Essays and Reports

The standard types of written assignment required of a university student are usually:

1. an academic essay
2. a report
3. a dissertation

The third, the dissertation, is always a summatively assessed piece of work, and this is therefore dealt with in the Assessment section. The following pages offer advice on writing essays or reports whether they are assessed or whether they are purely a means of developing your intellectual, writing (and time-management) skills.

Essays

The essay is a particularly academic form of writing, and is a standard method of developing and demonstrating a student's intellectual abilities at almost all levels of a humanities degree programme. Developing skills in essay-writing is therefore crucial to success in your studies.

An essay needs:

1. an introduction, telling the reader what the essay is about
2. a main body, containing the ‘meat’ of the essay, where you outline your particular point of view, while demonstrating awareness of other perspectives or interpretation
3. a conclusion, summarising the content of the essay clearly and concisely

An essay requires you to:

1. demonstrate your understanding of a subject area
2. bring a wide range of material to bear on a given problem or issue
3. respond critically, with your own ideas, to the issue
4. organise your thinking into an argument
5. select and use information to support your argument
6. express your argument in clear, logical, well-structured prose
7. reference all the sources you have used in constructing your argument

Try to see your essay writing as a continuing process of learning and improvement. Pay attention to the feedback you receive from your tutors, and keep it on file for future reference. Talk to tutors about their comments. Try to identify what your weaknesses are, and then to work on them.

Tip: Reading other students' essays can also be a useful way of thinking about your own.

Reports

A report is usually more practice-based and vocationally-focussed than an essay.

Whilst an essay is all about ideas and arguments, a report usually focusses on actions - it typically describes something you have done, and then recommends actions based on your findings.

A report asks why, how, what?

Essentially a report can be simplified into three general questions:

1. Why was it done?
2. How was it done?
3. What does it mean?

Report structure and style

• A report is always written in the third person (avoiding "I", "we", "you")
• A report is very concise - any background information is supplied as a separate appendix at the end
• A report is divided into headed, numbered sections
• A report usually concludes with a recommendation for future action, based on the findings of the investigation