Critical Essay Writing

Critical Essay Writing Brainstorming helps you to see what you know about the topic. Brainstorming, researching and planning are cyclical, which means that each process helps the other processes and you might want to do each process more than once. The first two articles have been cited 90 times and 103 times respectively, suggesting that they might be good sources for your essay. The links to the right indicate that you can access the articles through your university website. However, you should never forget to say where these ideas come from, even if you don’t quote the person’s exact words. ‘Integrity’ relates to ‘honesty’, and academic integrity involves writing in an honest way, so that no one will think you are claiming that words or ideas from someone else are your own. This is very important in academic writing in western countries, and if you do not do this you might be accused of plagiarism, which is a serious offence at university. Obesity and chocolate consumption seemingly have no proven correlations. Whether chocolate is a food or a drug is also unclear. It can therefore be said that chocolate is not a healthy food, but can be enjoyed as part of a healthy and balanced diet and lifestyle. The best place to start (assuming you haven’t already been given a prescribed reading list!) is by using an academic database. If you are not sure how to use a database, then book an appointment with your subject librarian at your institution. ‘Compare’ often appears with ‘contrast’ in essay questions.ContrastShow the differences between two sets of information or arguments. ‘Contrast’ often appears with ‘compare’ in essay questions.CriticiseEvaluate an argument or a text to see if it is good. ‘Criticise’ does not mean you have to be negative.CritiqueEvaluate an argument or a text to see if it is good. ‘Critique’ does not mean you have to be negative.DefineExplain the meaning of a word or a term, especially in the context of your essay. There is no set model for an essay, but the English for Uni website presents one popular way to do it. However, chocolate’s inherent popularity does not equate to it possessing healthy properties, as suggested by the title. The realities of chocolate are more down to earth; a number of these realities will be addressed in this essay. Chocolate has chemical properties that can influence mood and there is possible evidence for some positive impacts of chocolate on cardiovascular health. To write a 1000 word essay, ideally you should allow yourself about 3 weeks. You might wonder how you can include your own voice and still sound academic when you are writing about a subject area in which you have little knowledge. Including your voice does not mean that you should say ‘I think’ or ‘in my opinion’. Since Spanish explorers brought back chocolate from the new world, chocolate consumption has become a worldwide phenomenon. At first, chocolate, a derivative of the cacao bean, was consumed as a drink, only later achieving mass popularity in tablet or bar form. Another possible positive dimension to chocolate is a correlation with cardiovascular health. Yet the potential benefits of flavanols in chocolate are currently offset by the high fat/carbohydrate content of most forms of chocolate. Yet, such positive attributes are counterbalanced somewhat by the argument that, in some instances, chocolate can be viewed as a drug rather than a food. Moreover, there is the possibility of some correlation between over-consumption of chocolate and obesity. Thus, it will be argued that despite chocolate’s positive effect in some cases on mood and the cardiovascular system it has also been linked to addiction and obesity. Leave yourself enough time to look at your essay more than once. For a 1000 word essay you need at least three days to redraft your essay. Sometimes, particularly in very short essays, the essay will begin with an issue rather than a background statement. Topic sentenceThe topic sentence can function as a sentence of transition from the previous paragraph. The conclusion should not just repeat the ideas from the introduction. The introduction includes the background to the essay, the important issues and a thesis statement. The conclusion reminds your reader of the main points made in your essay and leaves your reader with a final impression and ideas to think about later. Once you have brainstormed your ideas and done some initial research, start putting them into a logical order as part of the essay planning process.