RCMP Learning Resource Centre at Depot Division-Guide to Research RCMP Learning Respource Centre at Depot Division

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Guide to Research

How to Write an Essay

The essay is an attempt to communicate information, opinion or feeling, which usually presents an argument about a topic. Within the RCMP Academy, an essay is an exercise that gives the student an opportunity to explore and clarify thoughts about a subject. The skills required by, and learned through essay writing, include thinking, organizing, researching and writing itself. These are skills that are required in almost any career but are particularly necessary in law enforcement duties. In particular, there will always be expository reports to write and arguments to present.

Essay Styles

While there are a variety of essay styles, three in particular are useful for students of the Academy. The function of the expository essay is to explain, or to acquaint your reader with a body of knowledge. By explaining a topic to the reader, you are demonstrating your own knowledge. In the persuasive essay, you must defend your side of an argument. You are no longer merely showing, you are convincing. The persuasive essay must choose a side, make a case for it, consider and refute alternative arguments, and prove to the undecided reader that the opinion it presents is the best one. The research essay leads you into the works of others and asks you to compare their thoughts with your own. Writing a research paper involves going to source material and synthesizing what you learn from it with your own ideas. You must find texts on the subject and use them to support the topic you have been given to explore.

A Model for Essay Writing

Writing is a complex process; it is a learned craft which requires a lot of practice, and no formula can guarantee a good essay. A workable linear model for preparing and writing an essay is as follows: 1) Choosing a topic; 2) Brainstorming; 3) Choosing a thesis ( the point you are arguing; your essay will take a position and will provide convincing evidence to support that view. It is important to develop a working thesis early because it will help direct your thoughts and research; of course your thesis may change as your reading and writing progresses and you begin to incorporate new information); 4) the Outline; 5) Research and Reading; 6) a First Draft; 7) Revision; and 8) the Essay.
When planning to write an essay it is essential to divide the essay structure into three distinct parts. 1)Introduction: This is where the the outline of the essay of the is presented to the reader. An outline typically describes what the essay is going to deal with, approaches, taken, etc. 2)Body:The main content of the essay is presented here. All arguements, statements and supporting facts are written here. 3)Conclusion: A short summation of the body is written here. The conclusion can be thought of as the Wrap-up to the complete essay and thought process.


Organizing an Essay:

Once you have narrowed your topic and formulated a thesis, you know what you are going to write about; organizing your essay will  help you determine how to write it. Careful structuring and organization will ensure that every part of your essay works to support and develop the thesis. An essay needs the formality of a beginning, a middle and an end. Organizing before you write gives your ideas a structure to cling to and allows you to articulate, analyze, and clarify your thoughts. Organization is a continuous process; it goes on simultaneously with other activities, such as narrowing your topic, forming your thesis statement, and conducting your research. Formal organization generally involves two components: determining a method of organization for the essay, and drawing up an outline which applies your ideas to that method. Some principles of organizations are:

Chronological order: paragraphs separate the process or series of events into major states; Classification: paragraphs divide the material into major categories and distinguish between them; Increasing importance: paragraphs are arranged so that the most important point comes last, thus building the essay's strength; Cause and effect: indicates causal relationships between things and events; Comparison and contrast: involves lining up related ideas for a detailed account of similarities and differences; in this kind of essay, it is important to decide whether you will be concentrating on similarities or differences. Although one pattern should serve as the overall organized framework, your argument can benefit from a combination of these strategies. For example, while the paragraphs may be arranged in ascending order of importance, within the paragraphs it is likely that you will incorporate comparisons, causes, classification or chronology. These principles apply to both the greater structure of the essay and each individual idea.

Common Problems of Writing Essays:

The above principles, direction and guidelines will assist in the preparation of a good essay. Knowledge of the common problems of writing essays will also assist in the avoidance of such problems. The most common problems are: Thesis Statement: lacking a thesis; a thesis that is too general, or a truism; or a thesis that is too narrow. Organization: there is no sense of direction, no reason why one paragraph follows another; there are few, or inadequate transitions; there are too many generalizations, and too little support for them; and the introduction or conclusion is weak, or one simply repeats the other. Presentation: the essay is poorly set out, with inadequate space for the instructor's comments and there are frequent typos or misspelled words.

Directions for presentation of a standard expository essay

Typing is always preferable and usually required. If you have to write, use lined paper. Use only one side of the paper. Double-space, so your instructor can both read and criticize your work effectively. Leave margins of at least one inch on the top, bottom and sides of the page. Page numbers should be placed in the upper right hand corner. Make sure that all pages are numbered. Title pages are not numbered. Page 1 is the first page of the essay proper, and must be numbered. Do not hand in loose pages; always bind them together, either with a staple or a folder. If you use a folder, be sure that the whole of the written text is clearly visible. Do not use folders that will substantially increase the bulk of the pile your professor has to carry home. A title page is not necessary for research papers but may be used if desired. Alternatively, you may enter your name, instructor and course number, and the date at the tope left margin of the first page (double-spacing after your name and the course number). Enter the title two spaces below the date and double-space it if it extends more than one line.



The information contained here was summarized from, and based on, the UVic Writer's Guide of the Department of English, University of Victoria.
http://webuvic.ca/wguide

Additional Guides to Style and Grammar

Getting an A on an English Paper www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/EngPaper/index.html
Guide to Grammar and Style www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/
Writing Better www.askoxford.com/betterwriting
Guide to Grammar and Writing ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

Altavista search engine guide http://www.altavista.com

How to Prepare a Bibliography

It is important to acknowledge the sources used when writing an essay or preparing a presentation of any kind. (i.e. This information utilizes a web-based resource APA Publication Manual Crib Sheet by Russ Dewey of Georgia Southern University which is a summary of rules from the APA Publication Manual; this resource is located at http://www.wooster.edu/psychology/apa-crib.html). Not to acknowledge or cite sources constitutes plagiarism (which is form of theft) and is a basis for expulsion from most post-secondary institutions. In addition, it is dishonest and unethical behavior. Consequently, knowledge of how to cite sources and to prepare bibliographical information is essential. This is knowledge that will be increasingly important for report writing and advanced research as cadets become more specialized in their knowledge base and areas of specialization. The ability to cite both print and electronic sources will be more and more essential.

