Could you please give any tips on getting a first in a humanities/essay writing subject? My essays right now are high 2:1s and getting 1sts seems to be a bit of hit and miss. Im a fresher so dont really know how to go about this. Thanks!
It’s really hard to pin down exactly what could push your essay up to a 1st without having actually read it. I would highly recommend going to your supervisors for the individual papers and having a chat with them about where they think you can improve. They’ve had a lot of time to get familiar with your writing style and believe me, they want the best for you in these exams, so they’ll be happy to help you identify points in your writing that could be weak. Also, different subjects have slightly different ways of writing essays and therefore different focus points – something that may be really important in one subject may be less important in another, and it’s only through talking to your supervisors that you’ll learn what’s key in yours.
All that being said, here are a couple of things that I think are important:
1. Originality: this is kind of the key defining feature of a first, but it’s really hard to pin down. It doesn’t mean that you have to come up with a brand new argument – instead, it means including something in your essay that’s a bit different. It could be a critical assessment of the material you’re using (is it severely limited in its support for the argument? Why? What are the implications?), an example/theory that you’ve derived from material not on the reading list, a new interpretation of an example (ie. if it’s interpreted using (x) theory from the reading it means this, but if you interpret it using (x) theory not from the reading it could mean this), drawing a link between different parts of the paper/different papers etc. It’s important though not to sacrifice the quality of your essay in your attempt to be original (i.e. don’t just throw something with a very tenuous link to your overall argument in because it wasn’t on the reading list – it has to be well-incorporated); you don’t want to be told that your essay was original and good, but the parts that were original weren’t good and the parts that were good weren’t original (yes, I totally stole that from a professor).
2. Coherence: structure is absolutely positively 100% key. If you’ve got all the right information, but it’s all over the place with no clear argument, then you can’t get a first. Make sure you’ve got a strong thesis statement (what makes up a strong thesis statement differs across subjects -- some want a ‘this is what i’m going to argue’, some want ‘this is what I’m going to argue and this is what I’m going to do to argue it’, some want a list of factors that you’re going to consider blah blah -- it can be very very variable), and make sure that at the end of each paragraph, you link back to the question. Like great, you’ve said all this cool stuff -- how does it answer the question? What does it mean? Also make sure you’re linking between your paragraphs very clearly, and that the beginning of each paragraph has a strong topic sentence. The examiner may have read several essays by the time s/he gets to yours. S/he’s going to be tired -- don’t make them work hard, give them a very clear indicator of what you’re argument is. Also make sure you finish your essay. Even a one sentence conclusion is better than no conclusion, because at least you’re not leaving them hanging!
3. Opinion. This sort of ties into originality, but if you just restate the lecture material in a nice organised way, you’re not going to get more than a 2.i. You need to be arguing a point, you need to be bringing your opinion into the mix. The way you do this will depend on the essay -- for some, you’ll be able to intersperse it in the essay in each paragraph, for others you may not be able to bring it in until the end. But you’ve got to make sure that you’re putting in your opinion of the evidence/arguments.
Oh, and of course #4: Answer the question. If you’ve got a question that’s similar to a supervision question, don’t just jump in with your supo essay without reading what you’re being asked to answer. Make sure to argue your point in a way that relates to the question -- by referring back to the question at the end of each paragraph, when you’re doing the whole ‘this evidence is cool but here’s why it matters’, you can do this pretty well.
