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Gerunds can occur in three different constructions in English: (a) as the subject of a sentence, (b) as verb complements (V + G) and (c) as objects of a preposition (Prep + O). Likewise, infinitives can occur in three different constructions: (a) as the subject of a sentence, (b) as a verb complement (V + I), and (c) as complement of an object (V + O + I). Gerunds and infinitives occur in several different constructions in English. The analysis is limited to the verb + complement (V + G and V+ I/V + O + I) constructions because it is these constructions that cause the most confusion for students. The generation of the gerund or the infinitive in these latter three constructions depends on the head verb choice. For example,

1. I want to go to the movies.
2. I want going to the movies.
3. She enjoys working in the library.
4. She enjoys to work in the library.

It is readily recognized sentences (1) and (3) as being grammatically correct sentences in English; likewise, items (2) and (4) are ungrammatical in English. However, there are some verbs that can trigger either gerund or infinitive constructions with relatively little difference in meaning.

5. He loves to walk in the rain.
6. He loves walking in the rain.

Both sentences (5) and (6) are grammatically correct sentences in English. A native speaker of English may recognize a subtle semantic difference between sentences (5) and (6). This intuitive difference is not part of our study. Finally, there are some verbs which take both the infinitive and gerund constructions but there is a significant difference. There is observed the semantic difference between items (7) and (8).

7. He stopped smoking.
8. He stopped to smoke.

Sentence (7) indicates that the man has kicked the habit of smoking; whereas, sentence (8) conveys the message that the man stopped what he was doing in order to have a cigarette. English second language grammar textbooks frequently provide extensive, but by no means exhaustive, lists of verbs that generate the various constructions. The students must learn to manage these lists, much as they must learn to manage the seemingly endless lists of irregular verbs. Because of the overlap in these verb + complement structures, it is not uncommon for students to produce frequent errors

The distribution of gerund complements

The aim of this part is to review the distribution of gerund complements, with examples and comments on usage.

1. Gerund complements as Direct Objects

There is a considerable number of verbs which take ing complements as Direct Objects.

Many of them also accept infinitival Direct Objects. Here is a list of verbs which accept gerund Direct Objects, but with which an infinitive complement is infrequent or not available.

(1) A. a. avoid, adore, bear, chance (= risk), contemplate, dread, dislike, detest, drop, end

up, enjoy, escape, evade, feign, finish, give up, keep, leave off, miss, postpone, put off, play, practice, risk, resume, renounce, shirk, can’t resist, help, stand, grudge;

1. condemn, consider(= think over), justify, ensure, include, entail, necessitate, encourage, defer, delay, excuse, pardon, defend, detest, support, sanction, oppose, criticize, favour.
2. a. resent, regret (also + inf) grasp, perceive, repent, deplore, ignore, care (about), bear in mind, mind, reveal, discover, disclose ;
3. admit, emphasize, explain, mention, announce, point out, verify, mean, acknowledge, certify, testify, doubt, deny, imagine, imply, etc.

Class A contains verbs that are typically followed by the gerund, verbs in class B have an alternative that complement construction.

(2) a. They certified his being insane.

1. They certified that he was insane.
2. I imagined John eating the apple quickly.

The fact that the gerund may alternate with that complement means that the gerund may have a propositional interpretation with these verbs. Following Portner (1994), we assumed that gerunds basically denote propositions, understood as sets of situations, rather than sets of possible words. Object gerunds may also denote facts (when the main clause predicate is active) or events, facts and events having in common the fact that they are more concrete occurrences.

(3) a. He regrets/ deplores accidentally killing his dog.

1. Mary always enjoyed going to the Opera.

Few of the verbs in (1) are verbs of obligatory subject control, which word always take a PRO-ing complement; examples are resist, finish, leave off, resume, keep on, as well as aspectual.

(4) a. *I left off his writing the essay.

1. *I resumed his writing the essay.

Most verbs in (1) accept different subjects in the matrix and complement clause, and then the subject assumes Possessive or Accusative form:

(5) Poss-ing

1. Nothing in the accident justified their grounding the aircraft.
2. And maybe you won’t mind my saying that you’re getting a little old for studying.
3. I don’t mind his coming whenever he likes.

Accusative. (6) a. I cannot help the dreams coming.

1. He replied that he should certainly support every nation being allowed to govern itself.
2. The parents did not mind the news becoming public.
3. Do you mind me saying it?

Allen (1959) mentions that deny, postpone, risk allow only a possessive complement, rejecting the Accusative structure:

(7) I couldn’t deny his / *him having made a reasonable excuse.

As to the preference for the Possessive or the Accusative. in object position, the Longman Grammar (1999: 750) has got the following to say: “In spite of a prescriptive tradition favouring the possessive form, the objective case must be considered the unmarked choice for the post-verbal noun-phrase in the pattern verb + NP + ing-clause. […] When both the objective and the possessive forms are permitted, the possessive option focuses attention on the action described in the in clause. In contrast, use of the objective form emphasizes the person doing the action.”

Another difference between the Accusative. and the Accussative complement, already discussed above is that the Poss-ing is understood as a definite nominal, referring to a definite (presupposed) event, while the Acc-ing may also refer to an indefinite event, when it is embedded under a non-active-predicate, as in (8d). A definite interpretation of the Acc-ing complement is also available, under active predicates, as in (8b).

(8) a. Mary didn’t enjoy John’s coming to visit her.

1. Mary didn’t enjoy John coming to visit her.

This interpretative contrast, suggests that Poss-ing gerunds are interpreted as DPs headed by a silent definite article, which secures reference to a known event, therefore, a presuppositional interpretation. The silent D of the Acc-ing complement may be indefinite, allowing a definite reading as a result of the factive context.

Where the Su of the complement is the same as that of the main clause, a PRO-ing complement is used, as in the following examples.

(9) a. I could hardly avoid (*my) running into him.

1. I gave up (*my) smoking.
2. I couldn’t resist (*my) buying such lovely apples.
3. He could not help looking youthful and calm and debonair.
4. He had sometimes envisaged telling her everything and making her his confessor and his judge.
5. He narrowly missed being seriously hurt, if not killed.
6. Andrew had by now almost finished dealing with the swing.

Kiparsky (1970) mentioned that the verbs listed under (1) Ba. above, which are active verbs, optionally allow a possessive of the same person as the subject to be inserted between the main verb and the ing complement, resulting in the alternation between the Poss-ing and PRO-ing complement.

(10) a. They resented (their) having a young family to support.

1. He deplored (his) going blind.
2. I recall (my) having seen her.

An arbitrary generic interpretation of the subject, roughly understood as the pronoun ‘one’ is also possible:

(11) a. The law doesn’t even mention killing oneself.

1. They abhor abusing oneself in public.

As already discussed in the previous chapter, ‘public verbs’ dispose of a second type of uncontrolled Su selection in the complement clause, the unspecified subject’, a featureless DP, whose content is retrievable in a given context. Examples of ‘Public verbs’ have tentatively been listed in (1) Ab and Bb, following the suggestions of Thompson (1973); verbs in Aa and Ba are ‘private verbs’ accepting only controlled readings.

(12) a. The report advocated setting up day-training-college.

1. The experiment justified changing the normal method of attack.
2. He advocated making war upon the brewers.

The gerund construction brings out several characteristics of true. [+ Active] verbs. We have already mentioned the alternation between a lexical and a null subject with active verbs, even when the embedded subject is the same as a main clause argument, so a PRO subject could have been used. An example appears in (13a, b) below. Since, with these verbs a lexical subject may potentially intervene between the main verb and the ing-predicate of the subordinate clause, these verbs tolerate apparent ‘doubling violations, as in (13c):

(13) a. Ed resented his getting photographed drunk.

