Basic tips to improve your writing style:

NEVER start a sentence with ‘because’, ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘or’. These are joining words that link together two concepts. Instead use the more formal terms: ‘However’, ‘Also’, or phases like ‘Another things that needs considering is’.

Work to improve your sentence structure. Often I was unable to understand the point someone was making. Try to think to yourself ‘what am I trying to say in this sentence’ and then see if you have. Often I would read a sentence or even a whole paragraph and not know what the point was. Think very clearly about this. One approach might be to have a plan in advance of what you want to say for a section and then write based around this plan. Once you have written the section look back and see if you have stuck with your plan; made the points you wanted to make and not mixed in lots of other irrelevant points.

The language used in the essay was FAR too chatty, informal, loose or vague and often contained slang. Remember the work you are producing is academic writing and needs to be writing in this style. When you are writing at this level try and think to yourself ‘could I read this word/ phrase in a journal’. If the answer is ‘No’ then re-word into a more formal style. To offer some randomly picked examples it is not ok to say things like “A shade of gray”, “Last but by no means least”, “the energy picked up by the client”, “one of the worst case scenarios”, “the scale tipping in favour of the psychologist”, “it is not exactly unethical”, “it’s a last resort kind of intervention”.

The best essays often had a very good structure with good use of headings and a clear and obvious introduction and conclusion. By using headings it made the author focus onto what their EXACT point for this section was rather than mixing all their points together. (this relates to my earlier point re having a plan in advance)

Never introduce new points in the conclusion/ right at the end. The end should just be to sum up points. If a point needs to be made it needs to be discussed fully within the main body of the essay.

Many people’s essays were VERY repetitious with people making the same point over and over again without extending or elaborating it. This is of no benefit and frustrates the marker. It was often related to poorly structured work. Another related problem was people making totally contradictory points without any explanation or reference to explain this.

Try to be CONSISE and PRESISE. Don’t use vague terms that leave the reader thinking ‘what does s/he mean’. Don’t take phrases from other papers and not define them. Most people’s essays could have made the same number of points far more concisely.

Many people are not referencing quotes correctly. Learn how to do this with reference to APA guidelines. This will not be acceptable for the thesis.

People were generally under referencing within their work. Don’t make strong opinions, including about moralist/ ethical assertions without referencing correctly. If you are going to make a opinion/ claim for something without a reference you need to explain your rationale/ thinking to the reader and where this came from. Don’t say things like “this astonishing finding” or “remarkably they found....” when referring to research. STAY OBJECTIVE.

Don’t write in the first person (I this, I that). Even in this assignment the better pieces of work were not written from the personal perspective. (N.B. I didn’t mark people down for this given the nature of the question).

Proof read your work far more carefully including thinking about some of the ideas from above.