Writing and assignments

An essay is one of the ways in which your lecturer or tutor assesses your understanding of a topic and your ability to express ideas, theories, definitions and critical analysis in your own words. In your essay you will bring together (synthesise) ideas, theories, arguments, and evidence and analyse them to address a specific problem or question.

An essay follows a particular structure, which will be different from other types of assessed work, such as reports or case studies.

What ingredients make a good essay?

• including connecting words and phrases to relate each point and idea to earlier and later points
• planning before writing
• applying critical thinking
• making it clear how you are going to address the question
• setting out your main ideas clearly and how they relate to each other
• taking the reader through your answer in a logical, progressive way
• organising groups of related information in paragraphs

Reports are produced for many reasons on different topics, to different audiences but usually have a common structure and layout.

Reports are written to:

• deal with practical business matter or problems
• evaluate situations and make recommendations
• analyse situations and recommend solutions
• provide a framework for policies

This guide provides a useful overview on report writing and how it differs from an essay: Mitchell, A (2012) A quick guide to report writing. LearnHigher.

A literature review is a review of the literature already published in the area of your research question.  It usually forms part of a dissertation but can also be a standalone piece of work.

A literature review:

• provides context for your research question
• shares other studies which relate to yours
• demonstrates your knowledge
• identifies themes/ schools of thought
• helps to define the research problem
• relates your study to the wider dialogue about your research area

To undertake a literature review you will need to:

• Do a literature search to identify the relevant research in the area.  See our guide: Finding Information - Search
• Evaluate your sources.  See our guide: Finding Information - Evaluate
• Apply critical thinking.  See our guide: Studying at London Met: Critical thinking
• Structure your review.  See the RLF's guide on The structure of a literature review - Royal Literary Fund (rlf.org.uk)
• Synthesise don't summarise.  See this guide from NC State University Writing A Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix (fiu.edu)

A systematic review is more thorough and structured than a literature review.  It's used in certain subject areas such as health and medicine, dietetics, nutrition, and psychology.  Take a look at Curtin University's comparison of different types of reviews.

How do I do a systematic review?

It's usually necessary to do some scoping searches, to see what's been published, to help to focus your research question/topic, as well as to review and edit your searches until you have a final systematic search that includes all possible synonyms and index/thesaurus terms.

• Decide on a research area.
• Do some preliminary/scoping searches.
• Formulate and define a specific research question.
• Check for existing reviews/protocols.
• Design your search strategy: review scope, resources to be searched, search terms and keywords.
• Selection process: define inclusion and exclusion criteria.
• Conduct your literature search.
• Select and critically appraise studies.
• Extract and synthesise the evidence from selected papers.
• Interpret and present findings.