To help you to develop your skills in writing essays we thought it would be helpful to summarise some of the key points underlying effective essay writing.

1. Always read the question carefully. Think about the key words.

Make sure you understand exactly what the question requires.  Pay attention to command words like  'list' ‘assess’, ‘describe’ and ‘compare’.  Clarify all the key terms and concepts used, and note the scope of the question.  It is a good idea to underline the key words and parts to constantly remind you what the essay is about.  As you develop your essay, keep returning to the underlined words and ask yourself, “Have I answered the question set”?  “Does my answer relate to the question actually set”?  If not then review what you are doing. Some students have a bad habit of writing down anything and everything that they know about a topic and hope that somewhere along the way the actual question asked will be addressed. Don't do it! Always focus on the question asked.

2. Take time in constructing your answer.

The main aim in any essay is to bring together the key points and issues in a clear and coherent way.  So it is worth spending a bit of time identifying these and then linking them together as effectively as possible.  Always plan your answer. Write down your broad ideas and then order them in what you consider to be the most logical way.  You always need an overall plan before starting the essay.  Without a plan your essay will end up being a jumbled collection of random sentences and will not attract good marks. A good essay should always flow and progressively develop the arguments.

3. Indicate the theories that you think are relevant.

Throughout your studies you will be introduced to the views of a variety of authors who are experts in their fields.  Frequently, they will advance competing views.  One reason for this is that they see the world differently.  It will be helpful to indicate in your essay how you see things before moving on to any detailed analysis, arguments and evidence.  Of course you know how you see things and what ideas you find attractive, but the examiners and markers do not know this.  You need to tell them so that they can see things from your perspective(s).  The theories which you choose to mention may be drawn from the ideas introduced on the course. In general theories are 'lenses' through which the world is seen. They also express some generalised 'truths'. Theories also help to make your essay analytical. Descriptive essays do not secure good marks.

4. Support your essay with well-chosen examples.

• Be selective and only choose illustrative examples that are relevant to your points.  The nature of the examples will always depend upon the theories.
• Limit the amount of scene setting and background to case studies, unless such background is asked for specifically in the question.  As a general rule of thumb, your examples ‘take over’ the whole essay.
• Try to support your points with more than one example.  We don't expect you to write great tomes, but it is important not to dwell on single examples, which could lead to sweeping generalisations.  So always give more than one example. The examples might highlight tensions in the claims being advanced. It is always better to use a range of well-developed examples to provide more solid support for your argument.
• Try to use examples from a range of sources and course components.
• Make full use of the course material, additional articles and press clippings (if you have not previously started a file of press clippings, now is a good time to start).   Did you summarise various articles that you encountered on the course? We also hope you will also draw on your own experience and on other sources, although this is not essential.

Always check to ensure that you have communicated your ideas effectively.  Pay attention to sentence construction and grammar.  Make sure that your sentences are simple and easy to follow.  Use paragraphs to mark changes in focus and not simply as arbitrary divisions.  It also means linking together your paragraphs so that the reader can follow clearly your line of argument.  Remember that anything which makes the reader stop or go back over part of the essay, risks breaking up the ‘flow’ of your essay.

6. All good essays should have a structure.

At the very least, they must include an introduction and conclusion.  Both are key elements of any essay and serve a range of functions.  The introduction should be used to clarify and define the scope of the question, and to set out your plans.  You should indicate how your answer is organised.

The conclusion provides an opportunity to draw together and summarise your arguments in a way that directly addresses the question.  It also gives you a chance to reach a clear conclusion of your own, if you have not done so already.

Most questions (depending upon their scope), however, will also expect you to specify further sections.  For example, clarifying your theoretical perspectives and providing evidence and arguments in support of your position.

Your essays should always be analytical i.e. analyse the debates and issues in terms of concepts and theories and the contribution they make to our understanding of the world.

The essay should not be descriptive.  We are not asking you to say who said what and when.  Of course, you might produce short quotations from the authors to support your analytical point.
A good essay also engages with counter-arguments.  So give thoughts to what critiques and criticisms may be made against your conclusions, evidence and theories.  Briefly indicate the way you might respond to your critics.

In case, the above looks daunting, do have a look at the structure of the essays written by various scholars.  These can be found in numerous scholarly journals in the library.  Many articles from these will also be found on the AABA education pages.  Take a good look and note how they have been put together.

7. Do not manipulate your tutors.

Some students imagine that by citing their tutor's own published work or his/her favourite authors they will somehow get higher marks. This is simply not true. Only the works that are relevant to the question, regardless of who the author is, need to be cited or discussed. Anything else will simply be seen as a blatant attempt at 'manipulation' and will earn you fewer marks.

8. Pay attention to references and citations.

Referencing and citations are an important part of essay writing. We all see the world by standing on the shoulders of others. So it is important to acknowledge the intellectual debt to other researchers. Referencing enables you to make the reader aware of the knowledge upon which your work is based. It also enables the reader to locate the sources of your work easily.
Upon reading books and journals you will encounter a variety of referencing and citations practices. Referencing is the process of creating a bibliographic description of each source. It should enable the interested reader to locate the publication. Citing is the way that a writer refers from the text to the source. Your essay should not be overloaded with citations. Always write in your own words. However, on many occasions, it will be desirable to refer to the exact words and phrases of another author. We suggest that you follow the following practices for referencing and citations.

• For Referencing single and multiple authored books:

Cousins, J., Mitchell, A., Sikka, P. and Willmott, H., (1998), Auditors: Holding the Public to Ransom, Basildon, Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs.

Puxty, T., and Tinker, T., (1995) Policing Accounting: The Sociology of Knowledge as Praxis, in
T. Puxty and T. Tinker (eds.), Policing Accounting Knowledge: The Market for Excuses Affair, London, Paul Chapman.

United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, (1998). Financial Havens, Banking Secrecy and Money Laundering, Vienna, United Nations.

• For referencing and single and multiple authored journal and other articles:

Sikka, P., (1999). The limited liability partnership scorecard, Accountancy, June, page 69.

Sikka, P., Willmott, H. and Puxty, T., (1995) The Mountains are Still There: Accounting Academics and the Bearings of Intellectuals, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 113-140.

Citation Examples:

Citation should enable the reader to identify the source.

" In each case, we could be seen as engaged in “ruffling some feathers or rousing some rabble” (Moore, 1991, p. 784)".

"As finance and banking are often characterized as the most internationalized of all businesses (Gilpin, 1987; Kapstein, 1994; Lash and Urry, 1994) ………."

"As Frieden (1991) notes, “In April 1989, foreign exchange trading in the world’s financial centers averaged about $650 billion a day, equivalent to nearly $500 million a minute and to forty times the amount of world trade a day” (p. 428)".

"Those engaging in “the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth” (Foucault, 1984, p. 74) and refusing to be go along with the status-quo risk being harassed and policed by what Herman and Chomsky (1994) call, “flak”  which “takes the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits ...... and other modes of complaint, threats, and punitive action” (page 26)".

If you wish to cite books and journal articles with more than three authors, it is customary to cite them within the text as "et, al". For example, Sikka et. al, 1998.

 The above advice has now been put into practice in the essays to be found on the AABA website. You should note a number of features.

The essays have been briefly introduced to set the tone of the arguments to come.The structure has been clearly indicated. The essays clearly clarify and theorise the key ideas  It is important to make the reader aware of the lenses through which you are seeing the world. The essays conclude with a discussion and summary of the issues. Please note that the good essays also engage with counter arguments. A full list of all the references cited in the text is provided. The citations follow good practice by keeping the actual quotes to the minimum.