Winter break essay
Winter break essay writing
An outline-introduction
Choosing the other subject:
focus on your strength in the subject disciplines (HL subjects).
Making sense of the essay title:
Provide youe interpretation/ understanding of the essay tite without displacing the title itself.
what is the task, the intention or the requirements of the title? what are the relevant concerns or controversies that underpin the title?
N/B the essay assessment is underpinned by the question: does the student provide clear,coherent and critical exploration of the essay title?
Exploration
identify the questions that each segment (or paragraph) is attempting to answer.
these are the knowledge questions that act as makers in the debelopment of the argument and pave the way from title to conclusion
these knowledge questions are stepping stonese from the title to the conclusions [they arise naturally in the peocess of responding to prescribed titles]
there shoulf be a sense that answers are needed for them in order to answer the title.
Unpaking the essay title
what are knowledge claim (KCs)?
what methods are used in the vhosen AOKs to test and support relevant KCs?
How can we know that these methods are reliable?
intorduction
lack of interpretation to demonstrate an understanding of the essay title, and the task it requires.
confusing definition of terms( knowledge claims vs. theories vs. knowledge; methods vs. tools; reliability vs. validity etc.)
no clear stand taken
no clear scope of the essay provided
(1)-interpretation of the essay title
*what claim does it make?
*what task does it require you to do?
(2/3)-what is your stand regarding the claim made in the essay title [do you agree or not?
(3/2)-definition of key terms [ where necessary give notistic definition e.g. of phrase on oppozed to single words "methods for testing and supporting"
(4)-indicate the scope of your essay
exploration
lack of organisation,clear and coherent arguments
confusing the question of reliability of the methods used to test/support KCs with the question of reliability of KCs
descriptive. Little or no insight provided; no struggle, or critical analysis e.g. "experiment is repeated 3 times" a good exploration will interrogate that, why 3 times? Is 3 times / any number of times sufficient? etc.
no follow through in the definition of terms provided in the introduction.
improper use of questions or lack thereof- as signposts ro direct the argument. It does not help to list or raise too many questions most of which are rhetorical (do not required an answer).
the use of examples
too man examples were hypothhetical rather than real life examples (RLE)
examples were not specific and relecant to the essay title
some examples were drawn from AOKs other than the rwo chosen
examples are used as a stand-alone rather than to support an argument/ the requirement of the essay title
most studenrs simply reproduced the examples used in class without providing insights to make them their own and or relate them to the specific requirements of the essay title (too many Aristotle, Galileo and Newton examples).
Few students came up with own and contemporary RLE.
keeping to the requirements of the essay title
lack of focus on the essay title
links are not made to the chosen AOKs
failure to use ROK terminologies to refer to the AOKs e.g. there is no "Nature Science", "sOCIAL SCIENCE" OR JUST "HUMANITIES"/"HUMANITY" IN TOK
Lacking links to the rhemes already covered in class (e.g. knowledge and knower, knowledge and language, knowledge and technology)
word count not indicated; some essays were too short
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