How To Succeed As A Student (continued) section 6
by Kevin B. Bucknall
6 PREPARING AND PRESENTING ASSIGNMENTS: If you find it difficult to write an essay, see the Essay Councillor if your Faculty has one. The Faculty of Asian and International Studies has managed to maintain their support in this area, despite difficulties with Government funding.
Never write your assignments in note form but always write properly in good English, using sentences and paragraphs.
Never just put down all you know, but try to deal with the question set. A commonly seen and reasonable approach is to discuss the pros and cons of the issue and then sum up, but whether it is always a good way rather depends on the particular question asked. If you are asked to support a view, or criticise it, then that is what you must do.
In the text, when referring to numbers, it is normal to write out `four' rather than `4' and so on. Generally, the numbers 0-9 are usually written out as a word. You should observe this practice. With numbers higher than nine, you are often better off still spelling out the number. In a sentence, `42' looks stark and upsets the flow in a way that `forty-two' does not.
There are three occasions when numbers can themselves appear in the text. The first is where the sentence is clearly intended to pass on the numerical information and there are therefore a lot of numbers in the one sentence. Putting the figures in makes it easier to understand and also stops the sentence from getting too long.
The second occasion is where you intend to use decimal points, in which case the numbers have to appear, as it looks silly to write out `fifty-seven point five per cent' instead of `57.5 per cent'. Notice that `per cent' is two words, not one, and the `%' mark is not normally used in a sentence, even after a number, but `per cent' is written out in full. Within a table you can use `%' as it is short and fits in more easily. You should never mix numbers and full words in the same sentence as it looks very odd. For example, `The survey showed that 10 per cent of the population travel seventy per cent of their journeys by car, but only twenty per cent spent more than 30 minutes in the car'.
The third occasion is when the numbers involved are large - usually over one hundred. It may look a bit strange to write out `two hundred and seventy-six' rather than `276', and is definitely odd to write out `three thousand, four hundred and fifty-five' in words.
While on the subject of numbers, note that a hyphen is used with numbers like `thirty-six' and `ninety-nine'; do not write `thirty six', or even worse `thirtysix' in your assignments.
A commonly asked question about an essay or examination answer is `How long should it be?'. With set projects, the expected length is often indicated (1200 words, 3000 words or the like) and you can work out how many pages of your handwriting this is. With typescript and double spacing you get about 275 words to a page, depending on the particular words you use and the type size. With exam questions, it is more difficult. In answer to the question `How long should the answer be' the best answer is really `As long as it takes' but this is not a lot of help. Perhaps a helpful answer might be that a typical examination answer might be longer than one side of A4 paper, but shorter than six pages, with many students commonly writing about three or four pages. It does depend on you, your writing style and so forth; doubtless John Maynard Keynes could have written 20 excellent pages on one economics question or alternatively done it brilliantly and succinctly in half a page. Only if you judge yourself his equal should you try to emulate him on either length.
Always remember that when you are presented with an idea, model, or ideology, first you understand it, then learn it, after which you can subject it to critical review. If you think of a criticism as you are reading, jot it down at once on paper, and examine it later, once you understand what the person is saying exactly. When presenting an argument, it is often good to give the standard cases first, before you move to present something of yourself with your own criticisms and any original contribution you have to make. Whether this is appropriate in any particular case depends on the question as well as on how you think it could best be tackled.
You need to be critical about what you read. There are often disagreements between specialists so that you are unable to accept everything at face value. Knowledge advances by rejecting what was once believed to be true and replacing it with a later version. New theories and models emerge, eventually to be replaced in their turn. Some believe that perhaps half of what you read in a textbook is wrong, but unfortunately no one yet knows which half.
When writing an essay, you should have an Introduction, a Main Body, and a Conclusion. The Introduction and Conclusion should agree with each other, and must never be mutually contradictory. The Introduction is usually the best place to get rid of all your definitions and maybe indicate the scope of the answer, i.e., what you have chosen to cover and perhaps why.
You must use paragraphs; and each new idea needs its own paragraph usually. It is often desirable to use headings and sub-headings to `signpost' where you are and what you are doing. It also clearly reveals the internal logic of your organisational powers.
Watch your spelling and grammar and make sure all your sentences are really are sentences. Most sentences have a subject - verb - object construction, e.g., `The dog bit the cat' where `dog' is the subject (noun), the verb is `bit', and `cat' is the object. If you have doubts about this, or are not sure what, for example, a verb is, consult a good high school book on English grammar. Any reasonable computer word processing program will have a spelling checker and a good one may have a grammar checker - use them if you have them. Notice that it is becoming common to use the American spelling of `program' when referring to computers. Remember never to use abbreviations in assignments, other than the most standard ones. Even then, some prefer you to write `for example' than `e.g.'. Generally you should save your abbreviations for note taking, where they belong.
Avoid using `etc.' at the end of a list of items. It looks sloppy, suggesting to the reader that either the list is incomplete or you have not thought through exactly what you wish to say. Such an impression does not endear you, nor gain you marks. It is better to put a phrase such as `including', `for example' or `such as' in front of the list.
Remember that your answer needs information and content, logical organisation, and perhaps a theme (if appropriate to the question), as well as a consistency of approach. You should footnote all data, statistics, views that are associated with a particular person, and quotations used.
If you use diagrams in an essay, draw them carefully using a ruler and ink. In the exam room, you can usually get away with free hand drawings if they are neat. Colours can help sometimes. If you have a simple diagram, then one colour is always best as it tends to look silly if you mix three colours and only four lines. At the most, you should use, say, black and two other colours, unless the diagram is ultra-complicated and obviously requires more. Most diagrams are fairly simple, even if they seem complicated to you when you first encounter them. If you pepper a diagram with half a dozen colours and make it look like a work of art, it tends to make the observer feel that a) you have wasted time that could better be spent on analysis and explanation; and b) you perhaps have little to say of importance and are trying to conceal the fact by doing pretty diagrams.
You should if possible type or word process your assignments, and you should double space the text. This makes it easier to read, pleases the marker, and allows more room for comments. A happier marker is a more generous marker - or at least an unhappy one is less likely to be sympathetic to things like a dubious but not absolutely incorrect assertion. Double spacing encourages the marker to note ideas and suggestions throughout your text, and in this way you tend to get more written comments or response. It is traditional to send all manuscripts to publishers and journals in double space, so academics are used to seeing it in this form and indeed rather like it. This monograph would normally be printed in double space, but that would have unnecessarily increased the price to you, so it is single spaced for cheapness.
If you must put in handwritten assignments, you can either double space, which tends to look a bit odd and may look like wasting space, or single space it and leave extra wide margins for comments. But please remember that handwritten assignments do not impress as much, which may mean you have to work that extra bit harder to get the same mark.
If you cannot type using all your fingers, you are strongly advised to learn now. If you already use or buy a computer, you will find that touch typing can always be faster than `hunt and peck' methods. Most of us know people who have developed a quite remarkable speed as two finger typists, but they could do even better if they ever learn to type properly. It is easy to obtain a computer program that will teach you to type, either through the University or cheaply through Shareware. In 1994, the ITS Faculty can supply a programme called `Typequick' for $15 for DOS or the Mac or $20 for Windows. You can also find advertisements for typing tutors in computer magazines. Some of the packages have a fun typing game that encourages you to practise. This can be important, as learning to type does require a lot of practice and improving your speed can only seriously be done by undertaking such typing lessons. Most of the computer typing programs also analyse your weak points and have the ability to throw up tests that focus on what you need to practice the most. This is a vast improvement on the old-time night classes where one sat in a room and hammered away on a heavy clunky manual machine that had been retired from serious business, while someone walked around and kept an eye on things.
If you are just learning to type, you ought to be aware that after each sentence you should put two spaces, not the usual one. In addition, if you single-space your assignments, then you must leave a double space between paragraphs. If however you double-space your assignments, as you should, then you do not need to put two double spaces between paragraphs, only one.
On a computer it is easier because you can start by telling the computer to double-space automatically as you type. This saves you effort. If you change your mind later, you can easily go back to the beginning and tell the computer to triple-space, or single-space, as you think best and it alters it immediately.
Do get your assignments in on time. You lose marks for being late and in addition, once you fall behind your study and writing schedule it will be difficult to catch up. When this happens, everything tends to become late on the domino principle, and so you are giving away marks needlessly. If this happens, resist the temptation to copy someone else's work (see Plagiarism below). In addition to the possibility of being punished, in the long term you will know less, and your grades will suffer.
If things get desperately out of hand and you find that you have an essay due almost immediately what can you do? You can ask for an extension if you have a good excuse. Not being able to organise your time better is not usually acceptable as an excuse. The danger here is that if you are given a week's grace this will probably cut into the time you need to prepare another future assignment, so that you can fall into a cycle of always being behind and needing to grovel with excuses. It is far better to try to work a bit ahead of where you need to be, which means that if anything goes wrong you can still meet the deadline. The person with a safety margin can relax a bit. One way is to set yourself a personal deadline a few days before the official one. You could try colour coding in your diary; say using green for your personal deadline and red for the official one, which might help you. Such a system is operative in almost all large private firms and the public service as tasks are passed down the line, so that you are also developing a skill that is likely to prove valuable later. Another way is to try harder, either by working longer hours, more evenings, and more of the weekends, or work more effectively in future.
If, despite all efforts, you can neither gain an extension nor prepare a quality piece of work in time, with continuous assessment it is always better to put in a poor piece of work, perhaps staying up all the night before in order to prepare and write it, rather than not to submit anything. Even a bad piece of work is likely to get you some marks, whereas a non-submission can earn you nothing at all. If the item is worth, say, 20 per cent of the total marks, then a non-submission means that you are being marked out of a maximum of only 80 per cent, which makes it much harder for you.
Putting in an item but not getting a good mark is sometimes better than non-submission for another reason. It looks better if in the future you should be in the sad position of being a border line pass/fail case; if you can be seen not to have submitted items, the committee is likely to be most unimpressed with your general efforts, which might mean they are less sympathetic to your case.
`Good preparation can save much perspiration.'
A good method of starting is to read the title carefully and spend some time thinking about what it might mean, how many parts it might be divided into, how it might be tackled. Many questions fall into a very few groups. You will often be given two points, A and B, and the question will deal with some sort of link between these. Sometimes the question is explicit (e.g., `Compare and contrast the English and Dutch as colonising powers in Asia') but often it is concealed. The common links are:
- Compare and contrast A and B in some way;
- Causes and effects, usually of A on B;
- How much did A contribute to B (judging importance);
- Argue a case (sometimes with a quotation and you are asked if you agree or disagree)
As you begin to consider the question in detail, you can usefully jot down all the ideas that occur to you on a piece of paper and maybe rough out a sort of skeleton answer. Some people call this brainstorming. In the first place this may be easier to do starting with a circle in the middle of the page and extending lines out as ideas occur to you. If you find a more formal approach like a list works better for you, then use that method. Once you have lots of points jotted down, in the order they occurred to you, then you can move to the next stage which is where you tentatively put numbers by the points. You can reorder these as often as you like as you change your mind, for you are involved in an effort to work out a sensible way to tackle the question. There will be more than one possible way and you are seeking the one that seems best fitted to you. These numbers will become the different paragraphs or sections of the essay when you write it up.