1. Ed resented getting photographed drunk.
2. Ed’s resenting getting photographed drunk is just too funny.

Moreover active verbs have the property of freely combining with perfect gerunds; not all of the other verbs listed in (1) have this possibility, as apparent in the contrasts below:

(14) a. I deplored/resented having been given this commission.

1. I *avoided / *evaded having been given this commission.

Kiparsky (1970: 361) notices the existence of verbs which allow for a active, as well as a non active interpretation of their complement clause (e.g. announce, anticipate, admit, emphasize, mention, deduce, a.o.). It is interesting that, with this verb sub-class, the gerund complement is normally interpreted as active, while the clause is indifferent to activity.

(15) a. He will mention his having read it in the paper.

1. He won’t mention that he had read it in the paper.

With the verb explain the gerund complement and that complement differs in meaning, again along the lines of a active / non – active interpretation. Compare:

(16) a. I explained Adam’s refusing to come to the phone.

1. I explained that he was watching his favourite TV show.

In (16a) the subordinate clause refers to a proposition regarded as a fact. Explain, in this case means ‘give reasons for’. When the object is a that clause, as in (16b), it can be read as non-active with explain that S meaning ‘say that S to explain X’.

Verbs followed either by ing or by infinitive complements constitute an interesting class, as this syntactic difference sometimes correlates with a difference in the meaning of the two constructions.

As remarked in Longman grammar (1999: 757) “in general a to-clause has a meaning that is more hypothetical or potential than the meaning of the corresponding ing-clause (with the same verb)…” This general difference naturally follows from the properties of Inflection in infinitive and gerund clauses. With some exceptions, control infinitive have irrealis, future Tense, while gerunds have realis tense. No wonder then that the infinitive is associated with hypothetical or potential events.

Problem Definition

Fostering and gaining the great understanding of being able to assist students to think critically is very significant to their academic success. Students have been increasingly found to lack the motivation of employing their contemporary set of critical thinking skills, they, in turn, mess up in the development of those skills which befits their level of intellect or grade levels. The problem at hand deals with students at their ninth-grade level of education who lack motivation or have challenges in developing and utilizing critical thinking skills in the classroom throughout the school year.

The ability to facilitate the development of critical thinking skills is very significant to be addressed. This is possible through some individual assignments, group problems, projects, and lessons. Through emphasizing continuously on the nurturing and development of critical thinking skills, students enjoy the opportunity to experience to learn how to come up with effective solutions to problems and also to add up their level of knowledge. As critical thinking expansion continues students in possession of developed skills tend to concentrate on strategy more than the issue at hand (Mezirow, 1990). On the other hand, less developed students tend to focus on the problem rather than focusing on the strategy.

Methodology

Each of the students received a notebook with a research number of each student on the front. The students used their chosen word to complete the code which gave room for easy identification at the same time keeping their identity undisclosed. The students were required to hand in the notebooks at the end of the session, but this was done after filling in the minute papers. The notebooks were supposed to have each date stated at the top of a new page and submitted to the teacher before the students departed from the class. In case of absence of one or more students, they were given a zero, and this score did not necessarily reflect on their abilities; it indicated that the students were absent in class that day. Also, their weekly average did not include the zero score; otherwise, it would have led to misconstruction of the results.

The notebooks that were employed in the research were only allowed to leave the school grounds under the researcher’s control and were kept in a contained room all the other times. The area was locked and confidential for effective control to avoid losing them. As the end of each week approached, the minute papers of each student were read and given scores per rubric (Appendix C) and a survey carried out on a weekly basis to help in the documentation of their progress (Appendix D) was completed by the person carrying out the research. Two ratings and two ratings made up the weekly survey and these ratings were based on the minute papers for a school week.

The results of each of each week were graphed, and they provided a growing picture to commence with result analysis. Records of gender separation results were also made available which gave room for a different information layer. By carrying out gender separation, the emphasis focused on whether there would be better performance from one gender. The teacher’s weekly survey was collected on a weekly basis and consisted of two agree/disagree questions. At this point, the teacher was given a chance of providing comments and recommendations as well. Analysis of the all the captured information was carried out separately or as a whole, for example. Gender, weekly, daily, for deeper comprehension levels.

The notebooks provided a substantial amount of information that helps in understanding the backward slides, stagnation or progress made by each student through the questions they posed as well as their minute papers. Furthermore, the students were instrumental in the provision of a firsthand look at the material comprehension, employment of critical skills in action, and thought process of each student.

Timeline

There were three phases in the study timeline, and the whole process took at least seven calendar weeks (Jeong, 2007). The first phase included the teacher and the school administration being conducted two weeks before the commencing of the research to seek deeper research understanding, background, permission, full understanding of study cooperation and partial creation of the number of participants. The teacher sent an email to all the parents involved to notify them about the study. The first and the second weeks consisted of four class days each and the third week was three class days.

The second phase included the actual timeline of the research (Appendix A) which summed up to three weeks of research that was equal to four calendar weeks. The teacher submitted the students’ weekly question surveys on a weekly basis. The minute papers were also collected on a weekly basis to award scores and also to record the results from the weekly and rubric survey. The third phase was the data collection conclusion and commenced data analysis. The third phase consumed at least three weeks, which provided the necessary information that would assist in answering the research the questions.

Results

The girls displayed a constant improvement in their weekly scores and about 62% of the daily average time, yet they were less than boys. Therefore, without the comparison of an equal amount of students, this can result in a curve in the analysis which might favor the girls. However, with a 17%, or 4 students, difference it is quite a small variation to provide an insight into how the performance of the students would be had there been exact boys to girls’ ratio. It shows that the students accepted the task regardless of the gender parity, i.e.., composing of minute papers, and were successful in building their critical thinking skills each time they wrote with the final week with veritably focusing on the skills they had gained that would improve their levels of critical thinking.

The teacher mentioned the scoring breakdown of each week throughout the weekly results sections. These results show that there was a steady increase in critical thinking skills throughout the whole study process. The second week presented issues that made the students appear to lose vigor and enthusiasm of the daily task which represents the overall scores of all the students (LoBiondo-Wood, 2017). Although, by the study’s last week the students had recorded a significant improvement of their skills in comparison to the previous scores of two weeks while the depth of their minute papers a displayed a substantial level of critical thinking. The students also posed questions that showed that they had taken new understanding levels.

Introduction

Teaching English is a hard work. When we speak about teaching English grammar it is more difficult work for the teacher and the students. Interest in learning of English to students has been steadily growing in recent years. For correct presenting grammar teachers need special skills. Helping the children to learn and develop grammar skills becomes more important than simply teaching language.

Grammar study is important for developing reading, writing, and speaking skills, but many teachers are unsure how best to include it in their curriculum. Providing grammar instruction through engaging literacy activities teaches basic concepts while developing students’ vocabularies and spelling proficiency. In this lesson, students review nouns, adjectives, and verbs and learn about gerunds. They then practice using them as new vocabulary words by composing structured diamante poems as a class and independently using an online interactive tool. The poems can be printed off and displayed or published as a class book or magazine.

However, teaching grammar isn’t difficult or painful if the teacher has appropriate knowledge and skills. It is impossible to speak about gerund and not to remain infinitive because they are structures which are connected very much. Gerunds and infinitives are among the most difficult topics to teach, and a continuing source of errors even among advanced learners. Treated as merely structural variants, these forms are usually grouped into a single grammar unit filled with differing syntactic specifications and long lists of verbs grouped according to their complement type. Significant grammatical distinctions between gerunds and infinitives, as well as pedagogical considerations, suggest that they should be separated and taught at different points in a grammar syllabus. The aim of this work are:

• to make grammar description of gerund;
• to show the difficulties in teaching gerund;
• to express the difference between gerund and infinitive;
• to presents a concise review of the linguistic evidence concerning important differences between gerunds and infinitives;
• to make recommendations on the sequencing of these topics within a course of instruction;
• to demonstrate frequency as a significant factor in second language acquisition;
• to show the derivations of gerund;

This course paper is devoted to show the role of grammar in the language, and the role of gerund especially.

