Secrets for Successful Study 2023/2024
Week 6: Preparing and planning essays and searching online academic materials
Tuesday 1st Nov at 12pm (Venue to be announced)
This session will cover preparing scientific essays both as coursework and in exams. This session will be led by Dr Charlotte Haigh.
5 TOP TIPS for preparing and planning scientific essays
- Research the topic
- Write an essay plan
- Make sure you answer the question being asked: re-read the question a few times
- Break the question down into sub sections or sub headings
- Make sure you have included an introduction, main body and conclusion
More links
General tips about planning and structuring essays and this is another site offering similar advice.
General tips including lots of information on things like use of Capital letters, correct grammar etc.
Advice about specifically writing science essays
5 TOP TIPS for finding and reading academic information
- Don’t trust everything you read on the web, use reliable sources for information
- Start perhaps with Google Scholar
- Then think about searching through academic journals using a database such as web of science
- Read the material but don’t just accept it, think about it critically
- Store your references using a referencing tool such as EndNote
More links
Here is a tutorial on how to use the database Web of science to search for academic publications.
Here is a tutorial about effectively searching the web and finding, evaluation and referencing online material.
Here are some search tips and techniques.
To effectively evaluate the information you find, perhaps look at this tutorial.
As suggested above, you should not just accept everything you read, but perhaps learn to critically analyse the information, here is a web page to help.
You should try to use a referencing tool such as EndNote, online help about this can be found here.
Finally, to read the material effectively, tips can be found on this site.