Then you can check your lecture notes, and any other notes you may already have that are relevant to the title set. Next you should go to the textbook (and as many other textbooks as you think helpful) and read the relevant parts, using the index at the back. Do not forget to think of different words under which your interests might have been indexed. Note what you need and put the same numbers on these notes as you used earlier. After this you can read anything that has been set or recommended by a staff member. Again note what you need and add the numbers. Then use the library catalogue and search for anything that might add to your knowledge, reading and noting what you find.
Do not forget to look at your own clippings' file, if you are maintaining one (see Chapter 7 below), for relevant materials. As the clippings will be drawn largely from recent newspapers and magazines, their content will probably be more up-to-date than journal articles and especially books. Such use of clippings can add a touch of originality and freshness to an essay. Because the marker will probably be reading dozens of essays on the same topic, he/she tends to get bored, and such freshness can help your work to stand out and be more interesting. This often means better marks.
If you are in a particular subject run by one main person, it may help if you try looking up their name in the library catalogue. If they are giving a subject and setting an essay on, say, Indonesian history, there is a good chance that the person is an expert and may have published on that topic. When you hand in an assignment in the area of their specialisation, there is a strong possibility they hope or even expect to see their own work cited.
Then you should go over all the notes you have taken, read them and think about them, jotting down all your ideas or criticisms as you read. At this stage you might usefully add to or totally remake the initial skeleton answer. Do not be surprised if the final product looks quite a bit from the first one. You might notice how much you have learned and improved your knowledge and awareness. Remember that if you change the outline, the old numbers will not exactly correspond now, so you should go through and renumber them. Overwriting the old numbers in red often works well as it stands out as a colour.
At this point, it is useful to discuss the issue with others if possible. This help you to organise your thoughts and identify weak points in your arguments, and might give you some new points to incorporate or help adjust the balance of your answer. You can then redo the skeleton, expand it with sub-points and arguments in brief note form - and wait a day or two if you have the time. This waiting period allows things to `gel' or settle, and gives you time to think carefully about what you intend to say. Finally you write it up, sticking to the skeleton outline. It is usually advisable to set aside the essay when you have written it and leave it for at least twenty-four hours, then look at it again. You will probably notice at least one area that you can improve, and perhaps pick up the occasional grammatical error. It is far better to improve the essay in this way than hand it in thankfully, then find it comes back with more red ink on it than you care to see. Many academics leave written work aside for a while before rereading and then sending it off to a journal, but for some obscure reason few seem to advise students to do the same.
It is not essential to follow strictly the above order of doing things, but it is one handy way of tackling the preparation stage of an essay. You will be tempted to shorten the process and you might find you can do so safely - it is up to you to work out the best methods for you. You should always plan a skeleton answer as part of your approach however.
The stage of organising your notes and preparing the skeleton outline can prove difficult for some. Ironically, the more work you have done, the more ideas you have jotted down, the more notes you have gathered, the harder this stage of skeleton design becomes. There can be so much, that it can tend to overwhelm and what to leave out may become a problem. Graduate students doing research for a higher degree tend to face this issue a lot. The big thing is not to worry - this is the penalty of success, not a failure in any sense. Start by feeling pleased that you have so much information; do not worry about the Organisation but try to treat it as a sort of game. `Can I find three brilliant ways of tackling this question?' might stimulate you. There is never a single correct way of doing it - and if you come up with a different but valid approach, most academics are impressed.
Techniques for organising copious notes virtually all involve effort and a bit of trial and error of different ways of tackling the question. Some advocate writing all the main points on small cards and shuffling these around and comparing outcomes. Others like skeleton outlines each on a separate piece of A4 paper. This may take the form of a list, or have a central point (perhaps the title) with issues radiating off. Either way you can play about with the numbers attached to them until it looks the way you want. Some prefer to make their list on a computer, which does make shuffling the actual points around easy and you can also keep a record of different possible outlines, one to each file with names like `Out1', `Out2' and so on, and then compare them easily.
As a handy hint or rule of thumb, it almost always pays to address a question from a theoretical point of view, and use your knowledge, experience and examples to justify what you are saying. In most fields of study it is rarely easy to achieve much better than average passes by an approach that provides descriptions and adopts a method of presenting a discussion without some sort of theoretical framework. This is particularly true of longer pieces of work such as semester essays. There may be times when this is not valid, but it holds true more often than not. When in doubt, go for a theoretical approach.
One problem that worries a lot of students is how much to include, where to draw the line, and when to stop. Part of your learning process is to gain such skills, and so any anxiety and struggle involved is not necessarily a bad thing as it can definitely pay off for you. You should bear in mind there is no clear answer to such questions: they depend on the particular approach you decide to adopt when answering the question, as well as on factors like how intelligent, hard working and creative you are. If you are aiming for a bare pass or a high distinction, the answers will again be different. Clearly you could keep reading and thinking for months, but you might only have a week or two to finish it in. Generally, it is entirely up to you where to draw the line when answering a question. It should preferably be sensible rather than idiosyncratic and you should always be prepared to explain why you chose to draw the line where you did. This is a useful exercise in its own right, as if you think long and hard about the extent of the question, it forces you to focus on it more clearly.
`Style is the dress of thought; a modest dress, Neat, but not gaudy, will true critics please.' (Rev. Samuel Wesley, An Epistle to a Friend concerning Poetry, 1700).
No one can teach you a good writing style by giving you advice in a book. It is quite likely that it is impossible to teach style anyway, it can only be learned or developed. Writing well is of course a skill and, as with all skills, the amount you are born with is dictated by circumstance and beyond your control. You can of course improve on nature as a result of nurture, which is to say you can get better by practice. It is a good idea to practice writing a little each day, if only a paragraph or two, setting out some view. Learning by doing is important.
Reading what is generally acknowledged to be existing pieces of good writing will also help you to develop a better style. Good novels are the most accessible source. If you are in doubt what to read and who writes well, you could check with someone in Humanities. Alternatively you could try anything written by an author who has been selected for the Booker Prize short list. This is an annual competitive event held in Britain for the best novel published by a Commonwealth writer in that year, and several Australian writers have been short-listed, such as Peter Carey, Thomas Keneally and David Malouf. Any author that has appeared on the list can normally be relied upon to write good English, but a few, such as Roddy Doyle, may use a local vernacular in speech. He may improve your ability to swear in Dublin argot but probably not your writing style. Note that many good authors do not appear in the Booker nominations, for example Vikram Seth's, A Suitable Boy, which was missing from the 1993 competition. You should be aware that a surprising number of journalists write badly, so that it is unwise to use a good so-called `respectable' newspaper as a model. Any other way of finding good writers that you can find, e.g., books advising what authors are good, or syllabuses that include set texts should also be useful.
Reading poetry is also a useful way of helping to improve your style. An anthology or collection by different poets is a good idea to ensure a reasonable mix. You should read a poem several times, searching for the meaning, looking for any hidden meanings, seeing if there are any allusions to other works, then examining the use of adjectives to qualify nouns, adverbs to modify verbs and so on. Are there any colourful images or comparisons? You might even ask yourself if you can find a better adjective and try to see why the poet chose the one he/she did. If you were unfortunate enough to be brought up to believe that poetry is romantic and slushy nonsense, you might be in for a surprise: some of it is great fun.
Some simple rules worth following are presented here.
Avoid slang and colloquial English
Written English is more formal than spoken and you can get away with less when writing than when speaking. You should not write slang expressions such as `I fronted up to the office', which are colloquial in Australian or any other version of English. There are also various `buzz words' that keep cropping up, which are fashionable and well-used for a time, after which they often fade away. It is part of being modern, trendy and up-to-date to recognise and use them, especially in speech. Words and phrases such as `fab', `absolutely' (meaning yes), `bombed out', `mega' (as an adjective) and `keen' all came and went; others such as `cool', `heavy' and `fantastic' seemed to linger on for longer. You should never use such words in written essays, and unless you have a good and amusing vocal style, they are also better avoided in oral presentations. In the words of W.S. Gilbert, they may be intended `To give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative' (The Mikado) so they are not without use. However, there is a tendency among staff to regard such phrases with suspicion. It is probably true that current buzz words can be used to save thought and careful explanation, rather than to analyse properly. It is often best to save them for the coffee room and parties. If you use out of date ones, it marks you as a fairly backward person, so you have to work at keeping up-to-date. Note that if English is not your native language it is particularly hard to use slang and buzz words, as much of what you know is probably many years, even decades, out of date and often sounds extremely quaint to the ears of the native speakers.
Avoid trying to be humorous in written assignments
Few people can manage to write in an amusing vein. You should in particular avoid being facetious or indulging in irony. What you say in jocular vein might be accepted by whoever reads it and believed to represent your real views.
When writing, avoid abbreviations
Do not abbreviate words in the form of `I'm', `You'll', `We're', `They'll', `Can't' and so on, even if you commonly use them in every-day speech. You can use acronyms, like EU (Economic Union) which replaced the EEC (European Economic Community) in 1993, OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) or LSE (the London School of Economics). Note that with acronyms you must always explain what they mean the first time you use them, even when they are in common usage, such as the ACTU (Australian Council of Trade Unions). When introducing an acronym, it is usual to cite it in brackets after listing the words in full; e.g., `.... as is seen from the National Employment and Training Scheme (NEAT)'. After that you can simply use NEAT without explanation.
Do not try to impress by using long complicated words or sentences
You should not use long and unusual words for their own sake or indulge in extremely complicated forms of expression. A sentence such as `A plethora of daedal and reiterative platitudinous or indeterminate statements of a verbose nature are counter-productive to the consummation of communication' is an attempt to impress, baffle or at the worst perhaps to conceal thought. Your aim should be to reveal your views and communicate clearly. Remember that `the entire literate inhabitants of the global community in their multifarious linguistic endeavours are strongly advised to consider with the utmost seriousness the potent desirability of eschewing the mega-complex and following a path of simplistic minimalism in both form and expression'. In other words, keep it simple.
If in doubt, you should always use simple short sentences. It is easy to learn to link these together if your writing style is ever criticised as being too curt or `breathless'. For some reason, a style of long-winded exposition seems harder to rectify.
Do not overdo the use of brackets
Generally it is better to use no brackets at all, than sprinkle them liberally. They distract the eye and interrupt the flow of thought. Sometimes they add a little punch to your style, but the reverse is more common. Unless you are a good professional writer and know what you are doing, using them once is fine, but twice tends to lead to a feeling of unease, and thrice is irritating. This does not apply to the first use of an acronym (see above) or the use of brackets when footnoting (see Appendix below).
Do present a bibliography with your essay
You should add a bibliography at the end of any assignment you hand in, unless it has been specifically said that you do not need one. It always helps to show that you are serious and it is of assistance to the marker who can see what you have found and read and therefore how hard you have worked and how much you can be expected to know and include in the text.
