PS101 First Essay

karaokeman

Hi all,

This Psychology essay is due 25th November and I have no clue how to go about writing it.

I'm doing the essay about language development in childhood.

Do we talk about the Nativist/Learning Perspectives and the Interactionist Theory and do maybe 3 paragraphs for each?

None of this has been covered in the lectures so far but I learned them in my own time while doing my own research.

I know a Psychology essay has to be much different from an English essay so I'm not sure if a good way to go about planning is 10-11 paragraphs and an introduction or is there a more scientific structure to it?

And ideally is there any preferred ratio of journal articles and book references that must be used in a Psychology essay or does it not matter so long as I get the main point across?

Seren_

I've never studied psychology so can't help with the subject matter, but one thing I'll say is that essays are invariably always the same layout, regardless of subject. So intro, your body paragraphs (try and stick to one point in each paragraph), and a conclusion. A good tip I was given was to leave writing the introduction to last as it's much easier to do then

tootyflutty

In psychology essays, its a lot less of your opinion, and a lot more references to other peoples work, that happens to fall in place with the point you are trying to make.

Jimmy Iovine

tootyflutty wrote: »

In psychology essays, its a lot less of your opinion, and a lot more references to other peoples work, that happens to fall in place with the point you are trying to make.

Yea I'd agree. I think I remember being told in first year that we weren't allowed to give any opinions in the essay. The reason was because we knew jack shít about the topic.

Your best bet is to look at the books on the reading list. Find key points in the books and look for the references in the back. Then look around for the referenced books or articles online. That way you'll build up a solid database of reliable references for your essay.

Don't fall into the trap of quoting only one or two authors. As many relevant ones as you can.

Oh and unless you are brilliant I'd recommend finishing a day or two before and trying to rewrite parts of the essay. You'll notice bits that make no sense at all and you'll have time to change it.

Finally, leave at least 1-2 hours to write your bibliography. Chances are you haven't taken down the list and you have to go looking for them all again. This is the most time consuming part of the essay I find and can be easily avoided.

kisaragi

Jimmy Iovine wrote: »

Finally, leave at least 1-2 hours to write your bibliography. Chances are you haven't taken down the list and you have to go looking for them all again. This is the most time consuming part of the essay I find and can be easily avoided.

Just do it as you go along, saves a whole world of pain in the end ^^

Jimmy Iovine

kisaragi wrote: »

Just do it as you go along, saves a whole world of pain in the end ^^

I was going on the assumption that no one ever does this as they go along. Better off trying to do it though. Saves ages

Seren_

it's so much easier to do the bibliography/referencing as you're going! I don't know why people wouldn't

And Jimmy Iovine, your post count is 1234

Jimmy Iovine

Your Text Here wrote: »

it's so much easier to do the bibliography/referencing as you're going! I don't know why people wouldn't

And Jimmy Iovine, your post count is 1234

Balls I missed it. I'll have to delete a dew posts to get back to it :pac:. I think my 1,000th post was only a few weeks ago. Being an unemployed graduate has resulted in my post count tripling in a few months ha

flightlessbird

Ooh I do psychology and got an A+ in the ps101 essay actually (the only essay I have ever gotten that for so I tell anyone at any given chance ha)unfortunately i chose moral development instead of language development.but PM me with any Q's.

Some general tips
1. Make subheadings!

2. Read as many textbooks as possible and cite them, try make your reference page about 1-2 pages.

3. Work hardest on intro and conclusion paragraphs. use conclusion to kind of sum up all of your main points.

4. avoid opinion.

5. Structure your paragraph by : make a point, cite it, provide experimental evidence for it, and the implications or importance of the evidence.

6. Use short clear sentences - keep it kinda snappy. It's easier to read (and also easier to write for most)

7. Pay close attention to referencing APA style, a lot of marks go towards referencing.

In regards to your question on what is supposed to be written, pay close attention to what the question asks, and just make sure each paragraph you write can be viewed as an answer to the question asked, and you should be fine.

karaokeman

Thanks for all the responses.

So far I have about 5 references but I'm scanning the library and JSTOR for many more.

I know that 7-10 will be expected for each page.

Regarding texts, I should confirm that I am not using anything from the reading list.

I don't remember getting a reading list for this module so I'm doing all my own research.

Jimmy Iovine

karaokeman wrote: »

So far I have about 5 references but I'm scanning the library and JSTOR for many more.

I know that 7-10 will be expected for each page.

I hope you mean that you'll be expected to use 7-10 references IN TOTAL, right?

karaokeman

Jimmy Iovine wrote: »

I hope you mean that you'll be expected to use 7-10 references IN TOTAL, right?

No for each page and I plan to write maybe 4-5 pages.