The initial orientation of the Resource Centre (see Orientation) refers to copyright and informs the cadets that the Resource Centre has a Cancopy license which provides permission to photocopy limited sections of books and journals for research purposes. In addition, the video collection of the Resource Centre frequently has copyright restrictions and permission is usually sought for permission to use specific videos for public broadcast purposes such as applies to an educational setting.

The following examples use the American Psychological Association (APA) Publication Manual guide to bibliographical citation. This style of citation is one of the most authoritative and widely-used guides. It is the standard guide that is used at the Academy and cadets are advised to become familiar with it. These examples contain information about author, publication date, title, edition, place of publication and publisher. These are the basic elements of a citation.

The following examples are intended to provide references for different types of citations that will be used in essays and papers. Wherever there are italics below, you should actually underline when preparing your paper. Italics are used here because many browsers use underlines to indicate links. References should be indented 5 to 7 spaces on the first line, just like other paragraphs. In examples below, the 5 white spaces are represented by 5 underscores (_____) because most browsers ignore white space.

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Books

_____Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E.B. (1979).

_____American Psychiatric Association. (1990) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

(note: "Author" is used as above when author and publisher are identical.)

_____Freud, S. (1961). The edo and the id. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19, pp. 3-66). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1923)

In text this would be cited as (Freud, 1923/1961).

Group or institutional authors

_____University of Pittsburgh. (1993). The titles goes here. Journal of Something, 8, 5-9.

Journal article

____Spitch, M.L., Verzy, H.N., & Wilkie, D.M. (1993). Subjective shortening: A model of pigeons' memory for event duration. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 9, 14-30.

Letter to the editor

_____O'Neill, G.W. (1992, January). In support of DSM-III [Letter to the editor]. APA Monitor, 4-5.

Magazine article

_____Gardner, H. (1991, December). Do babies sing a universal song? Psychology Today, 70-76.

Newsletter article

_____Brown, L.S. (1993, Spring). My research with orangs. The Psychology Department Newsletter, 3, 2.

The date is given as it appears on the publication. For anonymous newspaper articles, see the previous section titled "Anonymous or unknown authors."

Pamphlet

_____Just Say No Foundation. (1992). Saving our youth. (9th ed.) [Brochure]. Washington, DC: Author.

Source: APA Publication Manual Crib Sheet http://www.wooster.edu/psychology/apa-crib.html

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Additional Resources

On-line Guide to APA Format http://www.webster.commnet.edu/apa/apa_index.htm


Citing a Web Site

To direct readers to an entire Web site (but  not a specific document on the site) it's sufficient to give the address of the site in the text. For example,

Yahoo! is an excellent search engine for seeking Saskatchewan material http://www.yahoo.ca

Citing Specific Documents on a Web Site

Web documents share many of the same elements found in a print document (e.g., authors, titles, dates). Therefore, the citation for a Web document often follows a format similar to that for  print, with some information omitted and some added. Here are some examples of how to cite documents posted on the web using the APA format:

An article from the journal American Psychologist:

Jacobson, J.W., Mullick, J.A., & Schwartz, A.A. (1995). A history of facilitated   communication: Science, pseudoscience, and antiscience: Science working group on facilitated communication. American Psychologist, 50, 750 -765. Retrieved January 25, 1996, from the World Wide Web: http://www.apa.org/journals/jacobson.html

An article from the APA Monitor (article in a magazine, no author identified):

From 'character' to 'personality': The lack of a generally accepted, unifying theory hasn't curbed research into the study of personality. (1999, December). APA Monitor, 30 (11). Retrieved August 22, 2000, from the World Wide Web: http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec99/ss9.html

All references begin with the same information that would be provided for a printed source (or as much of that information as is available). If no publication date is available for a document, use "n.d." (stands for "no date") in its place. The Web information is then placed in a retrieval statement at the end of the reference. It is important to give the date of retrieval because documents on the Web may change in content, move, or be removed from a site altogether.

Source: Electronic Reference Formats Recommended by the American Psychological Association http://www.apa.org/journals/webref.html

Guide to Making a Group Presentation

While each group presentation will differ in terms of group dynamics and subject matter, the correct approach to a group presentation is to adopt a Project Management approach. This involves 6 basic steps:

  • Break the project down into measurable tasks.
  • Determine the inter-task dependencies.

  • Assign lengths to each task.
  • Assign resources (i.e., staff and equipment to each task.
  • Refine the plan.
  • Communicate, revise and update the project status regularly.

  • Perform a post-implementation review.

  • Source: Seven Steps for Highly Effective Project Management. Nancy Blumenstalk Mingus. Project Management. Ed. Paul C. Tinnirello. (Auerbach: Boca Raton, 1999). Best Practices Series. p.3-10


  • Preparing for a Multiple Choice Exam

    The multiple choice exam requires more than the simple recognition of true statements. Fine distinctions are required between correct and nearly-correct statements. Thinking for synthesis, analysis and application is required for success. Preparation is essential to learn about the thinking required to answer multiple choice questions and to read the questions carefully.

    A guide for preparing for multiple choice exams is located at http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/multicho.html



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