FOOTNOTING: WHAT TO FOOTNOTE
If you supply any numbers, figures, tables or graphs, you should state the source of the information. You should also footnote any special views that are associated with a particular person, and any truly surprising or new view. Naturally all quotations you use must be footnoted. Short quotations are put in either single or double inverted commas, thus `Down with everybody' or `Down with the others'. If your quotation already includes a quote, you use double within single, thus: `As John said, "It always works" and we agree'. Lengthy quotes are indented without quotation marks and leaving a space above and below, thus:
Various factors come together to explain this issue. Nationalism is one, and a potent one, that has been particularly influential since the Nineteenth Century. Technology is another. This has been a steadily increasing source of friction since the middle of the Twentieth Century.
If you double space your typed text, then you can single space the lengthy footnotes, which also makes them stand out nicely.
You do not have to footnote anything that is common knowledge, such as the dates of World War One or that Albert Einstein was a scientist.
Although there is no rule about it, it is common for lengthy personal projects at higher levels to be more footnoted than short essays that everyone has to write. A thesis submitted for a Ph.D. by a graduate student will probably be footnoted the most; an Honours thesis will have a lot; a personal project in the second year will have quite a lot; but a standard first year semester essay might have the least. Whether this is because as people move up, they learn that they should footnote more, or whether fear is the key, as they have more to lose, is not clear.
HOW TO FOOTNOTE
There are two main footnoting systems, but many minor variations may exist within these two. The first is the traditional way, the second is often known as the Harvard System.
A) Traditional Footnoting
With references to books, the author's surname comes first, with either initials or given name following. Some people adopt a different method for footnotes and for bibliography items, with the former putting the given name first, the latter putting the given name (or initials only) last. Then comes the title, either underlined or in italics. Book titles are underlined. Then comes the publisher, the place of publication and the year, followed at the end by page numbers if relevant. An example is:
Smith, J., How to Swim Faster, Coates Publishers, New York, 1991.
A chapter in an edited book is listed by the author of the particular chapter, followed by the book details, thus:
Jones, A., `The back stroke', in Smith, J. (Ed.), How to Swim, Coates Publishers, New York, 1991, pp. 105-21.
Journal article titles are put in inverted commas and the journal name is underlined or in italics, and the journal details are then give, thus:
Jones, A., `Swimming for Health and Fitness', The Journal of Athletics, Vol. XIII, No. 3, 1992, pp. 23-44.
The footnotes are numbered, these days usually consecutively through the essay or article, although some people still start renumbering each new page as footnote number 1. This is particularly tricky if writing by hand, as you have to guess how much space the footnote will occupy and put it in at once, or carry on the writing and remember to put the footnote in when near the bottom, and hope you have stopped early enough. If you have more than one footnote on the page it gets almost impossible. A computer will automatically put them in properly for you, if you have a decent word processing package. In most books, the footnotes are usually gathered at the back these days, and I advise you to do the same, numbering them consecutively throughout your piece of writing.
B) The Harvard System
This is a simpler and more modern system. The text contains a bracketed reference to source with a page reference after a colon if necessary, thus:
... The war actually broke out one month earlier than is usually thought (Jones A., 1987:32).
All the references are then gathered in the back, in alphabetical order so that one looks up `Jones, 1987' to see what the source is and where it appeared. If there is more than one reference to Jones, each will have its own year of publication, and if more than one in a year, they get `Jones A., 1987a)' and `(Jones A., 1987b)' and so on in the text, and appear in order in the list in the back of the book, thus:
Jones A. 1981a, Swimming for Beginners, Coalbrook Press, Sydney.
Jones A. 1987b, `The back stroke', in Smith, J. (Ed.), How to Swim, Coates Publishers, New York, pp. 105-21.
Jones A. 1987c, Teach Yourself to Swim, Manhattan Press, NY.
In the Harvard system, no numbers are used for references at all. The only time a number appears is when a footnote containing substance appears, i.e., is some comment by someone or by you. There are usually far fewer of these than there are references, and the numbers can be placed either on the page to which they refer, which is the best solution, or gathered at the back, which is cheaper and easier when producing a book, but less easy to use for the reader.
All the rules such as having to underline book titles and the names of journals are identical in both systems.
If you are in doubt as to which footnote system to use, you should check the handouts to see if they instruct you to use a particular system, and if they do not, you could try asking the subject convener. If told it does not matter, then you choose whichever you prefer. Using a method recommended by a Style Manual is safe, as you can always say that you have followed its rules. If the marker does not like some element of it, they can complain to the editor of the style manual rather than put the blame on you. Whatever system you choose to adopt, you must be consistent in your footnotes and bibliography.
When in doubt about how to footnote an item, a fast way is open an academic book or journal article and check how the items are displayed there. You might find how the author tackled the particular problem you face and you can do what he/she did. There are also various style guides that explain how to footnote in some detail, as well as various other useful bits of information. Reading the bibliography in the back of a book, with a critical eye for the way it is done rather than for content, is however a good way to start.
Learning about correct footnoting may seem a little tedious to you and you might wonder why you should bother. The only answer is that things are done that way, there are rules, and if you break them you leave a bad taste in the mouth of the reader/marker. Silly errors in footnoting or incorrect footnoting tend to suggest that the author is slapdash, superficial and has not bothered to learn the basics. This is not going to help you either to convince someone else that your argument is right, or even that you are competent. Such a situation would not help to earn you good marks or to get a good degree.
SOME TYPES OF COMMON MISTAKES IN ESSAY WRITING AND PAPER PRESENTATION:
`It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.' (Joseph Conrad, Outcast of the Islands, 1896, pt.3, chap.2).
You might consider for yourself if you tend to fall into any of the traps below. If your essays are criticised by the marker, consider if he/she is referring to any of these common faults.
`The Shotgun technique'
This is putting down everything you know about the subject, and is a common fault. It is like firing a shotgun and hoping that some of the many pellets hit home. You must avoid doing this. The question you are asked or the topic you are set will be specific, and not of the form `What do you know about X'. Some students feel that by putting down all they know, they impress. Unfortunately it usually works the other way round, and persuades the reader that you are not very bright. You must answer the question that you have been asked.
If you find you have a tendency to put down everything you know, rather than answer the question, it helps to practise making skeleton answers. When you are actually writing an assignment, stick to the skeleton. If you are told that your answer is unfocussed, woffly or vague you might be suffering from this fault. In this case, you need to focus more on the question asked and stick to the main elements of the answer.
One rather mechanical but effective way of doing this, is to refer regularly to the words of the question as you write. Naturally, it should be done so often that it jars or starts to look silly. It may not be impossible to get side tracked if you keep referring to the words of the question and dropping them into the text, but it does require a certain talent. When you think you have finished the essay, it is useful to read it over with the question in large letters in front of you and keep glancing at this. You should see if your answer is relevant in this way. Keep asking yourself the question `What is in that should be reduced in importance or taken out?' - then have the courage to do whatever is necessary.
Getting sidetracked from the very beginning
Never start off any assignment, be it written or oral, by saying `Before I deal with the question set, I will....' or `Before we can tackle this question we must....'. You have been set a topic or question and must answer it. If you sidetrack yourself from the very beginning, you will not impress the marker. You will probably persuade him/her that either you are not very intelligent, or else you wish a different question had been set, because you know more about it, and therefore intend to change the question for yourself.
Skimpy lightweight work
This results in an essay that is too short and lacks sufficient content. If you find it is a problem of yours, the solution is easy - you need to do more work! If you receive such a criticism, take heed. When you think that you have finished writing the essay, you should read it over and ask yourself `What is out that should be in?' - then put it in. If you cannot answer that, then either you have a perfect answer, or you definitely need to read more.
Badly organised work
If you find this is a problem of yours, you might find that it helps to practise making skeleton answers using old exam papers or questions in a textbook. You need not write out the actual answer. When preparing the skeleton, seek out some logical order (e.g., who was involved, why did it happen, what were the results) and organise your points under your main headings. You could try several different approaches, one skeleton answer for each. You might have to think about what to put in and how to organise better, and you may find it difficult, but the actual process of doing this is part of learning and improving. Be aware that it might take some time before your effort pays off and your work improves. But be reassured that you will be more effective when approaching an issue for the rest of your life.
Too personal answers
This can be a problem for some. If it is, you are advised to avoid the word `I' and be careful not to express your personal views too much, unless the question actually asks what you yourself think. It is safer to keep it in third person whenever possible. The passive tense is often the best, although some now think this is an old-fashioned way. If you start saying `I think' then it can easily become too personal and it may cause you to say what you think without sufficient evidence to back it up. Alternatively, you might be failing to express one or more standard explanations that others have proposed. Using the active tense is often more vigorous in language but can backfire. If you are not sure what is meant by active and passive tenses, `The ball was struck' is passive, `I struck the ball' is active.
Sexism in language
Try to avoid putting `he' automatically and do not assume that someone in an important position is male. One way to tackle the problem of inadvertent sexism when writing is to use the combination `he/she'. Another way that sometimes works well is to put the noun into the plural. For example, `If a student tries, he/she can...' is easily altered to `If students try, they can...' without any indicated sex. There are also certain words that are better avoided altogether as they can give offense. Some obvious ones include:
Not liked Preferred
Workman Worker
Manmade Artificial; synthetic
Chairman Chair; Chairperson
Man and wife Man and woman; husband and wife; partners
Man hours Worktime; person hours
Men and ladies Men and women; ladies and gentlemen.
Careless work, including misspellings and ungrammatical English
If you find carelessness is a problem of yours, it pays to check very carefully when you think you have finished an essay or exam answer. If you are forced to make a lot of changes, so that the text looks bad, you should copy your assignment out again if need be and circumstances allow. If you are using a computer and word processing your work, you will find it a big help, as it is easy to make needed changes on the screen, then reprint a completely new version. If you are in an examination room under conditions that preclude writing out again, you can try to clean up the text as well as you can. The judicious use of white-out can make this easier.
You should also avoid repetition or tautology, such as `big huge', `kills germs dead' or as some would argue, `mindless bureaucracy'. You should also avoid using oxymorons. An oxymoron is something that is inherently contradictory, such as `a free-thinking bigot', or as as was once suggested, `military intelligence'. The person who uttered the sentence `I am here from the Department in Canberra and I am here to help you' might, in the view of some, be described as oxymoronic.
Bad English, grammar, or style
If you went through high school in the last decade or so, it is likely that you were taught little English grammar and possible that you were not taught any at all. Starting around the later 1960s, many of the professional educational advisers in the developed world promoted the view that it does not matter how children spell or use their own language as long as they can communicate their ideas. In retrospect it seems to many to have been a mistake. The proper use of grammar enhances the ability to communicate, while misuse of it can prevent proper communication. The belief that decried emphasis on grammar, spelling and the like became something of a holy cow. For a long time no one could attack it without danger of being labelled an arch conservative. The viewpoint is now becoming somewhat dated, has started to die naturally in a few areas, and been slaughtered in others. Fortunately, many children survived the experiments.