Most theorists trace the history of grammar to the ancient Greeks who made grammar part of a tritium of rhetoric, logic, and grammar because without grammar the sentence doesn’t have any meening. The Greeks, however, viewed grammar as more than a set of prescriptive rules. Cheryl Glen (1995) interprets the role of grammar in the Greek tritium as one of style more than rules of correctness. Kolln also places grammar teaching in this position. Glenn views this role of grammar, what she calls “fluid, flexible, lively, ever-changing, emotional, beautiful, stylish, graceful language performance” (10) as the goal of grammar instruction.

1. The role of Frequency in teaching gerund

The development of constructional schemas is based on frequency of input and output. Research demonstrating frequency as a significant factor in second language acquisition, however, has been limited. Infinitive and gerund are analysed as constructions in English by native speakers because studies of gerunds and infinitives in second language acquisition are relatively rare. Furthermore, the students who are speakers of English often confuse these two constructions. Infinitives are high-frequency constructions in English. Conversely, gerund constructions are of low-frequency in English; do not generally exist in some European languages. This seemed a promising place, therefore, to test the relationship of frequency and error production in English second language students.

The theory that frequency plays a significant role in the production of language has been researched for nearly 50 years.

From these findings, it has been proposed that grammars are not a result of some sort of innate, preprogrammed set of universal rules that each human being is born with as proposed by Chomsky. Rather, functionalists claim that grammars emerge from thousands of different constructions, and these constructions are internalized and mapped onto our cognitive capacities through the frequency of input and output (Wray, 2002; Tomasello, 1998). Thus, the fundamental difference between the generativists and the functionalists is that of the source of grammatical knowledge in first language acquisition. Generativists believe that grammar is innate and that the lexicon and environment enter into cognition at a different, unrelated time. This fundamental difference continues to be hotly debated. Until very recently, though, the field of second language acquisition has not seriously considered frequency as a significant factor in learning a second language. Second language acquisition research has often avoided asking questions about language interference, variation, and pedagogy through the lens of the functionalist paradigm.

One of the primary reasons frequency effects has not received a great deal of attention in second language acquisition literature is that there is a genuine fear that evidence supporting a pedagogy based on frequency of input may lead the profession back to stimulus-response sorts of pedagogy like Lado and the audio lingual method which promotes rote memorization and practice of frequently occurring structures, divorcing structure from context (Ellis, 2002a). This is a very real concern and applied linguists, psycholinguists, and TESL practitioners have been justified in their reservations, not wanting to decontextualize language learning.

Language interference is a process in which internalized structures, or lack thereof, in the native language interfere with the learning and acquisition of structures in the target language (Ellis, R. 1994; Gass & Selinker, 2001). Language interference may result from differences between the native language and target language, or it can result from similarities between the two languages. For a discussion and a brief history of error analysis the language interference results from differences between the native language and the target language. For example, if the native language has an infinitive structure for verbs, then it can be predicted that this structure will transfer relatively easily to the target language. However, if the native language does not have the infinitive structure, this will be more difficult to learn and internalize in the target language. Language interference does not have to be restricted to grammatical structures. Learning lexical, semantic, phonological, and morphological items may also be affected by language interference. For example, Spanish makes use of two lexical items to represent the copula BE: ser and ir, whereas English only has one. Learning the contexts in which ser and ir are used is difficult for native speakers of English causing confusion and resulting in frequent errors in the early stages of learning Spanish as a second or foreign language.

It is clear that the frequency of input is not the only factor involved in learning a second language; however, we believe it plays a significant role.

2. General properties of gerunds

Here is a large variety of ing forms. Traditional grammars of English acknowledge the existence of two homonymous ING forms: the gerund and the participle. Gerunds, in (1a), were defined as “forms that have both nominal and verbal features, both aspects of the content being (often) apparent in the same context”. (Ellis, 2002a, p 347). “Participles differ from gerunds in that they don’t have any nominal features, but verbal features exclusively” (Ellis, 2002a p 365). The picture is more complex than that for several reasons. First, participles have a verbal use, as in (1b), but also an adjectival use, illustrated in (1c) below:

(1) a. I remember Mary’s performing the concert.

1. God willing, we shall succeed.
2. Never flog a willing horse.

Secondly, gerunds exhibit two forms, the traditionally called full gerund, whose subject is in the Gen (active) or Possessive case, and a second form, whose subject is in the Accusative case, known as the half gerund. We shall refer to the former as the Possessive construction, and to the latter as the Accusative construction.

(2) It all depends on their helping us. (Possessive)

It all depends on them helping us. (Accusative)

Additionally, the gerund may be subjectless. The subjectless gerund is, roughly,

interpretable like the subjectless infinitive in terms of Control Theory. It is reasonable to assume that an empty pronominal then represents the gerund’s subject, namely the empty pronominal. It will refer to this construction as pronominal gerund..

(3) I avoided of meeting him.

Thirdly, there is an ing deverbal noun, a form that has only nominal properties, illustrated in (4) below. This form is traditionally known as the verbal noun or the ing-of construction.

(4) Their cruel shooting of the prisoners

Theoretically, the more interesting ones appear to be the two gerund constructions, which exhibit mixed properties, being thus different both from IPs/CPs and from DPs.

More on the properties of the -ing suffix. Among the more obvious lexical peculiarities of English is the presence of a number of apparently distinct morphemes that share the phonological shape -ing. In addition to the gerund-forming affix under discussion here, we have noted the existence of the quite productive nominalizing affix exemplified in (4) above. There is also the adjective-forming suffix found in examples like unprepossessing individual. Then, there is the verbal participial affix found in the progressive, as well as in small clauses and adjuncts (e.g., John being away, I was sad; I found her laughing). Finally there is the semiproductive mass noun forming affix, seen in the “object” or “material” senses of words like clothing, fencing, and writings. It is difficult, if not impossible, to isolate a common meaning for all the types of -ing isolated above.

Several attempts have, however, been made to give a unitary description to the -ing suffix (cf. Milsark (1988), Harley and Noyer (1998)), in morpho-syntactic terms.

If there were in fact but one -ing in English, it would appear to have the following morphological properties: it suffixes to verbs, and the resulting complex lexical item may be of any category, a rather unusual property. The lack of category specification exhibited by -ing is unique among derivational affixes, at least in English. -ing is a category-neutral affix. If one takes the major lexical categories, N, V, A, P one notices the existence of Ns, Vs, A and Ps derived from verbs using -ing:

1. Footnotes or Endnotes

Quotations or citations within a text should be referenced by footnotes or endnotes, recording precisely the source and author of any words you have quoted or ideas you have cited.

The first reference to any text should give full bibliographical details, in the general order of Author, Title (Place name: Publisher, date), p. 111.

Follow the examples below.

Quoting from a text found in a module reader

When quoting from a text made available in a module reader, you should provide as much information about the text as you can (author, title, page, line references etc.), following the information in the module reader. E.g.

“The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkeney”, in Beginnings of English Module Reader (2014), p. 214, lines 12-20.

A monograph

1 Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (London: Jonathan Cape, 1995), p. 383.

An article in a book

2 Terence Brown, ‘Ireland, Modernism and the 1930s’, in Modernism and Ireland: The Poetry of the 1930s, ed. by Patricia Coughlan and Alex Davis (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), pp. 36-7.

