1. Criticality
Tutors defined good quality student writing as critical: by showing an ability to interrogate the assumptions that lie behind arguments. All seven interviewees
mentioned that the written text should contain analysis of others’ arguments rather than just providing a commentary. Students should show the reader that they have carried out critical readings, reviews and provided evidence of that critical engagement with the essay. The following interview scripts illustrate this point.
TUTOR 1: “I would say at this level, Level Three, I would be looking for what I would call a certain amount of criticality: ability to stand back from one’s own perspective and to stand back from the perspective of others and evaluate them; to see there are different ways of looking at the same thing, rather than taking
anything for granted or taking any – to be examining your own assumptions and the assumptions of others all the time.”
TUTOR 4: “A really good, a really good piece will be somebody who has tried, and it won’t even succeed, but someone who has tried to, to engage with, or, or with the critical readings and with the, the texts, the children’s literature itself and put something of themselves in it; so that they’ve engaged critically with them and tried to put that over in a way that has communicated it reasonably clearly.” TUTOR 6: “The key elements: that they are confident, that they give me
confidence as I’m reading that it’s not just surface knowledge. That they are not just throwing in key terms thinking they sound good without understanding what the underpinning is. It is not just surface knowledge; they are not just parroting what they’ve picked up from the blocks. In third level, it is very, very crucial that they are synthesising things.”
TUTOR 7: “A good piece of student writing engages with two things I feel: the question, and the material supporting the question. Once they’ve understood the question they then need to be able to critically assess both the primary novels or picture books, and also critically assess the academic supporting essays that are provided to them.”
2. Argumentation with evidence
All seven tutors stated that criticality should be demonstrated through good
argumentation in the text, which would be evidenced by the materials, literature and readings that student has reviewed.
TUTOR 2: “Things that we always stress with students are that they must use evidence and argument; in other words, it’s good thinking based on actual
evidence, which is usually evidence drawn from the module or drawn from the set text that they have to read.”
TUTOR 3: “But in a good essay I would expect to see direct quotations from the literary text, which the student has analysed, pulled out the significant details of the language and explained their significance for the topic of the essay.”
TUTOR 1: “…key thing about argument is the use of evidence; in the context of
this module I would say that is going to involve relevant citation from critical sources, which are provided.”
Tutors also emphasized that students should not only argue based on the supporting evidence but also by criticising contradicting elements of others’ arguments.
TUTOR 3: “I would expect to see an extensive range of research into the relative
materials. So that would include research into the background areas of concepts behind the essay topic and also research into the criticism that already exists about that primary text, about that literary work as well.”
TUTOR 7: “rather than replicating, shall we say, Peter Hunt in his essay on
see that this is true. Well that’s agreeing and they are backing it up. But I don’t necessarily want to see that all the way through. I would like to see occasionally a challenge. Sometimes, of course, the critics will present very strong arguments and it is difficult to disagree with some arguments; they are very strong but I do, I do hope that students will recognise holes and flaws in critics’ arguments.”
TUTOR 2: “…All right, now give me an example of some of these contradictory elements you have just told me are in there otherwise why should I believe you… So that’s a good argument.”
3. Voice
Interviewees said that the key element that brings student success is their ability to argue not simply by backing up their arguments with references, but by taking it to another level through the challenge of other peoples’ arguments to establish their own argument.
TUTOR 2: “…they are showing you that they have read everything that you wanted them to read; they’ve really understood it; they’ve got their own take on it.
In other words, they’ve reached their own understanding and their own thinking. They are not just repeating what they’ve read so they are actually presenting an argument of their own, which isn’t simply agreeing with everything they’ve read.” TUTOR 1: “And again it’s going to involve an ability to stand back from the evidence, and not just to assume that just because it’s in print it’s true.”
TUTOR 5: “So you would have evidence that they had engaged with the module activities, understood the ideas, but gone beyond that and become an independent thinker. So I would hope to see some evidence of something independent and individual in the writing as well as a good knowledge of the course materials.” TUTOR 7: “So I would expect them to read the essays carefully, the ones that are
relation to the question. So it takes a great deal of bravery for a student to do that because, I remember from being an undergraduate student myself, that, it seems almost, how can I say, disrespectful to criticise somebody who is so many tiers above you educationally. Someone who has so many letters after their name and who has a Doctor or Professor in front of it and how dare I challenge or disagree with them!”
4. Coherence / Orientation / Structure
All six tutors mentioned that students should guide the reader about the structure of the essay, and signpost what they are going to write about in the beginning.
TUTOR 1: “I think another thing that is clearly important is a sense of coherence. So something that makes you feel as if the parts of the essay fit together somehow in a logical way.”
TUTOR 2: “They should tell you at the beginning, I am going to make, I am going to argue this. I am going to make this kind of argument. This is the way I am going to go about it. They should make a statement in the beginning in their introduction about the sort of direction it is going in. …So, so you are kind of – you are
orientated at the beginning. That is a kind of orientation at the start and that is really helpful.”
TUTOR 3: “I would expect to see a clearly explained line of argument where the student sets out in the introduction what the essay is going to prove and
demonstrate and then the rest of the essay presents the evidence for their stance on the question.”
5. Relevant Content
All tutors added an important feature that would bring students to success. They put the ‘content’ theme above the four they mentioned at first. They all emphasised that
the topic. Even if students successfully achieved the four themes given earlier, if they have not done these within the context and the topic, then they cannot get any marks.
TUTOR 4: “I think, I agree argument is important, it is one of the main things but it’s no good having a good argument that is not relevant to the question. It is no good having a good argument that doesn’t show knowledge and understanding of our module.”
TUTOR 6: “A few times I’ve had some beautiful essays that just haven’t answered the question and you end up writing comments that go, ‘Had we been discussing…’ and you write out the question that they answered. ‘Had we been discussing this, you would have scored 90%. Unfortunately, we weren’t.”
TUTOR 5: “I think I have to say relevance to the question is pretty important and the knowledge and understanding, so probably these two; argument would come third.”
TUTOR 2: “If you see a wonderful essay which is about something other than the question that you’ve set, how do you know that the student is studying that course and how do you know that this isn’t an essay from some other course somewhere else, possibly by somebody else? But if it’s not answering the question that we’ve set this year, we’ve got no evidence that this student is studying on our course really, have we? … There are lots of wonderful essays in the world which are about the set text that we’ve got in our course but they are not relevant for us because