If you are unfortunate enough to be an unlucky victim of such educational social experiments I tender my sympathy, but what can you do about it? In practical terms you have a choice. You can live with the situation; you can study grammar on your own; you can take a course in it (if you can find one); or you can start to learn a foreign language. This last option sounds strange but commonly, we find that people only really start to learn much about the grammar of their own language when faced with the necessity of learning a different one.
If you find poor English is a problem of yours, you might find it helpful to read a good book on how to improve your writing, or talk to an essay adviser, and above all you should practice writing. Every day you could try to write at least one paragraph and then examine it critically. Try to get a friend to look at it too - you can swop paragraphs if you both need help here. Some people have found a series of three paperbacks useful - G.H. Vallins, Good English, Better English and The Best English, Pan Books, London, 1963, but there are others. You should also see the comments on style above. Be aware that in simple writing and for ease of exposition, it is often a good idea to make one paragraph the container of one idea.
Watch your tenses when using verbs
It is far too common to find assignments with verbs in the present tense mixed up with other verbs in the past tense. Try to keep the same tense within a paragraph, as it is very offputting otherwise, and can persuade the reader that you cannot express yourself. While on the subject of paragraphs, avoid the use of one sentence paragraphs - they are unimpressive. They will almost certainly be either too short for a proper explanation of the point, or else will be long and rambling, somewhat reminiscent of the worst parts of Faulkner's novels.
Too many adjectives and use of extreme language
When you have finished writing, go back and look at the nouns and verbs. If you keep saying `extremely...', `very...', or `remarkably...', as a qualification of the verb, consider knocking at least some of them out. It is better to try to find a better or more appropriate verb, than to modify it with a string of adjectives. You can often find a more suitable verb that is capable of standing alone. An adjective qualifies a noun, and adjectives are often over done. A reasonable general rule is do not use an adjective unless it is apt, unlikely and vitalising. Some advisers suggest you use no adjectives at all, but that is a little extreme, and not to my mind good advice.
If you find yourself using extreme words like `alarming', `staggering', `huge', `vast', or `astronomical', you are almost certainly guilty of exaggeration. Few things are that big or bad. You should cut all extreme words out of the text and try to stop using them. They usually indicate a lack of judgment about the seriousness of something or its degree, which is often associated with insufficient thought being given to the meaning you wish to communicate.
Reaching conclusions without good evidence
When you reach a decision or conclusion, you must have the evidence to justify it. Merely believing that it is the case is not enough. You have to prove it. The fact that a particular book or article said it is so does not prove anything. A different book might say the reverse. You can quote the book as a piece of evidence to strengthen your case but you should be aware that many book and articles are wrong in part or even whole. Jumping to conclusions falls into this category of problem.
Putting labels on people or ideas
It is perfectly acceptable to classify people or views, but you have to be able to defend your decision to place that person/view where you did. What is not desirable, is to hang a label on someone and then attack the label. As an example, I have heard a person called a fascist, then attacked using general anti-fascist arguments. It is a moderately clever but quite unacceptable way of arguing. It removes the need of you having to think why you do not like the view etc., then explaining what is wrong with that view and finally perhaps proposing an alternate view. A quick label and attack may be good enough in politics, and on a debating platform, but not in a university.
`Putting up a straw man' is a similar tactic. This involves making an apparently reasoned but really weak argument for something with which you disagree, then proceeding to batter down the weak case that you had carefully erected. In essence, both sides of the argument are being presented, but only one of them is being presented properly. This tactic is basically unfair. If you are ever accused of being `cavalier' you may be guilty of the straw man approach.
Political or cultural bias
This is very hard to spot in your own work, but easier in the output of others. You should keep an eye open on your work and try to avoid such biases. If you are conservative in viewpoint, then explaining your idea or semester essay findings to someone on the political left wing will rapidly reveal your prejudices (and theirs!). If you are on the left, then you might usefully try explaining to someone on the right. Political opponents need not be vilified and avoided, they do have their uses. You should also be aware of your religious beliefs, if any, and try not to let them get in the way of the workings of your brain and your analysis.
There are certain words that have an obvious bias attached and are found offensive by many. They are always disparaging and rude and should never be used. They may be connected with sex, race, colour of skin, religion, or social group within a society.
Unbalanced answers
Your answer may contain all the correct ingredients and points that could reasonably be made, and your Introduction may fit the Conclusion, but you can still have the problem that your answer is heavily weighted in one direction. The essay may not present a well-balanced fair evaluation of the whole issue. The imbalance may not necessarily be political or cultural, but they are common causes.
Rambling answers
If you find it is a problem of yours, you need to prune, edit and look for what can be left out. Cut out all repetitions. Never say `As was said before...'. If you are doing this, you are repeating yourself needlessly. You can also usefully practice writing to skeleton outlines. You can do this for yourself and your work will improve, even if no one else marks what you are doing. It might be expected that if someone marks and explains where you have a problem then you would improve. We do not fully understand why people still improve even if no one else sees what they write, but this often happens. It is analogous to us not being sure why people who keep doing intelligence tests, but who do not ever find out the correct answers or know how well they do, still get better at doing them. As a result, their measured IQ tends to increase over time.
Automatically adopting a chronological approach
If you are doing a history subject, or tackling a question in any subject that has an historical dimension there is something of which you should be aware. It is not so much a problem as a piece of useful advice. It is tempting and certainly easier to tackle the question chronologically and `tell the tale', i.e., you explain what happened in the order it occurred. You should be aware that although this is an easy approach, it is more difficult to gain good marks if you follow this route. Too many students drift into saying that `This went up and that went down' without revealing any particular understanding of why it occurred and why the particular results obtained occurred rather than some other ones. You will normally get better marks if you analyse the question, and answer it, rather than merely describing what occurred. Only if the question is of a form like `Trace the course of events in Indonesia in the 1950s.....' does the chronological approach pay off. And in this case you are doing what you were asked to do, which is always a good start.
Being boring
This itself can be a problem but one that is not easy to rectify. It is not only students that suffer from it. Quite a few academics somehow seem not to have managed to overcome it either. A good writing style and ability to interest the reader is very desirable. Few people seem to have this capacity, as most text books and many newspapers attest. It is not possible to teach writing style here, nor am I the right person to do this, but it is worth bearing in mind that you should at least try to make what you write interesting. Academics have to listen to and read many things that need marking. Marking essays and examinations is not the most interesting task in the world. You can perhaps imagine what it is like to read a hundred explanations of the same topic and still say sane. The essay or examination answer that leaps out as interesting and just a bit different (as long as it includes the standard `line' or explanation somewhere) tends to get a better mark. Contrary to underground rumour, academics are only human. Academics are prone to think, delve and seek for alternatives anyway. An academic has indeed been defined as someone who would rather be wrong for an interesting reason than right for a mundane one. This is an extreme view admittedly, but it does perhaps have a kernel of truth. There are limits to what you might argue successfully, especially in the first year, and the main accepted view or views should make an appearance in your answer. The obvious must be said, even if you go on to criticise it. Remember that if something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it probably is a duck.
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUIZZES, WRITE-IN ANSWERS, AND TRUE-FALSE TESTS:
Whenever you are faced with a set of answers and asked to choose, you should choose the most appropriate or `best' answer, as more than one may be `correct' in a limited sense. For example, if you are told that:
A] A seagull is a bird;
B] A seagull is a bird that eats fish;
C] A seagull is a web-footed bird that eats fish;
and you are asked which is correct, clearly all three statements are true - but C] is the best answer as it includes more than the others.
If you cannot answer a multiple choice question, go immediately to the next one. Do not waste time fretting over one that seems particularly difficult. Further down the paper there may be a few questions you can answer immediately and correctly. Your aim with multiple choice is to score good marks, which means you must finish. You should go through the whole paper fast, answering what you can and leaving the others. Then you go back to the beginning and start again, trying to answer the ones you left earlier. You keep cycling through in this way until you either run out of time or finish all the questions. This method gets you better marks than, say, hanging up on question five, so that you only get marked out of the four questions you have answered rather than the total number of questions set.
One point to remember is that if you are asked to answer thirty multiple choice or true/false questions, then you should do so. If you do not know an answer, it is always better to guess as you might guess right, but a failure to answer must be wrong. This is good technique except in the case where more marks are subtracted for a wrong answer than are added for a right one. In many cases you will find that marks are not subtracted if you are wrong. I should point out that I am not suggesting that guessing is a good idea, but it does increase the odds of getting at least some extra marks. With a choice of answers A - E, you have a probability of getting 20 percent of the marks by guesswork alone, if the answers are purely randomised.
If you get `write in' answers, which are often a gap in a sentence, you should read the rest of the sentence carefully and choose something that seems probable. If in an economics test, and you are asked to complete the blanks, you must make it both feasible and about economics. If the question reads `When the level of ...... increases we expect to see a .... in national income or an increase in .........' the words `demand', `rise' and `inflation' seem required. Equally, one could argue that `flood water', `change' and `the degree of water purity' would fit, but in a subject designed to teach you economics they are not the most probable answers and are unlikely to gain you any marks.
A different form of write-in answer is where you are expected to display creativeness and originality. Two commonly observed types of thinking are known as `convergent' and `divergent'. Convergent thinkers tend to have a tunnel-like vision and go very deeply into an issue; these contrast with divergent thinkers who start with something and jump off sideways, spreading themselves into different areas/disciplines and often linking them productively. `Lateral thinking', a phrase that made Edward de Bono famous, seems to be a specific kind of divergent thinking. Some write-in answers are designed to test powers of creativity or lateral thinking. A task such as `Write down as many uses of a pencil as you can think of' falls into this category. You should really aim to think of original things in addition to the obvious one. Everyone will say `Writing letters' but you could add uses like `constructing a see-saw for tame mice', `making a balance for weighing things', or `giving to a garden gnome to add a professional air to him' and similar creative uses. You should not worry about being silly, and you should be aware that suggesting amusing uses tends to gain you marks.
With true-false tests, under normal circumstances, one answer will be true (or false). With a little ingenuity, it might be possible to posit a particular and peculiar set of circumstances that would make the generally true answer not true at all. Ignore these special circumstances, and opt for the answer that will normally be true. There is no point in ticking one answer then adding a comment in the margin such as `As long as the budget is balanced' or some other statement, as the marker will almost certainly ignore it and might get irritated rather than impressed by your acumen. The time to impress in subtle and clever ways is when you write essays, not when doing multiple choice or true-false questions.
`Revision is to learning what digestion is to eating: if it does not happen, you will suffer.'
You will probably get a period for revising your work after lectures and classes finish and before examinations begin. Some people loosely refer to this revision period as `swot vac'. This will probably be either one week or two, but could be slightly longer, depending on which day your examinations are scheduled. This is valuable time and you should try to make the most of it. The very first thing you should do is to make a plan for what you will do and when. Unless some emergency arises, you should try to stick to that plan.