An article in a journal

3 Fredric Jameson, ‘On Magic Realism in Film’, Critical Inquiry, 12:2 (1986), 301-25 (pp. 302-3). [Note that the page span of the journal article is given without the p. or pp. abbreviations, whilst the specific pages being referred still use p. or pp.]

Something quoted by another writer

4 Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 36; quoted in John McClure, Late Imperial Romance

(London: Verso, 1994), p. 41.

For later references to a work already cited, give the minimum information necessary to locate it, usually the author’s surname, short title, and page number:

5 Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, p. 68.

[Note that format of title follows the first reference.]

If you know how to use ibid. and op. cit., do so if you wish. If you are not sure, do not. In any case, the short-title system given above is often easier to follow.

Endnotes or footnotes start with the author’s name in normal format (A. N. Other); entries in your bibliography (see below) start with the author’s name in reverse order (Surname, First-name).

 

2. Quotations from Plays

Where a play text contains line numbers, footnote references should be given in the form:

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, ed. by Harold Jenkins (London: Methuen, 1982), I.2. 45-7.

Where a play text does not contain line numbers, footnote references should give page numbers:

Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), p. 24.

 

Bibliography

The bibliography is an essential part of every literary essay you submit. Every text you have read should be listed, even if you have read nothing other than a single primary text. Follow the examples below, noting that the author’s surname is the first element in each item. The list should be in alphabetical order according to the following relevant layouts. Pay careful attention to the order of elements, punctuation and formatting such as italics:

A monograph

Foster, John Wilson, Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987).

An edited volume

Ellmann, Richard, ed., The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

A volume edited by two people

Williams, Patrick and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994). [Use the names in the order in which they appear on the title page.]

A new edition of an old work, edited and re-published Corelli, Marie, The Sorrows of Satan, ed. by Peter Keating (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

A modern re-issue (not a new edition) of an old work

Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916 (London: Paladin, 1988). [Note the original date of publication, and its placement.]

A book published in more than one edition

Gibaldi, Joseph, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 7^th edn (New York: MLA, 2009).

[You should always specify the edition you have used.]

An article in a book

Brown, E.K., ‘E.M. Forster and the Contemplative Novel’, in E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage, ed. by Philip Gardner (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), pp. 369-78.

An article in a journal

Jameson, Fredric, ‘On Magic Realism in Film’, Critical Inquiry, 12:2 (1986), 301-25. [In this example, the journal issue is 12, and the volume number is 2, but not all journals have volume numbers.]

An electronic publication

Treadwell, James, ‘The Legibility of Liber Amoris’, Romanticism On the Net 17 (February 2000) <http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/ 17liber.html> [accessed 23 August 2000] [Note the inclusion of the date you read the article – because net resources may be often changed or relocated – as well as the date of the article itself.]

An e-reader

Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre (London: Service and Paton, 1897), Ebook, AmazonKindle, Chapter 3.

This is the most useful guide to consult if you have encountered some problem in formatting your notes or bibliography not covered by this style-sheet.

 

 

Checklist for writing your work

Before you submit your assignment, make sure you have answered ‘yes’ to each of the following questions:

• Have you addressed the question/task you were set?
• Have you written (and, if necessary, re-written) your introduction so that it offers the reader the clearest possible idea of the content and focus of your essay?
• Have you proof-read your work?
• Have you spell-checked it?
• Are your references/bibliography presented in the appropriate format, using the relevant style guide?
• Have you observed the word-limit (remembering that this includes quotations and footnotes)?
• Have you acknowledged your use of other people’s work, using quotations or citations as appropriate and giving full source details?

Checklist for formatting and submitting your work

 

 

You must submit your coursework by the published deadline for each module, first electronically, and then in hard copy. Failure to submit your assignment on time will incur a 5% lateness penalty for every working day that the work is late (i.e. not including Saturdays or Sundays or Bank Holidays).

The normal deadline for submitting your work is 3.30pm. Before submitting your work, check the following:

• You have used Verdana font, point size 10, double spaced;
• The pages are numbered;
• You have included the essay or question title
• You have included a page header with your Student ID number only (no name), module code and module title on the top of every page;
• You have provided an accurate word-count which includes quotations and

When submitting your work, you need to:

• submit a copy electronically to Turnitin through Moodle and keep the Turnitin receipt as proof of submission;
• complete a coversheet and feedback form and staple them to the assignment, with the coversheet on top;
• date-time stamp the coversheet;
• submit ONE printed copy with coversheet* and feedback form to the postbox outside the School Office; (*TWO copies for PGT Dissertations only);
• keep a copy of the work for

1. References within the text

These are documented by author’s name and the date of the publication, plus a page number if you have included a direct quotation.

• Where the reference is a citation rather than a quotation (i.e. a summary reference to a general argument), this is all the information required, and should appear in this format: Bell (1992), in his study of the language of the news media,

asserts that… .

• Where you have quoted (or where your citation refers to a specific passage in a long work), you should include the page number/s, like this: According to Fowler (1993), ‘Each particular form of linguistic expression in a text – wording, syntactic option etc. – has its reason’ (4).
• Where the author’s name does not appear in the sentence, it should be included in the parenthetical reference: (Fowler 1993: 4), (Aldiss and Wingrove 1986: 33).
• Where the publication has more than two authors, you should write the list of authors in full for the first reference, e.g. (Adolphs, Brown, Carter, Crawford and Sahota 2004) and thereafter, may use ‘et al’, e.g. (Adophs et al 2004).
• Where you refer to more than one work by the same author and with the same date, label them – (1992a), etc – and be sure to include the same labels in your list of
• Where you refer to an e-book accessed via an e-book reader (e.g.: Kindle or Nook), include author surname/date, as usual. However, e-books do not always have page numbers. If page numbers are not available on e-book readers, use the chapter or section heading and/or paragraph number instead, to help indicate the location of a quoted section: e.g. Smith (2008, chapter 1, para 8) argues that ‘Men are much more likely….’.

 

2. List of References at the end

All your references must be documented in a References list at the end of the essay. This list must contain only texts you have mentioned in your essay. They should be arranged, in alphabetical order by the first author’s surname, according to the following relevant layouts (look carefully at the order of elements, punctuation and formatting such as italics):

A monograph

Cameron, D. (2000). Good to Talk? London: Sage Publications.

A book by two authors

Mullany, L. and Stockwell, P. (2010). Introducing English Language: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge.

An edited volume

Gee, J. and Handford, M. (eds.) (2012). The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge.

A work published in more than one edition

Yule, G. (2006). The Study of Language (3^rd edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

An article in a book

Machin, D. (2007). ‘Visual discourses of war: Multimodal analysis of photographs of the Iraq occupation’. In A. Hodges and C. Nilep (eds.) Discourse, War and Terrorism. London: John Benjamins, pp. 123-142.

An article in a journal

Stubbs, M. (2005). ‘Conrad in the computer: Examples of quantitative stylistic methods’, Language and Literature 14: 5-24.

[In this example, the journal issue is 14. Some, but not all journals also have volume numbers (e.g. volume 2). You would format such an example as 14(2): 5-24]

An electronic publication

Treadwell, James (2000). ‘The Legibility of Liber Amoris’. Romanticism On the Net 17. [Accessed 23 August 2000]

Note the inclusion of the date you read the article – because net resources may be often changed or relocated – as well as the date of the article itself.

An e-book (e.g. Kindle or Nook),

Smith, A. (2008). The Wealth of Nations [Kindle DX Version]. Available from: Amazon.com [Accessed 20 August 2014]

OR

Smith, A. (2008). The Wealth of Nations [Adobe Digital Editions Version]. Available from: doi:10.1036/007142363X [Accessed 20 August 2014]

Remember to include the type of e-book reader you have, e.g. [Kindle DX Version] in square brackets, the book’s DOI (digital object identifier) or where you downloaded the e-book from (if there is no DOI), and the date accessed – in square brackets.

