When it involves writing an essay or a dissertation you'll likely are made conscious of the very fact that there are variety of key components that structure these two academic document types. For an essay, the key elements that need to be included within the document are;
- An introduction which can generally contains 3 components: a quick explanation of the context of the subject , an overview of your interpretation of the subject , and an evidence of how you're getting to approach or examine the subject within this particular essay.
- the most body of the essay, where you'll discuss your chosen topic, using the approach or means of examination that you simply have outlined in your introduction.
- A conclusion which again generally consists of three components: a restatement of the question or task that opens the essay and what you think to be the important features of the subject that features during this question or task, a summary of the evidence that you simply have presented throughout the body of the essay, and a press release that summarises your overall 'concluding' view of the subject .
A dissertation may be a more thorough and sometimes more focused piece of educational writing. The structure for such a document is analogous thereto of an essay, as outlined above. However there are generally specific sub-sections of the most body of a dissertation that also got to be considered. These are;
- a strategy which outlines what sort of investigative work you're getting to undertake to finish your dissertation. this might be a review of pieces of literature, a qualitative study or a practical testing of a hypothesis.
- A review of the knowledge informing your methodology. this might be via a literature review for instance .
- a neighborhood dedicated to your findings and an analysis or interpretation of those findings.
A well written essay or dissertation will make sure that each of those key components are addressed thoroughly. All alright and good you'll think, but how does one give the extent of detail needed to be thorough and also stick with a stated word count? Surely content should be more important than an imposed word limit?
Unfortunately this is not the case. Word limits are set so as to discipline students into being concise in their writing and to analyse a subject carefully, making careful decisions regarding what should be added into an essay or dissertation and what should be overlooked . If word limits aren't adhered to then crucial marks are going to be lost, and this is often a really frustrating thanks to find your marks knocked down by examiners or tutors.
Don't forget that falling considerably in need of word counts is simply as bad a practice as exceeding them, for it suggests that you simply haven't examined the subject in sufficient detail. So when writing your essay or dissertation make certain to urge as on the brink of the word count as possible...without exceeding it! Also remember that always , references, appendices and footnotes aren't included in word limits, so use them to your advantage and portray information in these areas of your essay or dissertation.
Finally, it's easy to fall under the trap of panicking as you get on the brink of the word limit of your essay or dissertation and cutting the conclusion short. this is often never an honest idea because it can make the ending of your document seem quite abrupt, and there are always tons of marks to be gained from a well written conclusion. To avoid this panic approach, as a part of your planning process compute approximately what percentage words you'll dedicate to every section of your essay or dissertation, then stick with these word limits as you gather the most content of your academic document.