In the plan, you should allow a little rest time, perhaps taking off the entire first weekend in order to rest and relax. The idea is not to maximise your input of effort, which would mean swotting for all the time that you were not actually sleeping or eating, but to maximise the output of quality study. This will mean some non-study time is essential, although most of the time should be spent working. Try to break the time up into small chunks - for most people it is better to work for four lots of half an hour with a short break in between than to do three hours straight without a break. It is not only easier, you will usually learn and remember more.
It is usually helpful if you ensure that you do not work the night before your exam. Tempting though it may seem - `Oh my word, tomorrow I have to face those questions, I really need to work hard' - the quality of your answers is more likely to be higher if you are well rested, your mind is fresh and not awash with facts that you have tried to stuff in a few hours earlier. Equally do not, in the words of Arlo Guthrie in a folk song called `Alice's Restaurant', got `good and drunk the night before so I looked and felt my best.....'. He was going before a government draft board and he wished to be rejected on medical grounds so that he would not be conscripted to fight in Vietnam. You on the other hand are going into an examination and definitely want to be at your peak.
You should try to do no new work at all in this week or fortnight - the time for new work is past. If you have not read that book that you kept putting off, it is too late to start now. The only exception is if you have done absolutely no work all semester and any work at all will be new. If this is the case, you have ignored all the rest of the advice in this book, and unless you are either very brilliant or very lucky, you should anticipate failing. This short stretch of time is a revision period, and nothing else should get in your way. Summon up your motivation and be determined to do well, learn, and succeed. This is the last training period before the event and just like training race horses, it is worth special effort to get yourself at peak performance when you need it.
You should allocate time by subjects so that you cover every one well in the time available. You are aiming to bring up your weaker ones, push up your better ones, and raise the whole level of achievement. When you cannot make up your mind, it is often better to allocate more time to your weaker subjects: it is easier to raise your mark from 50 per cent to 60 per cent than from 70 per cent to 80 percent. In addition, a fail that could with a little more work have been turned into a pass looks worse than a credit that might have been turned into a distinction.
You also need to break the subjects down into the main topics, to ensure that you do a decent job. You should have obtained old examination papers and `spotted' the commonly occurring topics and covered them well anyway when studying and making notes. These will form the basis of your revision.
When revising, what you are doing is reading your notes until you know them. If they are distinctively laid out, as is suggested, then visual recall will be easier.
In addition to reading, which is a passive occupation, if you get tired or bored, try to do something else on the same topic. Perhaps you could rough out some skeleton answers for example for an hour. This is an excellent preparation for the examination room. After a while, you can go back to the reading, which may by then may not seem quite so bad. Keep the skeleton answers to the questions, so that you can revise them later also.
You should also continue to participate in your study group or work with your study buddy. This is a good format for brainstorming. People can throw a question into the ring, and the group then thinks about it, jotting down ideas for perhaps five minutes. After this, everyone can reveal their thoughts and views, leading to debate and argument. If you spend forty minutes on a question, it may be time for a short break before you move on to another. If you spend ten minutes on a question, go straight to another question. It does not matter how you organise your time, as long as you do it. If it helps to make a game of it, set five minutes for skeleton point answers, with the winner being the one with the most reasonable or relevant points. If the group likes the idea, the overall winner may get bought lunch or a couple of beers by the rest of the group. Anything that motivates the members and lightens the seeming burden has to be good for you. You can consider old examination questions, tutorial or seminar questions from the semester just finished, questions from the textbook, a question that anyone in the group likes, or wants to know the answer to.... There are many sources and the process of considering the questions and writing down an answer in point form is highly beneficial.
The skeleton answers you have invented are often useful raw material to talk over with your best friend or small study group and you can compare your answers. Remember that if you help each other you both gain; it is not the case that if your friend improves because of your work you lose in some vague way. You will gain in turn from the work that they have done. By discussing with your study buddy you might discover something you did not know. If such a hole in your knowledge appears, do not feel sad or miserably depressed. Be happy! You have found the hole and can now plug it - but remember to do it from the material and people you have available and do not waste time searching the library for hours looking for some obscure point at this late stage.
EXAMINATIONS: `In Examinations, those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot tell.' (Sir Walter A. Raleigh 1861-1922, Laughter from a Cloud, 1923, `Some thoughts on examinations').
A few days before the exam, check to make sure that the time and place you have in your diary are correct. Turning up a week late or in the afternoon for a morning exam will not do you much good. Ensure also that you know exactly where the examination room is, so that if they have put you somewhere different, like a gymnasium, you can go straight to it without any worries.
On the day of the exam, make sure that you set your alarm clock so that you are awake early enough to avoid all hassles and worries the morning of the exam. This is a rotten time to choose to break off with a boyfriend or girlfriend so if there is such a likelihood, you should try to do so a lot earlier or wait until after the exams. Nothing should disturb your mental equilibrium, and emotional conflicts are high on the list of things that can pull the standard of your work down.
If you run an old car, make sure it is likely to start when you need it, or make alternative travel arrangements for that day. You should wake up in good time to make sure you can get there on time. If you travel in by bus, it may pay you to get the one earlier than you need, in order to make sure you definitely get there in good time. If you are running late and upset or worried, you will not do as well as you should, and are in danger of letting yourself down.
You should get there early, say fifteen minutes before the start, and then try to relax. Never try to study in that brief period, or in the hour or so before an exam. The process tends to put a few things into the front of your mind at the expense of a larger number, often more important, which may temporarily be forgotten.
It is also better not to discuss possible questions and answers with other candidates at this stage. If you do, the discussion may take over and blank out a lot of information. The time to discuss questions and answers is in the last few weeks before the exam, never in the last few minutes.
Always take into the examination hall a `kit' of some spare pens and a pencil, a bottle of white-out, an eraser, a ruler and a calculator. You may not need all these, but their very presence is a comfort and knowing that they are there makes you relax. If you are under less stress, then you will probably be able to think and write better.
Note that it is generally better to write in black or blue-black and ball points are quite acceptable. Using a dark colour makes it easier to read and this pleases markers. You should avoid using red ink in particular, as most markers use that themselves and hate to be preempted. This also holds true for diagrams. You should avoid using pencil to write with, unless that is all you have and your pen runs out. It looks sloppy and is not easy to read - from your point of view it makes perfect sense not to annoy your examiner or make his/her life difficult.
If your native language is not English, take a dictionary with you to help you understand the questions and check with the person in charge that it is all right to consult it to help you understand the questions. They will usually be sympathetic.
Wait outside the room until you are told you can enter, then find a decent place and try to relax. Once in the exam room you should select a place in which you will feel comfortable, e.g., near the back, near the front, by the aisle, or whatever. Make sure you have a reliable watch with you, so that you can pace yourself. If you do not have a watch, try to sit where you can see a clock if there is one in the room. If you cannot manage this and do not have a watch, you can ask one of the invigilators occasionally. Do not upset everyone else by asking every ten minutes however. Do not touch the papers in front of you until you are told you may. Obey any verbal directions, such as you may fill in your name slip now. Normally you will be given ten minutes perusal time in addition to the time set for the exam. You can use this period to read the exam paper but you cannot write anything during this time, not even any ideas that may pop into your head. You should use this period to read the questions and make sure that you fully understand the instructions. In particular, check how long the examination will last, how many questions you will have to answer, and if any of them are compulsory. It is sensible not to pick up your pen/pencil during this perusal time as the invigilators will then not glower at you and check to make sure you are not in fact writing. You will be told when you can start and by what time you will have to finish.
It is a good idea is to read the exam paper several times, at least three, and select the questions that you think that you may be able to tackle. You then whittle these down until you know exactly which ones you will answer. Once you get the go ahead, number these clearly in the margin in the order you want to do them. After that, do not reread any of the other questions. If you do, you may feel depressed if you cannot answer them. This does not matter, because you do not have to answer them in any case.
You must, of course, read the instructions and attempt to answer the correct number of questions. If you are supposed to answer four questions and only attempt three, then you are being marked out of 75 per cent rather than 100 per cent and so cannot do as well as you could. In the same way, check carefully to see if there are several parts to the question, and if so, be sure you answer all the parts, or again you will be marked out of less than the full amount.
Conversely, if you are supposed to do four questions but attempted five questions, the marker will probably only read the first four and allocate a mark. You are unlikely to get the best four marks out of five. You have then wasted your time that could have been better spent. If you have been told that you must attempt question 1 and one question from each of sections B, C, and D, then that is what you must do.
Note that you can do the questions in any order that you like, unless this is specifically precluded in the instructions. Most students tackle first the question that they think they can do best at, and so on down the line to the one that they least fancy doing, but you do not have to do this unless you want.
Always plan out your answers in skeleton form before you start to write. It is always wrong to you grab your pen and start to write furiously as soon as you are allowed to begin. Many students finish early in any case and do not really need the full allotted time to write in. Careful thought about what you want to say and the order you wish to say it is more productive of marks than reams of disorganised writing that spread over several pages. Unless it is explicitly forbidden (which it almost never is) you can plan out your answers in the back of the answer book, or on the back of the actual exam paper. If you use the answer book, make sure you cross out your skeleton answer to show that it is not to be marked as part of your answer. Believe me, most markers will not read things you have crossed out, as for most staff there are far too many scripts to mark anyway. Those few who might be tempted to read it will perhaps be impressed by the fact that you did a skeleton answer anyway, so you cannot lose.
Plot out the answers in any order that the points occur to you, then reorder the points logically. You can either write out the skeleton again, or save time by numbering the points in the order you will write them - cross out the numbers and change them if necessary, if a better approach crosses your mind. This is not wasted time - it is one of the more valuable uses of your limited time in fact. This method also allows you to see any possible headings and sub-headings: these often impress the marker, who knows that you are under pressure and neat sub-heads can make him/her feel that you are an exceptionally bright person.
Naturally you always answer the question that is asked, rather than one that you wish had been set. Writing down all you know about a subject is not a way to get good marks, and you might not get any at all if you do this. There is a question in front of you - answer it! Keep to the point and answer what is asked. Consider this - if someone asks you `What time is it?' they do not expect to be given a history of the Swiss watch making industry, with a foray into cuckoo clocks, and ending up with the Japanese move into the watch making industry. The questioner merely want to know the time. Exam questions are similar - do not just put in what you know about the general subject, but answer the question as well as you can. In particular, never start off by saying `Before answering this question I will.....'; Markers do not like giving a candidate zero marks, but are forced to do so if the student absolutely refuses to answer the question that was asked.
Do not waste time copying out the examination question in your answer book, but do make sure that you put the question number at the beginning of each answer. You should start a new question on a new page unless instructed otherwise. Sometimes you will have been instructed to start a new answer in a new answer book, but this is uncommon. In all cases, follow the instructions at the top of the question paper.
Try to make your writing legible. It is human nature for the marker to feel generally happier if he/she does not have to spend twice as long as normal, merely trying to decipher the scrawl, while being supremely conscious of a monstrous pile of unmarked papers looming in the periphery of vision. It is not in your interest to alienate the marker, as an unhappy marker is not likely to be a generous marker.