Never use footnotes

Use an endnote for any extraneous material you absolutely cannot leave out. Ideally, all your material should be relevant, and all relevant material should be included in the text of your essay.

Presentation

Format

• Coursework should be word-processed using Verdana font, point size 10, and double-spaced. You should be aware of the need to keep back-ups of your work, and to plan for delays and times when computers are greatly in demand if you are relying on University computing facilities. Computer failure and/or lack of backed-up work will not normally be accepted as extenuating circumstances.
• Pages should be
• Include a page header on every page with your Student ID number, module code and module title at the top. However, do not include your name, otherwise your work cannot be moderated or second-marked
• Include the word-count: you will be asked to enter it on the coversheet when you submit your
• Coursework can be printed double-sided, as per the default setting for University printing

Titles

• In the text of your work, titles of books (fiction or critical), plays and long poems should be italicised (or underlined if you are handwriting in an exam): g. The Waste Land, King Lear, Great Expectations, etc.
• Titles of short stories, short poems, essays and articles in books or journals should be in quotation marks: e.g. ‘The Dead’, ‘Among School Children’,

Quotations

• Quotations of less than four lines should be run into the text of your work, enclosed by single quotation marks: ‘The man spoke’.
• Use double quotation marks for quotations within quotations: ‘He said, “I’m leaving now”, and went’.
• Short verse quotations should have each line separated with a forward slash: ‘My heart is like a singing bird/Whose nest is in a watered shoot’.
• Longer quotations in prose or verse should be set off (indented), and do not require quotation Be sure to quote exactly, even where the text you are copying does not conform to standard grammar, punctuation or presentation.
• Where you need to shorten a quotation, or amend the structure to fit in with the grammar of your sentence, use ellipses and square Compare the examples below:
• ‘Juliet is never extravagant in the way of Romeo, but she, too, undergoes a change’.
• Unlike Romeo, ‘Juliet [was] never extravagant’.
• In writing that ‘Juliet is never extravagant … but undergoes a change’, N. Other overlooks a significant episode.

Make sure that you have retained the original meaning of your quotation. If you ascribe to A.N. Other the quotation that ‘Juliet is … extravagant’, you are committing the academic and sometimes legal offence of misrepresentation.

Quotations should not be italicised, underlined or otherwise differentiated unless they appear in that form in the original

Dissertations

Dissertations follow exactly the same style of formatting, referencing and bibliography as a shorter essay, although the bibliography/references will be more comprehensive. Your text should include page numbers, and should have a title page with your Student ID number and Dissertation title on it. You will also need a contents page if the person reading your work will need to navigate various sections within it.

Many students like formally to bind their dissertations before submission. This is acceptable but not mandatory. However, please make sure that a normal assessment cover sheet is attached to the front of your dissertation.

Depending on the nature of your dissertation topic, you may wish or need to include an appendix. Appendices might include important information or data on which the argument of the dissertation rests, such as an interview with an author or subject, or statistical data produced in your research. The details of any appendices should be developed in dialogue with your dissertation supervisor. Note that they do not form part of the official word count and must not constitute an additional chapter or section of the main dissertation.

For more detailed information on writing a dissertation, please refer to the Dissertation Handbook available on Moodle.

References and bibliography

For the purposes of referencing, English is split into linguistic and literary categories and referencing conventions are different for each, reflecting the academic traditions from which these two strands of study arise. In general, coursework for English language and applied linguistics modules should be formatted and documented according to the Harvard style guide, while coursework for modules taught in drama, literature, medieval studies and creative writing should be formatted according to the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) style guide. You should regard learning to use these different systems as a professional skill: most of your tutors will be familiar with at least two systems, as different journals and publishers have different preferences for referencing systems. If you are in any doubt as to which system you should use for a particular assessment, you should consult your tutor.

Think carefully about who has written the material you are referring to: one author or more than one author? Be careful not to confuse the author(s) and the editor(s)

The key referencing conventions of each system are given below.

Some of the more common errors to be found in students’ coursework are given below. All will detract from your performance, and can be avoided if you take time to think about what you are doing.

• Misreading the question

This may sound obvious but can easily be done when you are working under pressure. Ensure you have checked the number and type of texts you are supposed to be writing about. Mistakes in answering the correct question will lose you marks.

• Exceeding (or being significantly under) the word limit

Every item of coursework carries a specific word-limit which you must adhere to. See the previous section on Word counts and leeway.

• Mistakes in syntax, spelling and punctuation

These will affect your marks in both coursework and exams. Use the spell and grammar checker on your computer. If you do not know how to use common punctuation marks (especially apostrophes, commas and semi-colons), find out.

If you know, or suspect, that you have dyslexia or another specific learning difficulty, and you have not consulted Academic Support in Student Services, do so as soon as possible. All writers have at least one persistent fault: e.g. individual words over-used or incorrectly used, sentences too long, etc. Get to know what your faults are, and check for them before you hand in your work.

• Missing or incorrectly presented references or bibliography

Incorrect referencing will affect your marks and may be deemed a case of academic misconduct. See the section on References and Bibliography for more guidelines.

• Use of the same material for more than one assignment

Material must not be substantially repeated either for different pieces of assessment within the same module (e.g. exam or coursework), or for different modules on your course, whichever School or department the module belongs to. However, in certain cases, and depending on the module, you are permitted to ‘develop’ one piece of assessment into another. If you are in any doubt on this point when choosing your topics, you should consult your module tutor.

Substantially repeated use of material can result in one or other piece of assessed work being awarded fewer or no marks.

• Unintentionally using others’ words or ideas as your own

Unintentional or not, this is academic misconduct and may result in penalties being applied for plagiarism (see the sections below on Plagiarism and Using Other People’s Work). When taking notes – from lectures, handouts or other materials on Moodle or the web, as well as from books and journals – always keep a note of the author and full bibliographical details for the source and use quotation marks to indicate any specific quotations. Never make notes on secondary sources next to your own notes on primary texts so that there is no risk of confusing your own thoughts and ideas with those of others.

• Failing to back up your work

If you lose your work or your computer fails and you do not have a back-up copy – at any stage of the writing process – you will not be able to claim extenuating circumstances and, if your work is late as a result, you will face the usual penalties for lateness.

Plagiarism (copied or derivative work)

If you are suspected of plagiarism, you will need to attend an Academic Misconduct meeting and could face penalties on your work and modules.

 

 

If your work is derivative (i.e. mainly based on other people’s ideas) it will not be awarded a good mark, notwithstanding the quality of the material or the fact that it is not actually plagiarized.

It is bad practice to make extensive, uncritical use of the arguments of others, even if you use quotation marks and acknowledge your sources. Your essay should not be simply a patchwork of critics’ opinions.

On the other hand, it is good essay practice to enter into an argument or discussion with the critics. Normally, a good literary essay will have a bibliography which lists the primary sources and a few pertinent critical works. A very long bibliography is not necessarily a sign of a good essay. Occasionally, it may be appropriate to write an essay without any consideration of what others have said about the topic; if you are in any doubt on this point you should consult your tutor.

Using other people’s work

There are three principles to bear in mind:

• Do acknowledge other people’s words and
• Do not reproduce ideas unquestioningly, even when you have acknowledged
• Do use these ideas to help you develop arguments of your

Read the following, and make sure you understand the difference between good and bad practice.

 

 

Each of the four writing samples below makes a different use of Longley’s words and ideas above. Some are legitimate; some are not. Read them carefully.

