Introductions and Conclusions

There are two common issues with TMA writing. The first, referencing, has been dealt with here before. The second is "how the hell do I write an introduction/conclusion?"

Now, the introduction and conclusion of your TMA bookend it. They demonstrate that you know what you're going to write, and that you can summarise what you've written about at the end. And they are vital, because most essay TMAs take them into account in the marking scheme.
So, how do you write them?

Well, first off, you don't have to write the introduction when you start, and the conclusion when you finish. I often write the conclusion first, before I write anything else. I may well totally rewrite it before submission, but it focuses my mind on what the final result should be. Conversely, I often write the introduction last, when I know what I've written about. You don't have to write your essay in order at all - I'll often write a few sentences that I want to get in, but I'm not sure where, and then ease them in at the end. Or not, if they turn out to be unnecessary. The important thing is to START writing.

It's times like this that an essay plan helps. I SCORNED essay plans when I started my degree. "I don't need them, they're a waste of time", I thought. But with time, I've come to value them, both as a template, and as a working frame of reference. If you have a vague idea of what you're going to write about, and in what order, before you start, half your problems of arranging the content in your head and on the page are solved. If you can work out how much of your word count you need to give to each segment, then you have an idea of how long each part needs to be.
An introduction and conclusion should not take up more than 20% total of your word count. With a thousand word essay, try and get your introduction and conclusion at around 100 words each. Any more, and you're probably waffling.

So, introductions. I tend to be pretty explicit in my introductions about what I'm going to write, and allude to the TMA title. For example (and I'm making this up as I go along, so I really hope it's not actually a TMA title), if your title is "Discuss Cordelia's motivation and actions in Act One of King Lear", then you need to mention in your introduction that your essay is about Cordelia's motivation and actions in Act 1 of King Lear. This may sound REALLY OBVIOUS, but you don't need to be Shakespeare to write an introduction.
"In the play King Lear, Cordelia is a central character. She is the youngest daughter of the eponymous king, and in the first Act appears only once, and greatly displeases her father. This essay will examine her actions, and discuss the motivation behind them."
And that's it. In under 50 words, Cordelia is introduced, and the reason for writing the essay is explained.

Conclusions are equally simple. You have, hopefully, done what you said you were going to do in the introduction and written an essay discussing the motivation and actions of Cordelia in King Lear, or whatever your essay title was. Now, you need to sum up your findings and signal this is the end of the essay.
"To conclude, Cordelia's love for her father is unsullied by greed, and Lear is unable to accept the simplicity of it, as he is so used to abundant, false praise. In trying to be honest, Cordelia is disinherited by her father, but her honesty wins her the King of France as a husband." 
And again, in 50ish words, the essay is rounded off neatly. All a conclusion does is state, briefly what you've written.
(I'm not an English Lit student, can you tell?)

So, don't fret about intros and conclusions. Fret instead about your essay argument, whether you're meeting the guidance (because if the guidance says read X, you better read X, and reference it, and quote from it if necessary), and whether or not you'll ever finish the horrible thing.

Good luck!

Referencing - tips for OU study

Referencing can be a pain in the bum. Every university seems to use a vaguely different system, and I see more comments about not being able to do it than any other specific part of TMAs. So, as the October term looms over the horizon, I thought I'd give a few tips.

There's an excellent guide to referencing on the OU website. If you're a student (and I can't imagine why you'd need it otherwise), you can find it here. It tells you how to reference EVERYTHING you can possibly imagine.

A reference is not a great mystery. It's not a special code. You don't need to be a genius to work them out. All a reference does is tell the reader of your essay EXACTLY where to find the source or evidence for what you've written.
You might reference a summarised theory, or a direct quotation. Always work on the principle that you must prove you haven't just made something up.

You should be able to get everything you require for the reference from the source.

A book reference has several parts:
AUTHOR: By surname, or organisation. Sometimes this will be in the form of Surname, Initial. Often, it will be The Open University. 
YEAR: This is the year that the edition of the book published. It is bracketed.
TITLE: This will be the title of the unit, or the chapter in a book; or the book itself. If it's the title of the book, it should be italicised. If it's a chapter, it should be in inverted commas.
CITY/TOWN PUBLISHED: I don't know why they need this, but there we go.
PUBLISHER

So, a typical reference might read:
Heller, T. Muston, R. Siddell, M. and Lloyd, C. (2010) Working For Health, London, Sage

Or, if you're referencing a chapter:
Scott-Samuel, A. (2010), ‘Health Impact Assessment’ in Heller, T. Muston, R. Siddell, M. and Lloyd, C. Working For Health, London, Sage

Note with this example that you reference the CHAPTER, and then add the crucial word 'in' before referencing the book it's from.

I think this second example is where people trip up with the Open University.  

YOU ONLY EVER REFERENCE WHAT YOU HAVE READ. 

If you've read three lines of a quotation by Pliny in a coursebook, you reference the coursebook, not Pliny. Pliny may have written it originally, but you haven't read Pliny's book.
IGNORE the reference list at the end of each unit. It tells you the source for your OWN further reading, but unless you want to go and read the whole book the reference is taken from, you must only reference the coursebook.

A typical coursebook reference would be:
 
The Open University (2010), ‘Pluralism: Ways of Seeing and Ways of Knowing’ in The Open University, Working Towards Health In Everyday Life, Milton Keynes, Open University

Here, you have the author, the year, the name of the unit (in italics and inverted commas, don't forget them), the word IN and then the whole book reference. The author name may vary by unit, so check before you write the reference.

