How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson

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can find fun in the task if you look for it.

      Linking to other chapters

      This chapter has touched on a lot of issues that are addressed in much more detail in subsequent chapters. After Chapter 2, which concerns how you can make your essay your own, the chapters that follow are linked to the different components of your essay and, where possible, are structured in the order in which their topical focus is likely to be most relevant in your essay. The first of these (Chapter 3) addresses how to write an effective introduction, the next how to address the essay title (Chapter 4) and the next how to smoothly interconnect your essay (Chapter 5). The following chapters address how to successfully evaluate (Chapter 6) and describe (Chapter 7) in your essay. The next chapters are concerned with coursework essays and outline how you can tackle two very different but often neglected components of a brilliant essay: conclusions (Chapter 8) and references (Chapter 9). We then look at the editing process (Chapter 10) before addressing the specialist area of writing effective essays in exams (Chapters 11 and 12). While each chapter should give you some genuinely helpful guidance and encouragement, you may find it helpful to use feedback from your essays and your awareness to focus particularly on the issues that keep coming up for you. There is no plot that will be spoiled if you move straight to Chapter 9, no mystery character that doesn’t make sense if you go straight to Chapter 7. It’s your book, your resource, so use it in the way that works best for you. Writing essays is such a great skill to develop – I hope this book helps you to realise your full potential.

      Chapter 2 Make it yours – how to use sources effectively and avoid the plagiarism trap

      There is a famous quote which appears to praise ‘stealing’ the work of others. One form of it goes like this: ‘Good writers borrow, great writers steal.’ You might instantly think that Pablo Picasso said this, or TS Eliot, or maybe Oscar Wilde. If you attribute the phrase to any one of them, you are right. They all said it – or something very similar – and several others did too, so it’s not entirely clear who ‘stole’ from whom. We could leave to one side what this quote is trying to express – perhaps something about the dangers of trying to sneakily imitate others – and dig a little deeper. Is it still theft – or, for our purposes, plagiarism – if Picasso inserts the word ‘artists’, Eliot ‘poets’ and Wilde ‘writers’? Many students use exactly this technique of word substitution, or versions of it, to try to evade plagiarism detection or in a genuine effort to make the copied passage ‘their own’.

      This chapter will tackle plagiarism head on – not to simply wag a metaphorical finger at you and tell you what you really mustn’t do, but by examining all of the key features involved in making your essay your own. Here you will find not only tips on avoiding plagiarism, but also how you can readily become a proactive researcher in locating sources for your essay, how you can create notes that genuinely empower your essay writing and how you can use those sources to make your essay sparkle. This chapter will support your natural curiosity to find out more about psychology and your sense of satisfaction in doing something well – creating something really worthwhile. Your sense of curiosity and creativity is what really matters, so don’t let stress, anxiety and time pressure blow you off course.

      In this chapter you will learn…

       What is plagiarism and why it matters

       The active-engagement approach to locating and utilising sources

       How to search effectively for information

       Dynamic note-taking

       How to really make it your own

      Plagiarism: What it is and why it matters

      Before we get into dire warnings about plagiarism, the likelihood of being caught and the consequences when you are, let’s try and get a sharper sense of what it actually is and then we can work out how to find a much better way of drawing on the work of others. Plagiarism is used to refer to instances where someone presents another’s work as being their own. It dates to at least 70 ce when one Roman poet (Martial) became aware that another poet (Fidentinus) seemed to be doing just that. It is interesting to note that concerns about plagiarism have risen as the act of committing it has become easier – and right now it has never been easier. It took 10 seconds to go from writing the previous sentence to finding several online essay writing services. But wait, there’s more: if I have an essay to do on Piaget, I can type the six letters of his name into Google and get, as I did, precisely 32 million pages. I could create not one, but hundreds of essays by assembling sentences, paragraphs and pages that I find online. It’s as if I don’t need to think – I just search and find, copy and paste. I might feel bad about the deception involved in getting someone to write my essay for me or cutting and pasting large sections of text, so I could try a more popular form of plagiarism where I just make minor modifications. Perhaps, if I change a few words it will be more authentically mine and harder to detect – a win–win situation.

      The Plagiarism Casebook

      Look at the following cases in Tables 2.1–2.3. The cases and names (which are from a random name generator) are fictitious, but the incidents are informed by real events. For each case, consider what the student did, what happened and what, in hindsight, they could – or should – have done.

       Table 2.2

      If this chapter is successful, it will stop you from choosing to outsource your essay, to cut and paste another’s work or to simply make cosmetic changes to someone else’s work. All of these turn a beautiful, human task of creation into an ugly, mechanical chore of simulation. Writing is difficult, joyful and satisfying; copying is easy, shameful and empty. At rock bottom, even if you could ‘get away with it’, plagiarism is pointless. It is pointless in the sense that it sucks point and meaning, learning and growth, out of your work, and your experience of being a student is diminished. The opportunity to really learn and grow – and you will learn and grow by writing – is just too precious to squander in an anxious bid to complete your assignment.

      The tragedy is that most people do not set out to cheat. Even the essay-writing services attempt to appease the consciences of their potential customers, suggesting that their service is ‘like having another teacher’ and that students can ‘learn from the essays’ that are written for them. The cut-and-paste passages are often done with the intention to change it, soon. Finally,

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