Writing Sample 1

It is clear that the prototype developed by ‘The Tollund Man’ is a scapegoat, privileged victim and ultimately Christ-surrogate. Heaney alludes here to Catholic victims of sectarian murder.

There are no quotation marks and no footnote supplied. This is plagiarism.

If your essay contains this kind of appropriation of someone else’s words, you will be found guilty of plagiarism and subject to the University’s Academic Offences Policy and procedures.

 Writing Sample 2

In ‘The Tollund Man’, Heaney makes reference to Catholic victims of violence, and presents the body as a scapegoat or a Christ-like figure.

There is no acknowledgment or footnote here. The re-phrasing does not alter the fact that the original writer’s ideas have been used without acknowledgement. This is, therefore, also plagiarism.

Writing Sample 3

Edna Longley describes the Tollund Man as ‘a scapegoat’ and ultimately a ‘Christ-surrogate, whose death might redeem, or symbolize redemption for’ more contemporary ‘victims of sectarian murder’. ¹

[Accompanied by a footnote (1) giving full details of the source.]

This is a legitimate use of Longley’s work and uses appropriate referencing. If you do not add to it, however, your essay will be derivative and will not gain very good marks. Try to develop the critic’s material with some independent thought. Do you agree with the critic? If not, can you say why not, and provide evidence from the text? If you do agree, can you think of another aspect of Heaney’s work, or that of another writer on the module, to which you could apply Longley’s idea?

Writing Sample 4

While critics have frequently noted the connection between religion and violence in Heaney’s poetry, the extent to which he frequently distinguishes ‘religion’ from ‘sectarianism’ is often overlooked.¹ [Footnote cites Longley’s work with full details.]

This is also a legitimate and appropriate use of critical material to establish a context for your own discussion of a related, but different, point. Writing like this requires some confidence in your own abilities and judgement, but with practice you should develop this.

 

 

Independent research

For most modules, there will be a reading list to follow. However, certain modules and dissertations will also require you to find books and articles yourself on a chosen topic. One of the simplest ways to start is by taking a book or article on the topic which you find important, and follow up the bibliography or references. If you find that several authors are mentioning a particular work, it is probably worth reading. Or you can strike out on your own, by using the ‘keyword’ searches in the various databases mentioned below.

Books

To find a book in the library, go to the University of Nottingham Library Online Catalogue (UNLOC) and follow the instructions. You can search by author, title or keyword.

Journals

If you have an article’s bibliographic reference already, you need to search under the journal title, not the author’s name or article title. For example, if the reference is Fredric Jameson, ‘On Magic Realism in Film’. Critical Inquiry 12 (Winter 1986): 301-25, you need to search for Critical Inquiry. Some journals have abbreviated titles, such as ELH (English Literary History) or MLQ (Modern Language Quarterly).

Go to UNLOC and click ‘journals’. When you have found the journal and its location, keep a note of the article’s volume number or year when you search for it on the shelves. For the article above, you will need to find volume 12 of Critical Inquiry.

If the journal title says ‘[electronic resource]’ or ‘SFX’ after it on the catalogue, click there, and by inputting the volume number or author name in the search menu, you can see the article online. Sometimes you will be offered a choice of which electronic journal database you want to use (e.g. JSTOR, Project Muse). If one database is difficult to use, go back and try the other.

However, if you do not know exactly what article you are looking for, you will need to use one of the special article-finding indexes through the e-Library gateway.

You will need to sign in to the e-Library gateway using your University username and password.

From the ‘Find Database’ gateway, select the ‘Titles’ tab rather than ‘Subjects’, then search for the following databases:

• The Arts and Humanities Citation Index (WoK)
• The ABELL index – inside the Literature Online database
• MLA International

Logging in to any of these databases allows you to search by keyword or topic. They will return a list of articles which have the author’s name, the title and the journal name, date and volume. When you have made a note of articles which look interesting, you then need to search by the journal title using UNLOC as before.

If you want to browse a full list of useful electronic databases in English, click on the ‘Subjects’ tab, then choose the category ‘Arts and Humanities’ and sub-category ‘English’.

Newspaper articles

Searching for newspaper articles (for example, recent book reviews in the Times Literary Supplement) follows the same procedure as for journal articles but uses different databases:

• Palmer’s Index to the Times
• Times Literary Supplement centenary archive (including full text)
• The Guardian

Poems and short texts

If you are unsure of where to find a poem or short primary text, search using the Literature Online database within the ‘Find Database’ gateway of the e-Library Gateway. Literature Online is a full text, searchable database of most published works between 1450 and 1799, and has a very good selection of works thereafter, though it does not include some twentieth-century works still in copyright.

What if the library does not have what I need?

Search for the item using the combined national academic libraries catalogue. This is an almost comprehensive catalogue of the nation’s holdings, including the British Library, and it will show you what libraries have which books. Once you have found the item and its location, you can get hold of it in two ways:

• use the Inter-Library Loan (ILL) service to request the book from another library. This service can take a few weeks, so make sure it is what you All undergraduates require authorisation from academic staff before they can make interlibrary loan requests. Special forms and advice on using the service are available from lending desks; you will also need to pay £1.00 for each interlibrary loan request you make.
• go and find the book yourself. Your Nottingham library card entitles you to read during the vacations at most UK academic libraries (and often librarians will let you in during term-time, too). Especially if you live nearby, this can be a very effective way of getting important reading done in peace and

Students doing dissertations may occasionally need to consult material in the British Library or other copyright libraries (the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Cambridge University Library, and the National Libraries of Wales and Scotland). These libraries have their own entry requirements and you should check their websites. Some may require a letter of authorisation from us, which we are happy to supply.

Frequently asked questions

Does the word-count for my assignment include quotations or footnotes?

Yes, it includes both. However, it does not include the bibliography/references list, headers and footers, the question/title-page, figures and tables or appendices.

How many poems/plays/examples do I need to include?

Where the title or question does not specify a number, decide in relation to the approach the essay requires. Are you going to examine a single text in great detail? Are you going to examine a theme or concern over a broad range of texts? Are the texts long or short? If you are asked to write on, for example, ‘a selection of poems’, some of these should be works not covered in detail in lectures or seminars – you need to develop your own ideas as well.

How many critics do I need to read?

Check the module bibliography for any critical reading described as essential. Read it. After that, aim to read several more critical works that are relevant to the question you have chosen. After that, you will eventually come up against the law of diminishing returns – read as much as you have time for. However much you read, make sure that you allow yourself time to digest and reflect on that reading, so that you can properly integrate it into your own developing argument for your essay.

Should my essay contain my own opinions or be entirely from critics?

This is a false dichotomy. You will, in almost all cases, be making use of critics’ ideas. You should be questioning these ideas and testing them against the evidence of the text, etc. Your own ideas, or ‘opinions’, are often the most interesting thing about your essay, but only when they have been developed and supported in a scholarly way, with reference to the text, its social/cultural/historical/theoretical context, and the opinions of others. If your ‘opinion’ can be reduced to ‘I do not like this text because it is boring/too long/not a novel’, do not include it.

Ways of Enhancing Critical Thinking among the College Students

There are various ways in which the students can improve their skills of critical thinking. A college student can improve his ability to think critically by asking questions that are relevant to a college education. Students use the information that they already have to mark the basis of their questions concerning a particular topic. The critically thinking student does ask about their concern issues in education. A student who asks for more information concerning a particular idea gets a variety of information about the idea making him or her think and achieves the best idea. Critically thinking students always want to understand how the information or idea that is on the ground is working and how it came about.

