For Masters students and those doing their degrees in countries like the UK, here is a thread for you to make good grades in academic writing. To make a first class or distinction, these tips are key!
▪️Spend time reading your assessment brief and understand it well before you start writing. You can also review it with others before starting to write. ▪️Attend drop in sessions as much as you can or listen to the recordings. Don't hesitate to ask questions please.
▪️For schools where you are allowed to choose modules, ask for reviews before choosing the modules. You can get the assessment brief on the module and see if it's appropriate for you before you enrol. ▪️You need time! You might need to cut down on extra shifts to achieve your
goal. Academic writing takes time and commitment. ▪️Ensure you understand how to navigate your blackboard or any learning platform your school uses. ▪️Read past essays and academic researches online, they really help you understand the writing flow. ▪️When asking for essays
of past students to understand the approach to use, do not copy their works!. Just use their works to understand how best to approach the essay. ▪️Be careful of those you request essays from to use in writing yours, their scores in that module matters as well as the feedback on
their essays. ▪️Use the school library, there are tons of materials there you might not have access to otherwise. ▪️You can use your institutional login to access lots of materials online which are usually paid for ▪️You need to do a lot of critical analysis,
▪️Most schools give free access to Microsoft word, take advantage of this.
don't just make a point and give a reference, argue on that point, state the conflicting ideas on it with references. ▪️Don't use old materials, the usual advice is that you shouldn't use materials older than 10 years, but if you must, limit the number of old articles.
▪️Start writing on time, the earlier you start, the more relaxed you get in sourcing for credible materials ▪️Stick to the word limit, preferably, you can write not more than 100 words below but don't go above it please unless your assessment brief says otherwise.
▪️Although this varies from one institution to the other, aim for plagiarism score below 24. ▪️Know the right submission point and submit as appropriate. Submitting on the wrong submission point might lead to a score cap or complete fail.
Avoid plagiarism! It is a criminal offence and you can get withdrawn for that. If you must quote sources directly, quote them with proper referencing. However, avoid doing this if you can as it increases your plagiarism score. ▪️To cite sources, follow your institution's
referencing style, you can use https://t.co/od2GYADlVn for this purpose. It lets you directly copy and paste the link and DOI number while it generates the reference for you automatically. ▪️Get people to review your essays, this is very important. Be careful though and ensure
mybib.com
they understand the academic requirement for level 6 or 7 ▪️Do not contract your work out. Lots of people might be good writers but poor in academic writing, hence, poor grades. ▪️Never cite Wikipedia or all the small blogs with information online. They are not peer-reviewed.
Only use sources that are peer reviewed. You can get sources like that on Google scholar (this has tons of materials), scopus, embase, pubmed and other academic databases. ▪️Subscribe to grammarly premium via
grammarly.com/premiumand
Grammarly helps make your essays more academic by giving useful sentence suggestions and it's a great tool for punctuations as well
▪️Submit before deadline to know your plagiarism score and act on it. If you submit late with high plagiarism score, you might not have the time to make corrections and that is a big deal. ▪️In all, academic excellence is really rewarding but you need to put in the work.
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