Screens, Yes! screens. I believe that Screens are taking over our lives it is getting worse and worse in the modern world. Television screen ,Mobile Phones, Tablets, Handheld games consoles, computers even in our cars. The time we spend in front of screens is shocking! either for work reasons, socialising or leisure. Screens serve as a portal taking us form reality and transporting us somewhere immediately however with the amount of time we spend in front of them they are sucking the life out of us without us even knowing it.
An Anatomy of an Academic Essay: (Part 1 The Skeleton)
I am going to use the analogy of anatomy to help describe the structures of an academic essay and how its elements work and join together. This should help you structure your essay. Each part I write and send to you will grow from the previous part, be fleshed out so to speak. It might be human like but could turn into and octopus, how it is formed is up to your imagination? You may have noticed that in writing and what you write on, the body is used to designate various parts. To name but a few: the preface, the body text, the header, the footer and spine.
Pre-face: The conception
Before the start of any essay you need to bring it to life. This usual means looking at the question or questions or what the brief set for you very closely. Or by setting yourself a question you would like to answer. It this case you were asked to chose a piece of cultural production to start your three types of analysis from. It is the forms of analysis, the methods that you use that you need to research as much as the thing you are scrutinising.
Part 1. A simple structure of an academic essay/text looks like this:
Introduction
Sections
Conclusion
Bibliography
Or more poetically:
Introduction (The Head)
Section (The Body)
Section (The Body)
Section (The Body)
Conclusion (The legs)
Bibliography (The feet)
To elucidate further:
The Introduction
(Head) The brain of the text and shows you have eyes and ears and a brain and tell the reader that you know what you are talking about and helps the reader understand why and how the essay was conceived and structured. This often includes the rationale.
A Section Can have a title to differentiate it from the other sections of the essay.
(Body) Text + Images, the guts of the text and this is where you challenge what you have read and create your arguments. You describe, analyse and situate, contextualise what is you are investigating)
A Section (Ditto)
A Section (Ditto)
Conclusion
(Legs), This is what make the text run and be articulated and animated and makes it stand up to scrutiny. It is where you can show what you have learnt)
Bibliography
(Feet) This is what good academic writing always stands up on. Without a good grounding, which a bibliography gives to any academic piece of writing, the text will fall and collapse into naïve argumentation. It shows that you have gathered information and then been able to write from your experience of reading high quality texts)