Reversing the ideas is also another good way that students use in a developing their critical thinking skills. A student can also enhance his or her critical thinking skills through reversing the ideas that are already in the record. Reversing an idea helps greatly in finding the origin of the ideas. Working with an idea in a reverse way requires big thinking and hence brain expansion. Reversing the ideas and working with them for their educational purposes serves students by improving their ability to think in solving critical issues that they face in the process of their education.

Thinking about ones’ self also plays a role in improving the critical thinking ability of an individual. A student at the college should embrace the character of thinking about how their bodies work and the operation of all their body activities. When a student thinks about himself or herself, he or she begins to think about the relationship between the body operations and the ideas that they are written in the various sources of information that they use for their academic purposes. Students who think too much about things that have happened end up depressed and stagnant, thereby not showing any sign of progressing in their academics and other activities in the colleges.

A college student can improve his skills in critical thinking by coming with ideas that challenge the ones that they find from the various sources that they use for their academic information. College students are expected to think of ideas that work by challenging the ones of the scholars (Colucciello, 1997). To challenge information that is already in place, a student must think well and have evidence to support his or her argument. Through this, they can improve their critical thinking skills greatly. This means that students should try challenging the ideas that already exist in the bid to improve their critical thinking capabilities.

In the colleges, certain assumptions are made and taken as facts. Students believe that such ideas are the truth and never dispute them in every aspect of their academic lives. Through questioning the basic assumptions, students make their critical thinking skills grow bigger. Questioning an assumed fact requires a student to have a lot of information that he can use in disputing the perceived fact. Disputing or questioning a basic assumed idea, therefore, boosts the critical thinking skill of a student greatly.

The tutors can also help students improve their critical thinking in various. Tutors can introduce group-based assignment to the students in the bid of ensuring participation of the students at the same level. Group discussions require that every member participates to his or her level best so that he doesn’t appear a liability to the group. The students in the membership of the group would, therefore, work hard as possible to ensure that he or she gives the highest number of valid points in the discussion. Through group assignments, students also learn to know the ideas that are with their fellow students and adopt them for their personal use. Students also get motivated to read a lot and get every bit of information understood so that their participation can be effective to the group. Further, a tutor can help the student by introducing them to the connections between what they are taught to what is happening in the real-life situations. Students who are made to understand that what they learn is important for their performance in the real-life situation automatically responds by studying to know the maximum that they can contain in their brains so that they can be able to have their feature life perfect.

Intellectual Errors that Inhibit Critical Thinking in College Students

Although the college students are expected to think critically, there are a lot of errors that they make in the way they think that tend to hinder them from being critical thinkers. Some college students have their thinking aligned toward making them look perfect in the school society. This is called egocentric kind of thinking. In this kind of thinking, this category of students fails to appreciate the points of views that the other students give to a subject (Gokhale, 1995). The feeling that one’s view can never be right makes egocentric thinkers make academic decisions on a certain topic in a way that directly objects the way critical thinkers make their academic decisions. Egocentric thinking sometimes causes students to be in the context of cultural conditioning where they fail to recognize those from the other cultures that cross their ways. This sometimes reduces their abilities to resolve issues that are resulting from their opinion and belief differences. As opposed to critical thinkers who try to be neutral in their communication, recognize others ideas and easily resolve their opinion difference issues with their fellow students.

Over-relying on authority is also an intellectual error that has greatly affected the students’ critical thinking skills (Kurfiss, 1988). Authority means an outside expert that one feels is always right. In the college, there are some groups of students who do not even trust themselves in certain academic issues and have set their mind that they cannot do without certain individuals. This kind of mindset prevents students from thinking of other problem-solving methods, which is a basic component of critical thinking.

In the college, the moral judgment that a student makes for himself or herself dictates a lot about the academic outcome. Making a hasty mortal judgment is very dangerous for the student’s college life and often lead them into nasty situations. A hasty moral judgment does not give enough time for an individual to think of the particular topic of discussion in all the directions that are expected and necessary. Making hasty moral decisions, therefore, blocks the student’s path towards becoming critical thinkers. Hasty decision making, therefore, lags the critical thinking abilities of many college students.

Some of the college students tend towards thinking of the information that they get from the sources to be belonging to specific categories. This is black and white thinking whereby one fails to examine to find out the detailed information concerning the topic of discussion. This turns out to be opposing the critical thinking path whereby a student tries to get all the details of the information that he or she wants to find out more about. Some individuals are just resistant to the changes in their environment.  If a student happens to be resistant to environmental change, he or she will likely not to be accepting the changes in opinions. A student, however, should be ready to take any idea and verify it in case of any doubt. Those who are resistant to changes normally fail to make any necessary changes on the ideologies that they have had in their minds form the past.

Stereotyping is also another character that is common among the college students. Some of the college students believe that some of the units are very difficult and are meant for specific courses. Such students get disadvantaged greatly when they meet such units in their courses and mostly end up failing. Such a student fails to think of finding a solution to particular issues that they meet in their academic process and most likely fail terribly in those areas. Such students fail to recognize the simplicity of the concepts that the instructions need to be used (Furedy, 1985).  On the opposite direction, some of the students misunderstand the differences that may exist from one case to the other. Stereotyping affects the student’s keenness to read the instructions adequately and deduce the meaning that it tries to communicate. Irrelevancy among the student’s results forms stereotyping information that they get from the various academic sources that are used by the college students.

Critical thinking tries to trim students to be thinking of about how to make greater academic futures. However, some of the college students think a lot about their past academic experiences at the expenses of thinking on how they can correct their past academic events. Too much thinking of the past failures causes great depression among the students and results to students ending up failing throughout their academic life. Getting depressed about the issues that have already occurred and are irreversible inhibits the student’s ability to think about their future due to concern about what has already past (Halpern, 2002). Students who want to grow their critical thinking skills should, therefore, avoid getting involved in depression as a result of the past events so that they can set their minds free and ready for developmental thinking.

Many college students show characteristics of being resistant to the changes that take place in their environments. Students who are not ready to change become very difficult to deal with when they are introduced to new information that they had not known before. College curriculum is made such that it introduces a lot of new ideas to the students. The interaction with other students also become difficult as such students often have the feeling of being perfect and better than all the others and hence do not take the other’s ideas or give them time to express themselves.

Introduction

Most of your modules will require some element of assessed coursework to be submitted, through (for example) an essay, project or seminar presentation write-up. This coursework cannot be successfully completed the night before it is due: you must plan and take care with your work to achieve your potential. Writing is an individual process, and it is not possible to specify a single ‘right way’ to write an essay. However, following these guidelines will give you the best chance of making the most of your own skill, research and commitment.

 

 

Scheduling your work

During your studies, you will inevitably find that several pieces of coursework are due within a very short period of one another. You will receive your coursework information and deadlines well in advance. It is up to you to plan your work so that you have time to complete each task successfully and on time.

Working on your essay

Preparation

The minimum preparation necessary is to know what the main focus of the module is, and what your primary texts are about. You gain this knowledge by:

• reading your primary texts;
• participating fully in your lectures and seminars;
• making sure you are aware of any secondary reading recommended by your tutor;
• asking your tutor if you are unclear about any aspect of your (All tutors have office hours, and may be able to see you at other times if you are unable to make office hours. Email to make an appointment).

 

 

Researching

• Choose the question/title that most interests you and/or that you feel most competent to (You will sometimes be asked to compose your own title, in consultation with your tutor.)
• Then decide what primary texts or data set you will be writing It is better to proceed in this order than to choose a text first and then bend the question to fit the text you have chosen.
• Pay careful attention to any instructions in the assessment rubric as to the number, genre, etc. of texts you must discuss, e.g. ‘any two novels’, ‘one novel and one poem’, or ‘one sample of spoken and one sample of written discourse’. Usually you are not permitted to write on texts you have already used earlier in the year/semester, but in some cases the assessment rubric will specify otherwise. Failure to follow the instructions properly in the question will lead to a reduction in marks for your work, whatever the quality of your essay.