In-text referencing is a lot easier. All you need to do is put the author name, the year, and the page number (if necessary), in brackets immediately after the relevant bit of the essay. For example: (Scott-Samuel, 2010, p.34). If the reference covers more than one page, it would be: (Scott-Samuel, 2010, pp.34-47). Note that the full stop goes AFTER the reference, if it's at the end of a sentence.

Once you've got the hang of coursebook and textbook referencing, you can use the OU guide for everything else. The website and media sections are particularly useful.

To end, here are my handy and unorthodox referencing tips:

1. Do your end-of-text references BEFORE YOU START THE ESSAY. 

This goes against the grain, as you're supposed to reference at the end. But I find it much easier to assemble the resources for a TMA, write out all my references, and then not have to worry about them. It also gives a clearer idea of what you're going to be writing about and where to find things as you write. It may also be useful to save your basic reference for coursebooks and textbooks somewhere, so you don't have to think of them again from scratch with each TMA, especially on courses that are book-heavy.

2. Do your in-text references AS YOU GO ALONG.

Again, you'll often hear it said that you should do these at the end. Which is madness - how are you supposed to remember page references hours after you've written them?

3. Don't forget to ALPHABETISE your end of text references.

There is software that can do it for you. They should be alphabetised, A-Z, by author.

(N.B: Don't do your references in red, this is only for highlighting purposes....)

Moving from Level 1 to Level 2

SO, K101 is DONE. I get my result is around a month, and to be honest, I've barely thought about it since I stepped out of the exam hall. The exam, for what it's worth, was much better than I was expecting. I wish I hadn't got in such a massive, life-damaging stress about it. By that morning, I was catatonic.We got to take in a notes sheet, so even if our minds went blank, we had somewhere to start. My mind didn't go blank, the questions were all on bits I'd thoroughly revised. I regurgitated 2500 words onto the answer booklet, and I finished with about half an hour to spare. My wrist was complete agony after an hour, then I stopped feeling it. I'm considering getting plastics to have another look at it. The tendon is two inches short and I can see the scarring moving up and down inside when I clench my fist. This is not good!
I then had to wait for the bus for an hour, but that was mere BAD TIMING. I don't even want to guess how I did. I think I passed. That's all I can say.

K203 started ten days before the exam and I did NOTHING until after the exam. Then I just couldn't get my brain in gear. I was still in revision mode. This is why I'm never doing two modules back to back again. It took me three whole weeks to do one unit (you're supposed to do a unit a week), though I had sick children to contend with as well. I did the first TMA without reading half the relevant unit.
But SOMEHOW, I got 71% ! 
My highest TMA essay score in K101 was 73%. I was expecting a significant drop in marks on this module, with it being higher level. Let's see if I can do as well next time (probably not).


Without naming names (and I put all this on my feedback form after the module), my K101 tutor was a disappointment. Her feedback was minimal, her group interaction worse. When I asked for help with my exam prep, she had nothing useful to say. The only good thing was her tutorial notes (I never went to a tutorial).
My NEW tutor is a REVELATION! She's very active on the forum, does regular tutorials with excellent notation and her feedback is exactly what I need. It tells me what I've done wrong, without being insulting, and tells me what I've done right. She praised my structure and paragraphing, which tutor#1 marked me down on every time.

It's buoyed me up to get on with it. I've managed to mostly catch up in the last ten days and I've got a reading week next week, so I can get up to date and write my next TMA, which is due on the 28th. The course content is one subject, but in great depth (the polar opposite to K101, which is broad and shallow) and the first block is theory. Theory, and difficult reading, and nonsensical statistics. It's challenging every preconception I had about health and biomedicine. It is MESSING with my HEAD.
But I think I love it.

The pain of essays

I hate writing TMAs.

I've just submitted my second one. I was going to hold out, keep revising it, and submit it closer to the closing date (which is in 9 days), but the PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE got to me. So it's gone. And now I will attempt to forget it EVER HAPPENED.

Even with analysing the question, reading the assignment guidelines and considering my grasp of the subject to be pretty good. I think I've done a dreadful essay. I wrote an ESSAY PLAN, for god's sake. I haven't written one of those since I was 17, under duress from my extraordinarily evil English teacher. I wrote my essay plan weeks ago, long before I'd finished the block. When I came to writing the essay itself, I looked over my plan, nodded at my own amazingness and went ENTIRELY BLANK. I started writing randomly and somehow, it became coherant. I cut about 300 words out, rearranged it a bit, and decided that it was actually Quite Good.

Then doubt set in. My last essay was shocking. Well, it wasn't objectively, but to me it was shocking and I, originally, thought it was quite good. So, for several days, I have pondered and edited, and re-read units and decided I am dreadful. My essay, once something I could read, and follow and feel faintly proud of has filled me with ANGER. I can't even read it anymore, it's like I know it off by heart and the words just blend into a giant, glowing turd on the screen. Dread, unwholesome DREAD at seeing some painfully crap number appear on my student record again, has reared it's vile head.

So, I will attempt to wipe it from my mind as my tutor won't mark it for a couple of weeks. It's my baby's birthday tomorrow *yay*. Time to concentrate on the child, for once.