Try to pace yourself so that if you have three hours to write in and six questions to do, you spend in total an average of half an hour on each. That probably means fifteen to twenty minutes planning out all your answers, and twenty to twenty-five minutes writing each, leaving a bit of time at the end for reading over and correcting any obvious mistakes. You must always read over what you have written before leaving the exam room, unless you have been so badly organised as to run out of time. Under exam conditions, with the attendant stress, it is likely that you have missed out odd words in sentences, used a wrong word here and there, and put things like `there books' rather than `their books'. If you get confused on `there' and `their', you can remember a short piece of doggerel which I was forced to learn at school: `There is, there are, there was, there were; Tee Aich Ee Are Ee'. If you make a mistake in the exam room, you will find the white-out is useful, as corrections can be done neatly and quickly. The above discussion assumes that all questions receive equal weight in the marking: if one question is worth twice the others, you should spend twice as long on that question of course, in order to optimise your chances.
When writing your answer, try to avoid using words like `should', `ought' and phrases like `it is desirable to'. The examiner might disagree and in any case it looks prescriptive rather than analytical. Markers do like to see an analytical approach to any question.
Always use diagrams if you can. In the examination room you can draw all your diagrams quickly and you should not waste time making them look super-pretty. Using a ruler will make them look neat, but much use of different colours is probably a waste of your time. Take care that you choose the correct diagram for the problem and that the parts of it are correctly drawn and labelled. When you have finished writing the answers, make sure you check all diagrams carefully, asking yourself if you are certain it is the right one, and if you have drawn it properly. Make sure you have labelled all the axes and curves, or named any boxes in the diagram, and done so correctly. It is common for students to pick up several mistakes when checking at this stage, so you should make sure you do finish writing early enough to correct both text and diagrams.
If you run out of time and realise that you will be unable to finish the necessary number of questions, you can often gain marks by doing the last answer in note form. You should get some mark at least for doing this. All other questions must be answered in proper `written out' English and not in note form, unless a particular question states that it can be answered in that way.
It helps to define any terms in the introductory paragraph. You might find it helps to finish a question by saying something like `In conclusion, it can be said...' or `To sum up, the main influences were....'. This refreshes the mind of the marker, who after all may have read a hundred other versions of the answer before yours, and may tend to forget just how well you have made your points. Some advisors suggest avoiding using the word `conclusion', but I think it helps to do so when answering an examination question. You can vary this by using different phrases, such as ` In conclusion', `Therefore we can conclude', `To sum up', or `We can therefore decide', in different answers.
Do not try to cheat. It simply is not worth it. Even if you manage to sneak in a few dates, key phrases and the like, you may not find you can use them. More to the point, markers look to the general quality of an essay and the quality of the analysis revealed in your answer. At best you are only likely to be able to smuggle in a few facts which do nothing to raise the quality of what you have to say.
An important reason for not trying to cheat is that if you are found out, the potential loss is great; but if you are successful the potential gain is small. Such situations have been described as `possessing a large down-side risk', a piece of awful jargon, but quite descriptive. If you can gain little or nothing but stand to lose a lot, accepting the risk is stupid. This is particularly so with continual assessment as in Griffith University, where the mark for the entire exam is likely to be a fairly small percentage of your final mark for the subject. Cheating simply is not worth the risk.
If you blank out and cannot remember anything - do not panic. It is only nerves and can be beaten. If you have learned any relaxation techniques, or breathing techniques, use them. That should fix it. Do not however merely take lots of deep breaths. In moderation, say three breaths, it can help, but too many and there is a real danger that you will hyperventilate and get into quite serious physical trouble. The remedy for that is to breathe in and out in a paper bag, but you are not likely to be carrying one around with you. Never use a polythene bag, of course, as it is surprisingly easy to suffocate with one.
If you have not learned a breathing technique which helps you to relax, try the following. Sit quietly, with your legs uncrossed and palms resting in your lap. Close your eyes, consciously try to relax, and then picture some quiet and pretty scene from your childhood, perhaps drifting in a boat on a lake. Something rural seems to work best. With any luck, this will solve your panic attack.
If that quick fix fails, then you can try this quick relaxation technique. Take a few deep breaths, close your eyes, rest your forearms on your thighs with your palms up and fingers loosely folded. Empty your mind for a few seconds. Then think of a number like 10 or 30 and visualise it in your mind. If you need a simple relaxation, 10 might work; if your mind is totally blank, choose 30. You then breathe slowly and normally, counting your breaths in and out, starting with 10 (30) and coming down to 9 (29), then 8 (28) and so on. Concentrate on feeling the sensation of your breath coming in and out and also visualise the number changing downward as you count. With higher numbers, you may find it easier to think `twenty' on the in-breath and `nine' on the out-breath. When you get down to zero, just sit quietly for a few more breaths. Then to come out of the relaxed state you are in, count five slowly in ascending order, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and open your eyes. As most relaxation techniques work better after a little practice, it would make sense to try the technique out a few times before the exams even start. If at any time in the exam you should start to get overanxious again, you can repeat the technique and count down again; it cannot harm you and should lead you to relax once more.
You will have used up only about a minute or two of the total time, which is nothing, and you should now be in better shape to answer the questions. You only have to do a few questions after all. That should be easy. Remember that.
After you leave the examination room it is tempting to stand around outside and ask others what they wrote in answer to question five, and the like. Such post mortems serve no purpose and can be positively dangerous if they make you feel angry or depressed, should others seem to have supplied a better answer than you. They might in fact be wrong but that is not really the point. Your task now is to wipe out from your mind the examination that you just sat and, after a break, to relax, start preparing yourself for the next examination paper. It is always the next paper that should concern you and attract your wholehearted attention, never the one you have already done. For examination papers, bygones are bygones. Remember that before examinations, (but not in the few minutes immediately before them), discussions of possible questions and answers to them can be very helpful to you. Post mortems however cannot.
`I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they are still going.' (Lord Birkett, in The Observer, 30 Oct. 1960).
Oral presentations can be a trial for some. If you are shy, introverted, and lacking in self confidence, or in other words are generally normal, then an oral presentation might worry you. There is not a lot you can do except practice. You might try joining a drama group and taking a small part in order to build up your confidence. Drama parties tend to be very good too. Alternatively consider joining a toast-masters or toast-mistresses organisation, where you learn about and gain practice in public speaking. The more you take the opportunity to practice, the better you will become. Rest assured that it gets easier. If you do develop twitches or show other signs of nerves before presenting a seminar paper, take consolation. Quite often, the shy students do better at examinations to make up for the agony of public speaking.
If on the other hand you are extroverted, self confident and enjoy performing in public, then go for it! You will not know the delicious frisson of stage-fright, but that is your loss and you must live with it. At least you will not feel sick either. Your main problem, if you have one, might be that you tend to be a little too self confident and as a result may come over as rather brash and glib. If anyone tells you something like this, then try to rein yourself in and not go over the top. Exercise more self restraint. You might also do well selling real estate in the future, if the job market for graduates gets worse.
You must never be put off or allow fear of the assigned topic to crush you. Just start on it! Read the title carefully, jot down a few preliminary ideas, including anything at all that might under the remotest circumstances prove relevant. This might include simple things, such as why you dislike the topic, why it seems difficult to you, and what sort of book, journal, magazine or newspaper might have something on it. Of course, you must put down all the substantive ideas about the question also. Once you have begun, it usually seems easier and more interesting. It is common to find that certain lines of enquiry start to suggest themselves. Talk to members of your study group if it helps you to sort out your ideas. Ask your friends if they heard anything on the radio or saw something on TV about the topic recently, and what they remember or felt about it. Anything at all that gets you started and raises the level of your interest is valuable.
Whether you read it aloud or present from notes is up to you, unless the rules of the subject specify otherwise. Reading aloud is easier for the presenter, but usually a bit more boring for the audience. You should try to do it from notes at some stage at university, just for the experience. The first time you give a seminar, reading aloud is definitely safer for almost all students. If you are mature, confident, extrovert and exuberant, then you might use notes from the very beginning.
If you intend to read aloud, once you think you have finished your first draft, a practice dry run or two is called for, to see how long it takes. Do not forget that you read aloud to a group more slowly than you would normally speak. If the rules say `about twenty minutes' then sixteen to twenty-five minutes would be acceptable, but not forty minutes. Do not go on too long, it bores the boots off everyone, and you start to lose marks, not gain them. It is usually better to cut out a chunk if you find you are already running late and the end is not in sight. Equally if the staff member interrupts and asks you if you could finish quickly, you should do so. You could apologise for having done too much to fit in, tell people in a few seconds what the last two points are that you did not have the time to discuss, and say that you would be happy to answer questions on them in question time. Then jump to a short summary. Preferably this should not be more than two minutes in length. In a fifty minute session, commonly a paper should last not more than thirty minutes, leaving twenty for questions, comments, and perhaps a summing-up from the staff member. Twenty minutes is often a better length, as it allows more time for the group to start working properly. Remember, a seminar is a group session, although it may seem like a monologue to you as you prepare the paper. What you are preparing is really a paper for discussion.
Whatever type of person you are, extrovert or introvert, you should try to make the presentation interesting as well as of high quality. This means using your voice properly. Most untrained people speak far too quickly when public speaking - make a definite effort to slow down and try to listen to the sound of your own voice. If anyone in the group asks you to go more slowly, then rapid speaking is definitely a problem of yours that you will need to address. People easily tend to lose concentration, stop listening or even in extreme cases fall asleep. You should be aware that some in your audience will be tired from earlier work that day, or from the excesses of the night before, and others not really interested in the topic.
If you are giving the paper in the evening, be prepared to face more audience tiredness and to deal with this. You are likely to find more people turning up late, as they were kept at the office, the traffic was bad, there was nowhere near to park and so forth. Try not to get thrown by latecomers. I find it better to ignore them completely. If they apologise to you, just smile and nod. Whatever you do, you should not start a conversation with them. Go straight on with your talk;, do not wait for them to find a seat and get comfortable. The people who came on time should never be punished for so; that is what happens if you devote attention to the newcomers. Do not try to summarise for them what you have already said. You might be prepared at question time for them to ask something that you dealt with before they came in. You can point this out in a nice way, and then tell them the answer, but briefly. Keep it short and do not give an extended answer, as this would bore everyone else who was present from the beginning.
In order to deal with the problem of tiredness among the audience and some lack of interest, you can try to alter your voice, getting louder and softer, emphasising the main points with more volume and then dropping it away. A small pause before a major point usually gets peoples' attention. Do not indulge in the politicians' habit of repeating phrases for emphasis, which is designed to persuade not to inform, not to inform. This tactic has no place in a university but you might remember and use it if you decide to go into politics. You should also speak loudly enough so that you can be heard by everyone present. If the people at the back cannot hear you, then both you and they are wasting time. Project your voice if you can, which does not mean you should shout. Do not mumble and do try to speak clearly.
Always try to get eye contact and look at different people as you talk. Do this as much as possible. If this means reading head down, then glancing up in pauses, do this and make sure you look at someone different each time, to draw them into the group and make them interested in what you are saying. You might find that you feel shy and nervous about this at first, but do not worry. Do it anyway, and eventually you will probably overcome the feeling.
