How To Cite An Essay Online In Mla

How To Cite An Essay Online In Mla How can you defend yourself against that response? Ideally you want to be able to split your burdens of proof into a few different points. Start your intro with the central claim of your essay. If I’m reading it, I want to know within literally five seconds what you’re trying to convince me of. Ninety nine percent of the structure of your essay is exactly the same as you learned in secondary school. If you’re making a claim, you need to tell me why that claim is correct. Think of a potential response to your argument, perhaps from an author you’re arguing against. Write out that response, then tell me why it doesn’t defeat your argument, or at least why it only mitigates it. This is the stuff that actually makes up your argument. If you perform poorly at this, you might as well pack up and go home. Next, think about what you need to prove in order to make that claim. What might be the immediate negative reaction of someone reading your central claim? As a general rule make sure there is at least one citation (i.e. name of psychologist and date of publication) in each paragraph. Critical Evaluation - arguments should be supported by appropriate evidence and/or theory from the literature. Evidence of independent thinking, insight and evaluation of the evidence. After writing your plan conduct supplementary reading and refine your plan and make it more detailed. This plan could be in the form of a mind map, a summary table, or by writing a core statement . Remember, your plan at this point is provisional. As you begin to write and research it will probably change. An essay plan can help you work out how you will answer the question and which information you will use. You might think you’re too good for Point, Evidence, Explain. How are you going to relate your argument to the existing literature? Make sure you know their arguments reasonably well and have armed yourself with flexible quotes from their work. Once you’ve written the whole essay, read over it again. Look at every premise you’ve used and claim you’ve made. Be aware whilst you’re reading that all arguments and authors are fallible. Think about the text you’re reading and think how you might respond to it. If you can, familiarise yourself with the people who think they’re wrong and awful. Figure out if there are arguments which are unresolved and see if you can make a contribution towards resolving them. You don’t want to get penalised because you didn’t reference your readings properly after you’ve put in all that effort to make sure that your arguments are founded in the literature. If the reading list is really short, you’ll need to go beyond it. This is the single easiest way to get more marks. If I see an argument citing an author whom nobody else has mentioned, and it’s a decent argument, it will make my day. You will save yourself literally days over the course of your university career. They allow you to reference as you write, and you can create and reformat your bibliography and citations at the touch of a button. Finally, make sure you formulate every claim in the strongest possible terms. Don’t make your opponent look like they have no arguments, or take the weakest version of their argument. Think about the strongest possible response to the claim you’ve put forward, then beat that. Each paragraph should comprise a main theme which are illustrated and developed through a number of points . Now let us look at what constitutes a good essay in psychology.