{"id":579,"date":"2017-03-08T20:19:45","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T20:19:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/?p=579"},"modified":"2017-03-08T20:19:45","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T20:19:45","slug":"a-template-for-university-essay-introductions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/2017\/03\/a-template-for-university-essay-introductions\/","title":{"rendered":"A template for university essay introductions"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article in the Guardian entitled How to write better essays: ‘nobody does introductions properly’<\/a> has, toward the end, a template for any essay that produces an ideal introduction in under 100 words.\u00a0 I was not convinced.\u00a0 He says:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIntroductions are the easiest things in the world to get right and nobody does it properly,<\/i>\u201d Squirrel says. \u201cIt should be<\/i> \u2018Here is the argument I am going to make, I am going to substantiate this with three or four strands of argumentation, drawing upon these theorists, who say these things, and I will conclude with some thoughts on this area and how it might clarify our understanding of this phenomenon.\u2019 You should be able to encapsulate it in 100 words or so. That\u2019s literally it.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I was going to strongly disagree and came up with an example to prove it, but failed.\u00a0 I took his template:<\/p>\n

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Here is the argument I am going to make, I am going to substantiate this with three or four strands of argumentation, drawing upon these theorists, who say these things, and I will conclude with some thoughts on this area and how it might clarify our understanding of this phenomenon.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

and tried turning it into a very simple (and silly) introduction to prove it cannot be done in 100 words:<\/p>\n

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I am going to argue that in visual perception black is actually white.\u00a0 I am going to substantiate this with the claims that black is black, white is white and in between are shades of grey.\u00a0 I am going to refer to Tom, Dick and Harry who say black is dark, white is light and there is a sliding scale between them.\u00a0 I will conclude with some thoughts on how reading 50 Shades of Grey will pass some time but it will not clarify our understanding of optical perception in humans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But that’s only 91 words.\u00a0 He might actually be right.\u00a0 His template might be a good one.<\/p>\n

Oops, I forgot the “Never use the first person” rule that applies in some subjects.\u00a0 Second attempt:<\/p>\n

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This essay argues that rodents in the visual media don’t always like aged pressed milk curds.\u00a0 This will substantiated with examples from old cartoons, feature films and modern digital cinematography, drawing on productions by Fred Quimby, Walt Disney and Pixar.\u00a0 Their works demonstrate titbit-laden mousetraps, no dairy products and toy rodents who don’t eat at all.\u00a0 The essay will conclude that it depends on context but that there is an age to cheesiness correlation, and it might be worth watching some Dreamworks videos for further research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

How’s that for a comprehensive media studies TMA introduction in 86 words?<\/p>\n

I’m convinced.\u00a0 What do you think of this method?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article in the Guardian entitled How to write better essays: ‘nobody does introductions properly’ has, toward the end, a template for any essay that produces an ideal introduction in under 100 words.\u00a0 I was not convinced.\u00a0 He says: \u201cIntroductions … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,85,97,87],"tags":[183,88,98,90],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-degree","category-education","category-masters-degree","category-universities","tag-degree","tag-education","tag-masters-degree","tag-universities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nonewwars.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}