 

 

• In addition to the specific instructions for each essay, you will find it helpful to keep in mind the Marking Criteria used by the School for assessed work.

Have a look at the qualities of assessed work which are needed to achieve marks at the upper end of the scale, and keep these in mind as you develop your work.

• Read through examples of high quality work produced by students of English in the final year. These are available from the School’s undergraduate journal of student

While there is not one single correct way to write an essay, these examples will help to illustrate the kinds of best practice and quality that are produced by our students. Hopefully they will inspire you in your research and writing, and help you to make sense of the marking criteria used in the School

• Read your chosen texts again, with the question in mind, making notes on relevant Write down any ideas on the structure/content of your essay that occur to you as you are reading so that you don’t forget them.
• Consult any secondary reading recommended by your You might also look for secondary reading your tutor has not specifically recommended: some fields (like Shakespeare or Victorian literature) are vast, and nobody has read all of the material available. Be careful, however, that you do not give too much weight to out-of-date or unscholarly work.

For secondary material, other than journal articles, use the index and the table of contents to identify areas of interest, rather than simply reading through the full work. Try to follow up references to other critics or texts, if you feel it would be useful. Note down useful ideas, and transcribe short, relevant quotations that you might use in your work.

 

 

Structuring

• The basic structure for your essay consists of an introduction and a conclusion separated by a series of paragraphs each progressively developing your You will know this already.
• The introduction should identify the topic of your essay, the approach you intend to use, and the text/s or materials that you will be writing It is also possible to use the introduction to grab the reader’s attention by some eye-catching statement, quotation or statistic, but this can back-fire. Read it over to yourself to be sure it is not going to alienate your reader. The introduction is not intended to contain broad generalisations about your topic, your material, your views on the material, or anything else.
• The argument developed in the main body of the essay will be dictated mainly by the question or title you have chosen. It is often logical to move from the general to the particular in your work, starting with a short survey of the critical, theoretical, literary or cultural context for the text/s before moving on to make particular However, be sure to keep relating the individual points back to the main context and focus of your essay as you proceed.
• Where the question requires you to write on or compare two or more texts, you should structure the essay around the argument you are making, considering each successive point in relation to each text, rather than giving each text a separate section within the
• Each paragraph should contain one point, fully explained, accompanied by the evidence you are offering for your
• The conclusion should be short, and include a brief summary of the argument you have developed in the It should not contain anything which contradicts the rest of the work, or any new ideas or points that you have not discussed already.

 

Writing

This is usually the hardest part of the process, and also the most difficult to advise on. Bear in mind the following points:

• DO NOT include irrelevant information. For instance, it is inadvisable to start an essay on ‘Dickens’s use of romance motifs’ with a page of biographical information on the author, or a paragraph on the general characteristics of Victorian England.
• You should also avoid making statements to the effect that Dickens is well-known, successful, good at writing, the greatest Victorian novelist,
• DO ensure that you are answering the question that is being What you should produce are points relevant to the question, including specific examples chosen from the text to support your argument, and, where appropriate, references to relevant criticism by other scholars.
• DO make use of secondary sources, lecture notes and points made in seminars, but do so with care. Lecture notes should be used as material to consult, but not to quote in assessed work. If your lecturer made a general point, using a specific textual example, you might, for instance, look for different examples of the point to use in your own The same may be done with regard to points gained from secondary reading.
• DO NOT use other people’s ideas as a substitute for your own, no matter how well-expressed they appear or how carefully you have referenced Instead, use them as starting-points for your own arguments. Writing ‘X argues that Dickens’s heroines are “childlike, sexless angels”; however, this view overlooks the prominent role of characters such as Estella’ is much better than writing ‘as X argues, Dickens’s heroines are generally childlike and asexual’.
• DO ensure that you acknowledge all ideas taken from the work of others, as well as providing references for all Information that is widely known does not need to be acknowledged, but all specific ideas must be attributed to their owner. For example, a statement to the effect that India was a colony of the UK during the nineteenth century does not need to be referenced; however, using the concept of ‘hybridity’ in discussing colonialism requires a note citing the work of Homi K. Bhabha. If you are in any doubt about whether or not you should acknowledge your source, it is safer to include a reference.
• DO distinguish between primary evidence and secondary comment or ‘Evidence’ comes from the text or material about which you are writing in your essay. ‘Comment’ or ‘criticism’ is what other people have already written about it (or what you might have heard in a lecture about it). You should use comment and criticism to stimulate your own ideas and help develop your own argument. You should cite ‘evidence’ in support of your argument, and not simply the published views of critics. You should then follow your argument through to its conclusion, acknowledging the ideas of other critics without being derivative (see the section on Plagiarism below).
• DO make sure that you are using the correct system of referencing and bibliography (see References and Bibliography).
• DO keep a back-up of your work at all times. Computer failure or loss of work and lack of a back-up copy at any stage of the writing process will NOT be counted as valid extenuating circumstances.

DO NOT stop work when you have finished writing. Use the Checklist at the end of this guide, and ensure that you can answer ‘yes’ to all the questions before you hand in your coursework.

 

 

Word counts and Leeway

The School of English has introduced a new policy on word counts and leeway, in a phased roll-out from Spring 2014.

For all first year and second year undergraduate students and all full-time and part-time PGT students:

All items of coursework, including dissertations, carry a maximum word limit that you should aim to meet but must not exceed. So, for example, if the word count is 2500 words, you must aim to write up to this word count, but not beyond it.

There is no leeway on the word count for any piece of assessed work. Marking practices and word limits relate to an assignment’s intellectual, professional, and technical skills as outlined in the Faculty of Arts marking criteria and your work will be marked accordingly.

Your word count includes all quotations, citations, footnotes and endnotes, but excludes the essay title, tables and figures, and the set of references or bibliography at the end. Appendices containing either data or passages used for analysis are also excluded from the word count.

For ALL final year undergraduate students:

You are permitted a 10% leeway above or below the word-limit. Over-length or under-length work is less likely to display a high level of professional, intellectual and technical skills under the Marking Criteria used by the School and Faculty, and will be marked accordingly.

Your word count includes all quotations, citations, footnotes and endnotes, but excludes the essay title, tables and figures, and the set of references or bibliography at the end. Appendices containing either data or passages used for analysis are also excluded from the word count.

(The new policy without leeway will apply to all Year 3 and 4 undergraduate students from Autumn 2015.)

Throughout this paper, we have to make connections between theory and practice through research. Having analysed adverbs in literary sources we can barely find that there is a tendency towards more frequent usage of derived adverbs than others. Various types of adverbs found in the novel “White Fang” are used in the Modern English language.

The result of the investigation testifies to the fact that adverbs created due to the derivation are widely used in the English language. The most productive suffix is –ly. We found many examples of such a type in the novel.

As adverbs can be classified from different point of view approximately all types of adverbs happen to meet in the book.

Adverbs can perform different functions in the sentence. Traditionally, adverbs are regarded as qualifying verbs and adjectives. The examples analysed in the novel demonstrate that adverbs are mostly used as adverbial modifier.

Parentheticals and evaluatives have a dis­tinct illocutionary status that sets them apart from ordinary constituents. Most existing descriptions of parenthetical expressions hypothesize a strict correlation between the special illocutionary status of parentheticals and a special prosodic status. There are many adverbs which are in the status of parentheticals and they are also used in the novel “White Fang”.

We may say that the English language is really rich of adverbs and a well-developed system of adverbs is great advantage in a language.