In almost all cases, it is better to read the paper aloud without allowing interruptions from the audience. The proper time for comments and questions is at the end. A few students start by actually inviting interruptions and questions as they go; this does however tend to spoil the main focus and flow of the paper for the majority of the listeners. It also allows any extroverts who may be present and who cannot keep their mouths shut to disrupt and dominate the proceedings. Many questions that will be asked as an interruption will be answered in the paper later, you simply have not reached it yet. If you do suggest you welcome interruptions, it is on your own head.
Should you get an unwanted question in the middle of your presentation, it is usually better to say politely that you would prefer to deal with that at the end rather than try to answer it there and then. If you then jot down a few words to remind you about the question, you can ensure that you start with that person during question time and they will often feel good about it at that point. Once you allow an interruption, others tend to join in and there is a danger that the paper may turn into a free-for-all discussion before you have even finished. If this occurs, a good chairperson should interrupt and suggest that we finish the paper without further interruption then return to the debate or argument at the end. It is better not to risk it happening in my view. You can use your discretion of course, and if the interruption is simple, along the lines perhaps of `Did you just say 1982 or 1992?' you can of course give the correct date immediately.
USING OVERHEAD TRANSPARENCIES:
It is desirable to use overhead transparencies (OHTs) to illustrate or explain your points. They give people something to look at and help you to transmit your meaning. The actual OHT plastic oblongs can be bought in a packet, and you will need a special set of pens for drawing on it. Ordinary pens do not work well and cannot easily be cleaned off. If you use a water-based pen, you can subsequently clean off with a wet cloth. The oil-based pens are intended to be permanent and the OHT cannot easily be cleaned without special substances, so you have to buy more plastic oblongs. Do check carefully when you buy the pens. If you cannot afford a box of OHT plastic oblongs and pens, you could split the cost with other students and buy jointly as a cooperative. As you are likely to use OHTs during your entire three years, it could be worth the initial investment for yourself. You might need more plastic oblongs than you think, especially if you choose to keep them with your talk notes for future revision, rather than to wipe them clean and reuse them.
It is best to prepare your OHTs in advance of your talk. You have plenty of time to think about how you will use OHTs to enhance your message, decide exactly what you wish to put on them, and then do them neatly. If you get it wrong, or it looks awful, it is easy to wipe out and redo. It is also much less nerve-racking if you prepare in advance. Trying to draw diagrams while you speak can add substantially to your feeling of nervousness. If you are writing down points as you talk and forget to do one, it can be a bit devastating if you suddenly realise what you have done - or not done.
What should you put on the OHT? Data and statistics can always usefully be discussed in this way. It tends to put people to sleep if you drone on using figures in the text that they cannot see. In addition, if they cannot see the data, the listeners do not seem to get the message. In any case, if you read out statistics, they almost always seem to go past the audience too quickly to be absorbed and understood. If you wish to present any statistics, including any research results, always put them on an OHT, perhaps in a statistical table. You can then talk to the transparency and point to the figure that you are discussing. You can also use data on OHTs to emphasise the main points you wish to make.
Systems can also be usefully shown on OHTs. A complex set of inter-relationships can most easily be grasped by an explanation accompanied by a visual presentation, rather than merely giving a description. Unless either you or your audience is brilliant, describing without a visual aid is likely to confuse people, rather than to transmit your message. If you ever have to show the progress of things round a system, it is virtually essential to have a diagram to show people and explain as you trace the track round.
Diagrams are another area that lend themselves well to OHTs. When you put one up, it helps the audience if you immediately tell them what the diagram is for, i.e., what use it plays in your talk. The next thing is to tell them what is on the axes, or what the main boxes etc. of the diagram are. Whatever you do, never jump in and say something like `You can see that...'. Many, perhaps most, of the people present will not be able to see it at all. Remember that you have thought long and hard about the topic, and seen the diagram often, perhaps even drawn it many times to get it right. You are familiar with it, but you must remember that it will be new to at least some of those present. Only when you are sure they know what the diagram is about, can you use it. Naturally, this advice applies to a diagram with which you cannot expect the viewers to be familiar. If it something they should know, e.g., an economic supply and demand diagram in a second year presentation, you can say something like "This is the usual supply and demand diagram" and proceed to use it at once.
An outline of your talk, covering just the main headings also makes a good OHT and has the additional benefit of making you organise your presentation well. The other students and the staff member present know you have spent time organising your talk and they will follow the presentation better. It is often useful to take a sheet of paper and cover up the bottom part of the OHT when you do not wish the audience to see the whole thing immediately. It works well if you start by just showing the title and first point you want to make and then sliding the piece of paper down to reveal the second point, then later the third point, and so on. When the last point has been revealed, leave the whole OHT up. You might have to take off the OHT which depicts the overall outline a few times, to show other OHTs. For example, you may wish to show some detail of the point you are discussing, or you might have data or a diagram to show the audience. If so, it is often useful to put the overall OHT back up again, once you have finished with the new OHT.
If you can afford it, or if the rules of your subject say you must, then as an alternative to an OHT, you might make a xerox copy of the outline for each person who will be present. You should pass the outline round before you begin your talk. Even then, it often helps to have the same information on an OHT - it gives them something to look at, and keeps them looking in your direction rather than being immersed and head down, which some presenters find difficult to cope with. Eye contact definitely helps your presentation.
You should leave your transparencies up for a lot longer than you think is necessary. Remember that you are familiar with their content, but the audience is not. They have to look at the OHT, see what you mean by it, then think about the information and your interpretation of it, and this all takes time. They may also wish to refresh themselves on an earlier point you made, or catch up if they were busy thinking, or got distracted, and missed one of your points. It is better to let them look it up on the OHT than interrupt you and say `What was the third point again?'. In any case, people simply like having something to look at as well as listen to. It is better to have things up for your entire talk, than whip OHTs away before people have fully studied and grasped the meaning of them.
Keep your transparencies simple - if you put too much on one, people get confused easily. You can perhaps divide a complex thing over, say, four OHTs, and go through in order. If necessary, you can go through them again, showing them twice, if it is a particularly complicated issue.
At some stage you will probably need to xerox tables of data and turn them into OHTs to use in a presentation. There are two important things you need to know about xeroxing tables from books and articles. First, it is comparatively rare that you need the entire table from the book as you will be using the data to make some point or other. Never supply more figures than you need - it is often better to copy out the part of the table you need to discuss by hand, using large figures and use that, rather than present a whole table when you will only refer to two or three of the figures contained in it.
Second, if you must xerox a whole table, you will probably find that the figures will be tiny, and too small for the people at the back to see. You will almost certainly need to blow it up in size, using the xerox machine for this purpose. Most modern machines allow you to copy something and enlarge it up to 140 per cent of the original to make it easier to see. If this product is still too small, you can then xerox the enlarged xerox itself, to make a new version that is even larger. The process can continue until the data is big enough for your purposes, if you do not lose too much definition. Note that as you blow up the data, you can get less and less on the OHT. It often takes a few attempts to get just the part you need on the final product.
Using the proper pen, you can draw straight on to a transparency and use different colours if you find this useful to explain your points. In most cases, the colour black (yes I know it is not really a colour, but would `the non-colour black' really be more understandable?) along with two other colours are often as many as will be useful. The use of too many colours merely confuses and starts to look as if Walt Disney may have designed it.
If you wish to draw on the transparency in front of the group, e.g., if you have a blank map and wish to put in towns and rivers, note that you can slide the original under another blank transparency and draw on the blank top one. This keeps the original untouched, so you can use it again, either in that session or elsewhere, if you want. If you have a complex diagram you wish to show, it often helps to make it in advance, building it up on separate OHTS. You place one layer directly above another to show what you are doing. It is possible to hinge the several OHTs together at one side, and fold them down, one after the other, as you progress through your discussion of the complicated diagram, adding each layer exactly above the one earlier. A different colour for each layer may help you make your points more clearly. If you have a sequence of events to discuss which can be gathered into groups, it may help to put each group into one colour and on its own layer, for example.
If you try to make complex diagrams in colour or layers, you might try it straight on the plastic, but if you do, you should make sure you are using water-soluble pens and just keep trying, wiping out with a damp cloth until you get it the way you want. Alternatively, you might prefer to work it out on scrap paper first and see how it will go. This will save you a lot of wiping clean and starting again. Do whichever works best for you.
You will find that it helps to number the OHTs in one corner in the order that you will use them, either using the normal OHT pen, or by sticking a small piece of paper there and writing on that. If you ever drop your OHT transparencies without having numbers on them, you will probably get very confused, especially if you are in front of an audience when it happens. They tend to look very similar and you are more likely to panic than recall the exact order in which you wish to show them. Another reason for numbering them, and doing so in pen so that the audience can see the number, is that those listening and watching may find the numbers useful if they wish to ask to see a particular OHT again later, probably when you answer questions. If you have to sort through asking `This one? That one?' it bores everyone and might even lead to unwanted hilarity.
You should check the room will have an OHT machine beforehand - ask the tutor or person in charge at least a day or two ahead of time and preferably at the end of the tutorial the week before. If you turn up with a mass of OHTs on which you spent hours of work and there is no machine to show them on, you will get a deep sinking feeling at the very least. It could lead you to worry or panic and do a much poorer presentation than you would otherwise manage. Passing around OHTs for the audience to look at individually never works well. You will find that many of them will not have received the particular OHT you are discussing before you have moved on to something else. If you ever get to the stage of having three or four OHTs going around the table, you will realise that different members of the audience are at different stages of your talk. You then have a choice of stopping talking until everyone has caught up, which irritates those who saw the OHTs first, or continuing to talk. If you choose to do this, then those at the end of the distribution line are strongly disadvantaged. I am aware of no good solution to this problem and if you suffer it, you will appreciate the sense of a prior check on machine availability.
When you cannot use OHTs for some reason - perhaps you cannot afford to buy them, there is no machine available, or you are allergic to plastic for example, then you are back to using the blackboard or in a more modern room, a white-board. There is nothing wrong with this method, but it lacks the punch of a well-designed OHT, and you will have to draw in front of everyone, which both wastes time and exposes your weaknesses as an artist. You should try to get in the room early if you can, and draw the first few diagrams, or put up the early data on the board, before the others arrive. With the pressure on room space caused by a great increase in student numbers without a concomitant increase in government expenditure, you will be lucky to find an empty room in the period before yours. When you come to draw on the board in front of others, you should remember that if you wish to talk to the group as you are drawing, you will be facing the board with your back to the audience. This means that they will not be able to hear your voice properly if you speak in your ordinary tone and at normal levels. You must turn your head sideways as much as possible, in order to cast your voice closer to the required direction, and at the same time you should project your voice, so that they can hear you clearly.
USING BLACKBOARDS AND WHITE-BOARDS:
When intending to use the white-board, you should ensure in advance that the room has a white-board eraser or a piece of old cloth to serve the same purpose - if it has not, take your own bit of cloth.
