[LAUIL601] Lecture Notes: Essay Plan & Structure

Lecture Notes: Essay Structure

• Looking back: Identify, propose and develop research project. Result in exploratory outcomes.
• Opening stage (3 weeks)
• Research, gathering, responding, initial practice and testing.
• Explorative stage (5 weeks)
• Practical exploration, research material, case studies, unpacking and making sense of findings.
• Now: practical and structuring writing 
• Where to meet ILO's in 5000 words. Critical and theoretical synthesis. Theory and practice.
• The context of your investigations. 
• Primary and secondary sources. Analysing and making sense of research.
• Testable processes from research.
• Project management.
• Break 5,000 words into sections. Seeing links and connections between your research. 
• Contact academic support if any support is needed!

Critical writing

• What? Written discussion or analysis from varying angles and voices
• Why? Not just academic relevance but unpicking personal motivations and interests. Being able to situate myself in illustration
• Critical vocabulary. Being able to speak confidently and being a useful critic to myself and others.
• Expanding professional opportunities. Writing in context, want to go onto a masters or PhD?

Revisiting Essay/Explorative Stage

• Introduction
• Main Body: seeking connections and triangulation 
• Conclusion: evaluate, pulling it back together 

Guide

Introduction (Roughly 400 words)

• May come back to this at the end to state the overarching research, outline the topic, why is it important to you?
• Outline how you are going to investigate the project. "I'm going to be interviewing these practitioners and making testable processes and pieces."
• Tell the reader your stance.
• What are you finding out?
• Why is it interesting?
• How are you investigating?
• Where are you starting from?
• Be specific. Which books, what methods. 
• Organisation and management.
• When doing interviews show you have prepared and managed.
• 400 words covers what this project is.

Main body (roughly 2,000 words)

• Context
• Research methods
• Evidencing the research - Journals, articles, podcasts, interviews, books.
• What are your primary sources? What are your main points? What is the context of your investigation?
• Now applying that to case studies. I am a case study
• Context, research methods, synthesis.
• Descriptive, contextual, theoretical analysis. Describe case study, contextualise it. Has it changed your lens or how you view it? What's the link between them?
• Be detailed and specific.
• One or two case studies. Can be very detailed. Relate them back to your secondary research.

Reflective Practice (700 words)

• Applying that to your practice. How is it relating to your work? This comes much further down the line when you've made work.
• What was the testing processes for yourself? How was that informed by your research? Be specific. Use examples of the work you've made. Relate it back to a case study. Synthesis. Effectively demonstrating your work.

Conclusion (400 words)

• Pull together and draw together. Draw together conclusions and summarise. No new information will be in the section. Broad implications for your practice. Was there tangents to explore? Evaluate the success or shortcomings of the project.

• Synthesis. Management. Use headings or chapters in your piece of writing.
• Quality and relevance of sources.
• Mix of things. Books, journals, articles, podcasts.
• Up-to-date discussion within the past 5 to 10 years.
• Interviewing practitioners it's a good way for conducting research.
• Quoting and paraphrasing. Smaller quotes and paraphrasing into your own words to show you understand it. Harvard Referencing. There is a library guide on estudio.
• Paraphrasing is summarising into your own words, in brackets stating the original source saying the name and date.
• All of the essay can be in the first person showing your own voice and criticality.
• 10% either side below or above the 5000 word count which doesn't include the bibliography.
• Use online journals and archives. You don't need to use only the library.
• Secondary research can be put into specific subheadings if it's useful to you.
• If you're looking at photography and case studies do I need to use photographs? Not necessarily. It could be a reportage you are looking at our documentary. You can't read everything.
• Be easy on yourself. Ideas improve, stick with it.
• Theory is a poetic process
• Make the most of what you can. Reading actively.
• Ideas move and change. Find and follow pleasure. Theory is a cumulative project.
• You write better with what you enjoy.
• You don't need constant blog posts.

Take-Away Task: Reflective Report 1

• 601 label
• A written reflection of the opening stage. 300 words.
• A rough framework of your writing. Next steps and plan. How is your project going so far?