This essay has CA marks as part of the module as a whole so my best bet would be to do as much with it as I can to maximise marks.

Seren_

Just remember that referring to too many sources is as bad as too little. You just need to use the examples from sources to back up your main points 7 to 10 citations for each page is far too many for a first year essay.

Jimmy Iovine

karaokeman wrote: »

No for each page and I plan to write maybe 4-5 pages.

This essay has CA marks as part of the module as a whole so my best bet would be to do as much with it as I can to maximise marks.

Jesus mate calm down a second. You've only got 2,000 words to write. I wrote 10,000 words for my thesis last year and I only had 22 references in my bibliography. You're on track for 40 or so by the sounds of it. That's ridiculously over the top.

The way you should be approaching it is find a general book that covers the majority of the topic. Then you should look and try and find 4-5 sources of information in that.

For example, in my lit. review for the thesis I quoted Henri Lefebvre's book "The Production of Space" a total of 15 times. Everything that I put down was relevant and because he was one of the only theorists on space he was pretty much the only guy that I could reference.

I am almost certain that you'll be lucky to find maybe 3-4 top theorists on language development in children. Your best bet is to single out the ones you want and then use multiple quotes in the body of the essay. Your bibliography may not be bulging because of it but the amount of references within the text will stand to you.

Believe me when I say this there is no way in hell that you'll be able to fit 40 individual references into a first year essay. It's just not possible. The quality of your piece would suffer as well. Once you get past the 5th reference I find the quality drops and you're really straining to find a relevant quote within it.

Oh and it's not how many references you have it's how well you use them. You're at nothing at all if you aren't able to seamlessly weave together an argument between two theorists.

That is, in my view, the most important part of the whole essay. Anyone can do the research, but not everyone can turn it into a cogent argument.

Shinshin14

Is anyone giving grinds in the Laois area for the certificate level 7 in Psychology . I am a mature student and out of my depth regarding essay writing and how to incorporate what I am reading into an essay. Just need a few grinds to help me get started .

Xqzciara

I agree 7-10 references per page is a bit much for a first year essay, I'm in third year psychology and only a very small amount of my essays would have that many. I handed up a 3,000 word essay yesterday that only had 25 references. I know there is a kind of 'rumour' flying around the psych dept that you need that many per page, I remember hearing it last year and freaking out. But honestly if you use the material you have sufficiently you wont need that many, I think they just say it so you'll use plenty of journals. The bulk of my references come from journals and researchers within a core book
Anyway its a bit late now, as far as I know that essay was due yesterday. How did you get on?

karaokeman

Xqzciara wrote: »

I agree 7-10 references per page is a bit much for a first year essay, I'm in third year psychology and only a very small amount of my essays would have that many. I handed up a 3,000 word essay yesterday that only had 25 references. I know there is a kind of 'rumour' flying around the psych dept that you need that many per page, I remember hearing it last year and freaking out. But honestly if you use the material you have sufficiently you wont need that many, I think they just say it so you'll use plenty of journals. The bulk of my references come from journals and researchers within a core book
Anyway its a bit late now, as far as I know that essay was due yesterday. How did you get on?

Nope its due next week and I've decided I will only use 7-10 references for the whole essay.

Xqzciara

karaokeman wrote: »

Nope its due next week and I've decided I will only use 7-10 references for the whole essay.

sounds good, what way did you decide to answer it? I hate psychology essays so much.. but love them at the same time. psychology really is love-hate

karaokeman

Xqzciara wrote: »

sounds good, what way did you decide to answer it? I hate psychology essays so much.. but love them at the same time. psychology really is love-hate

To answer the question I will be listing the learning perspective, the nativist perspective and the interactionist perspective. I will then go into detail about the three theories and refer to researchers, their proposals and the empirical and experimental evidence for what they have contributed to the study of language development.

One more thing, will I be penalised when introducing theorists to maybe say one line about their background. I have a few down where I saying he/she is the professor of Psychology at [....] university and then I launch into their contributions and empirical evidence for claims.

Xqzciara

karaokeman wrote: »

To answer the question I will be listing the learning perspective, the nativist perspective and the interactionist perspective. I will then go into detail about the three theories and refer to researchers, their proposals and the empirical and experimental evidence for what they have contributed to the study of language development.

One more thing, will I be penalised when introducing theorists to maybe say one line about their background. I have a few down where I saying he/she is the professor of Psychology at [....] university and then I launch into their contributions and empirical evidence for claims.

That sounds quite good to me, that's the approach I would take myself anyway.
On the background thing, I'm not really sure. You wont be penalised but you might be told in the corrections that its unnecessary, but some brief introductions are definitely not a bad thing, especially if you only had a couple of theorists. However when you get into heavier essays you just wont have the word count for it. Its only your first essay anyway, sounds like you did ok to me