OUGD401 Planning & Structuring an Academic Essay (Study Task Four)

In this seminar, we were showed a presentation that tought us how to answer the essay. I found the seminar incredibly helpful and it will definitely be useful when I begin to write my essay.

To write a successful essay, I should:

- Consider the question carefully.
- Ask relevant sub-questions.
- Outline what you know already in a mindmap.
- Hypothesis - what will you aim to argue?
- Read with purpose.
- Direct research with hypothesis.
- Use contents pages and indeces.

When planning the essay, I should review and organise my research and put the not so relevant findings to one side. By doing this, it will help me to decide what to include and what to leave out of my essay, which should, in turn, avoid me going off on a tangent.

The essay should be structured along the lines of the following guide:

INTRO - Address the question, why is it important? How will you answer it?
MAIN BODY - Build argument, ideas in sequence to make persuasive argument. There should be one main point in each paragraph.
CONCLUSION - Summarise your arguments and evidence, show how they answer the original question.

My essay should enforce the following guidelines:

- Write in third person (Objective - facts).
- No sweeping statements.
- Evaluate information sources.
- Analysis and conclusion must be well reasoned and justified.

We were then set a task to create an essay plan for our own essays. My plan can be seen below.

What is the relationship between branding & the consumer self?

INTRO - Introduce question & 1920s in America.
MAIN BODY - What happened in the 1920s? How were the items sold? Design of catalogues? Advertisements? New, updated items - re-released? How it is still happening today? Boom's impact on society? Analyse brand from then and now and compare? How the brand could work now?
CONCLUSION - Overview & sum up the relationship.

OUGD401 Tutorial

In my tutorial today, I discussed with Richard my idea for my essay and my idea for my practical work which I have previously talked about on this blog. He said my idea could definitely work but I have to keep my essay focused on the art-side of the 1920s instead of the history context, however I can research into it as much as I like as long as I keep my essay concise.

In the tutorial, Richard gave me a couple of starting points for my research. One of these is a book called 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein. He also told me that I should look at this website and start building a glossary for my essay. The website that will be useful for this can be found HERE.