You also need to take with you as many coloured white-board markers (pens) as you will need, and you should remember to check to see that they have not dried out. They seem to do this quite quickly. If you cannot borrow some from a member of staff, you will have to buy your own. It is a rare event to find a white-board pen lying around when you need one. Note that white-board pens are totally different from OHT ones. The latter have much finer points and, even worse, they will often not rub off a white board. This means that if you try to use OHT pens to write on a white-board, the resulting lines will be too thin to show up properly and you will in any case rapidly run out of board space. If you use a white-board pen on an OHT, it will produce a thick line which is usually inappropriate.
With a blackboard, there is usually less problem finding pieces of chalk. If your room happens to have none, then a quick search in adjacent teaching rooms usually reveals some. If you require a specific coloured chalk, or definitely need a number of different colours, then you might have to bring your own chalks. A staff member might be persuaded to lend you some. You will have to put up with covering your clothing with chalk dust, as generations of old-time teachers discovered. Whatever else you do with the blackboard, try not to let the chalk squeak. It sets some peoples' teeth on edge.
You will find that you have to write larger than usual on both white and blackboards, in order that those further back can read what you put. Writing in block capitals is often better for people unused to writing on boards. Many people have difficulty keeping their lines straight as they go across the board. You are unlikely to be writing out sentences, unlike school teachers, so this is not normally too serious a problem at the university level. You should try to keep the things you write arranged in some sort of logical sequence. You may find your topic lends itself to going down the board, or else across; for some purposes, it is better to start in the middle and radiate lines out. If you end up with a full board and are starting to squeeze bits in wherever possible in a randomised way, you should grab the duster, clean off either the whole board, or more likely the part with the earliest information on it, and start again.
Remember that when using white-boards and blackboards, unlike with OHTs, your back will be to the audience when you draw something. If you try to talk and draw at the same time, which is often needed to avoid long pauses, remember to turn your head round as far as you can and to speak in a louder voice, projecting for all you are worth. Otherwise the sound disappears into the board and not everyone will hear you.
If you have to make a presentation that has been set up as a business-type one and involves role playing, e.g., you have to pretend you are selling an idea to a board of directors, you might choose to immerse yourself in the role. You can dress up for the part, with a neat blouse and business suit (or as close as you possess), or jacket, collar and tie, (depending on your sex and tastes). This looks good, shows you are taking it seriously, and can make the assessor impressed and sympathetic, which may help to gain you marks. In addition, your own performance is likely to be better, partly because you are really trying your hardest and your brain pulls out the stops a bit, and partly because you will probably have done more and be better prepared if you are going to the trouble of dressing up. Incidentally, if you receive jocular and friendly teasing and remarks from your friends in the group, it is usually better to smile and ignore it, treating them loftily, rather than to get into a slanging match. Only if you are good at public repartee should you try to defend yourself, as unless you have the ability of a Groucho Marx or Winston Churchill to put someone down with humour, it can backfire. What most people tend to say in defence and off the cuff is often merely rude and can be a bit embarrassing. You really do not have to defend yourself to your friends for trying hard to do well.
Copybook work may be desirable; copying book work is something else again.
Plagiarism means copying out someone else's work and presenting it as your own. This may be done directly from some book or article, or from another student's essay from this or an earlier year. Plagiarism is a deadly sin at university and is punished stringently. You should avoid it at all costs, not only because if discovered you will feel embarrassed, but also you will be punished and you might find a close eye being kept on you henceforth. In addition you are harming your own progress by not learning skills for yourself. Searching libraries for information and going through books and journals, either by hand or electronically, teaches and reinforces skills you will need for the rest of your life, including many jobs that you are likely to consider for your career. The use to which you put the information you have gathered also has a strong learning component. This includes thinking about what you have found, deciding on the main theme and various messages, organising it to ensure the best presentation possible, and finally writing it up in your own words. Such processes also help you to learn and remember the information itself. You cannot improve yourself by plagiarising other people's work. Even if you manage to get away with it on occasion and deceive a marker, the real person you are deceiving is yourself. Do you really want to do this?
There is one occasion when you should be particularly careful not to be accused of plagiarism. If you have a major project or semester essay to write, you might discuss the subject in depth with other students, arguing the pros and cons and learning as you do this. There is nothing wrong with this and on the contrary it is a good way of learning and reinforcing what you have read. There is a slight danger that if you get too close to someone else, and mutually discuss the issue in minute detail over several weeks until you agree on everything, it is possible that you will both produce a final paper that is extremely similar. This can occur even if the writing up was done totally separately. If this should eventuate, you might be accused of plagiarism if the marker decides that the papers are really identical and essentially the same one in approach, layout, methodology and so on. You may then have to defend yourself before a hearing. If you share a house with the other person, or are enjoying a relationship, this might make the case against you look stronger. To avoid the danger, or substantially reduce it, you might choose to stop the discussions before complete agreement is reached. By doing this, the papers should be sufficiently different.
At the undergraduate level, it cannot be expected that all your ideas and views will be original; naturally most of what you think, say and write will have appeared somewhere in print before. It might be that at the undergraduate level we can add a little something to an accepted view. After all, if a dwarf stands on the shoulders of a giant, the dwarf can see a little bit further. For the undergraduate, plagiarism often means a straightforward copying out, word for word. An assessor can usually spot passages that were lifted holus bolus from elsewhere because the writing style often sharply and briefly improves. As long as your assignment is well organised, written, pertinent and the like (see chapter 6) the fact that the ideas are already known is not a problem. You should, however, note in passing that the common student idea that there is a correct answer or only one thing that the assessor is looking for is hardly likely to be a valid perception. Naturally, if your assignment includes mathematical calculations then there will be a correct result for that part, but what you do with the result and how you interpret it can often still vary a great deal.
At the post-graduate level, however, plagiarism can get a bit more difficult because greater originality of ideas is required. At this higher level, as was said by Marguerite Gardner, `Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower'. If one of your assignments is returned with a comment like `Nothing new', this is quite a severe criticism at this higher level.
`We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.' (Benjamin Franklin, 4 July, 1776.)
You might find that in some subjects you are required to undertake a project as part of a team with other students. This not only means that you can handle bigger questions, but during the process you learn several different and useful skills, such as working with another, delegating, or editing. Skills such as these are ultimately marketable and will undoubtedly be useful for your career once you leave the university.
When starting on a group project, it is usually best for everyone to meet together early and choose a leader. This person might not only have to organise and coordinate but might also have to report the findings publicly and verbally, depending on the requirements set in that subject. An older, maturer student with some experience is often better here, although this is not an essential choice. A good seventeen year old is naturally a better choice than a hopeless forty year old.
Once a leader has been chosen, the group then should set a timetable for the stages that will be involved in getting to the final report. This process can take several forms but the following is not unreasonable.
Stage 1 is to do some preliminary reading quickly and make an outline of the main points that will be tackled in the project and/or the main ways that it can be divided up. This may be done at the first meeting if it is agreed that it would be feasible and people know enough about the topic. This is the stage of brainstorming.
Stage 2 is to meet and allocate the group members to the different parts, so that two or more students will work together as a sub-group on each part, doing intensive reading and preparing that bit of the project. Friends work together better than enemies, but strangers can often work together satisfactorily. This small sub-group may not need a leader, but an extrovert, experienced or more aggressive type may take over and function as one, if needed. The sub-group usually prepares a written report to the main group. The sub-groups may need to liaise a bit, to ensure that the approaches roughly match up. It can create problems down the line if of five sub-groups, two argue against the proposition, and three argue for it. This is the stage of research, but with some coordination needed.
Stage 3 is for someone, usually the leader or a small inner cabinet of two or three, to put together or write a daft report from the bits submitted by each subgroup. They will usually have to edit, cut, rewrite and generally bring them into line. They will also probably have to draft an Introduction and a Conclusion as part of the process, because these cannot usually be written until after the body of the report with all its findings and overall conclusions are known.
Stage 4 usually requires a meeting of the whole group to listen to the draft report and agree to it, because the editors may have had to have made decisions and perhaps compromises during the writing of the draft final report. It will not look good if a sub-group objects to the final report at the final presentation stage. This can be quick and easy, if all agree generally and only a few minor suggestions for improvement are proffered and accepted.
Stage 5 is the final writing up and/or oral presentation, as required by the rules. If an oral presentation is required, a common way is for the overall leader to do this. You might consider, however, letting a member of each sub-group present their part of the final report. This allows them some satisfaction, and they are identified with their part of the project. On a practical level, they are going to know more about that section and people know to whom they should address in any questions.
If your particular leader, or group prefers a different way of tackling the project, then you can of course ignore these suggested stages. They may not suit everyone or each particular circumstance.
SOME CAUTIONS ON JOINT PROJECTS:
`To trust oneself may be to trust a fool; if you place your trust in others, the act removes any doubt.'
Undertaking any project where you are responsible for searching out information and writing an extended essay or putting together a report will almost always take longer than you think. Joint projects are even more difficult and tend to go more slowly as there are certain additional problems involved. These may include problems of authority and control over the entire project, coordination within and between sub-groups, editing (which often includes issues of compromise and perhaps politics) and perhaps making a precis of the final report if a short oral summary has to be presented. There will almost certainly be the issue that some sub-groups are better or more hard working than others, so that there may be imbalance between their reports to the centre. It is essential that with a joint project the group aims to finish earlier than is actually required, in order to build in a safety margin for time.
If you discover a problem that the person selected to act as the leader of the whole group or even of a sub-group turns out to be hopeless, you might have to change them. This process is always embarrassing and usually results in the generation of ill-will, so do not undertake this step lightly. The people replaced are unlikely to give of their best.
You should also beware of `free riders' in joint projects. One or two often appear: they do little or no work, leave everything to others, but usually share equally in the final mark. This is naturally resented by those who have contributed a fair share. In the short term, free riders often feel successful and may pride themselves at being clever in gaining marks for doing little or nothing. In the end they do themselves a disservice, as they learn far less than they should and in addition do not develop their skills properly.
On the other hand, in a sub-group of, say, half a dozen, you will often find that one or two have done more than their fair share, and they recognise this fact. It often leads them to feel that their extra work and effort should be recognised by the award of a better mark than average and particularly higher than any widely recognised free rider.
You might consider some system of allocating marks to members based on contribution, rather than equal sharing of marks, because this helps to reduce the free-rider problem and pleases the harder working minority. You should be aware that the actual process of trying to achieve an equitable distribution of marks can become complicated. It is probably better to try not to waste a lot of time on the mechanics of how to do this. You have been set a question or a problem to investigate and solve. It is really important to get the subgroups sorted out quickly and then get the members into the library, searching, gathering, organising, and reporting. Perhaps a stern word by the overall leader might work. Alternatively you might organise an early general meeting about the issue to apply peer group pressure in order to try to shame the guilty few into doing more. The free rider problem has been around a long time and it may not be easy to solve in your particular case. Maybe you should just live with it, knowing the longer term will punish the offenders, who will both know less and perform less effectively.
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