To resolve these issues, in Appendix 1B I provide the essay marking criteria for four first-year subjects (English, Anthropology, Business Management and Law) at the University of Cape Town. These four subjects are very different from one another (in terms of their content), and so it was reasoned that a comparison between them would give a good indication of whether – in general – first-year university subjects have shared or distinct essay marking criteria.
44 Before consulting Appendix 1B it is important to mention that the Business Management marking criteria refer to a long (300-word) tutorial assignment. The decision to include the marking criteria for tutorial assignments was deliberate, as tutorial-length written assignments are thoroughly incorporated into the curricula of first-year tertiary subjects. In addition, 300-word (plus) tutorial assignments can be thought of as miniaturised essays that have a similar structural template to standard length first-year university essays. Such tutorial length assignments can therefore be conceptualised as essays (of a sort) rather than comprehension style answers.
Before commenting on the congruencies between these criteria, I would like to include the following note that accompanies the Law essay marking criteria. Out of all the UCT departments that supplied essay marking-criteria, the Law Faculty was the most detailed, and the following commentary [taken from The Research, Writing, Style and Reference Guide 2016: pg.2] provides a good insight into why – as I shall subsequently argue – various tertiary disciplines require similar writing skills:
There are different types or ‘genres’ of legal writing. On the one hand, writing about law may take the form of general descriptions and/or evaluations of aspects or areas of law. This type of legal writing differs little from academic writing in other disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences (eg History, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology). Although it is important to remember that each discipline may have its own conventional sources of evidence and style of ‘correct’ writing and referencing, legal writing of this type follows the normal academic practice of stating and defending a thesis.
Due to the shared “academic practice of stating and defending a thesis”, the above note takes it for granted that disciplines in the Social Sciences and the Humanities require similar writing techniques. This understanding of academic writing harmonises with a more detailed comparative approach, as Appendix 1B clearly show that similar skills are required due to the inherently argumentative nature of academic prose. Thus, in each of the rubrics, the importance of thorough and logical
argumentation is conspicuously emphasised. Next, all the rubrics stress that essays
should be rigorously structured through the use of introductions and conclusions. Here, it should be added that any well-structured essay will necessarily also contain
45 elementary (or more advanced) instances of information-synthesis (i.e. the establishment of firm links between the introduction, body and conclusion of an essay).
Language or diction is also prioritised in the rubrics, with a specific emphasis placed
upon clarity and conciseness. Importantly, although the Business Management tutorial marking criteria do not mention the importance of language or diction, other tutorial marking criteria which were kindly made available to me by the department
do prioritise the importance of formal language skills.14 Finally, all the rubrics and criteria identity the importance of brands of creativity in which originality or some
appropriate contribution from the students’ own subjective experience is structured
into their essays.
However, despite these congruencies, there is a specific area in which Law seems to require discipline-specific writing skills that are not a requirement in other disciplines. This difference is elucidated in the following note provided by the Law Department’s Research, Writing, Style and Reference Guide 2016:
On the other hand, legal writing may take a form that is specific to the work of lawyers: the provision of written advice about the legal solution to a particular problem. This type of legal writing is characterised by its specific and disciplined focus on the precise problem and the legal principles and sources that are relevant to its solution. The principle is that a lawyer is not free to digress and to pursue knowledge for its own sake, but must confine herself only to what is relevant— anything more would waste the client’s money and/or the lawyer’s time (and income). Legal writing of this kind takes the form of an attempt to identify the legal issues raised by the problem and to resolve these by finding and then applying relevant legal rules. The style of this type of legal writing therefore takes the form of a search for a solution rather than the defence of a proposed thesis, but it should be obvious that both forms of legal writing require the formulation and defence of a point of view, and require logical arguments based on credible evidence (in other words,
not mere emotional reactions or political ideologies or slogans) drawn from critical
reading of the researched material. Finally, legal writing may sometimes amount to a combination of these two types, as where one is required to assess or evaluate the manner in which the law resolves a particular type of problem.
14 In particular, these tutorial assignments state that tutorial assignments should have an “academic tone”, and that the writing style used in them should be “smooth” and “easy to read”.
46 (2) The note is perfectly correct to identify this as a distinctive component of law writing. Although academic writing (in the Humanities and Social Sciences) does often confine itself to what is “relevant” and “is not free to digress and pursue knowledge for its own sake”, these virtues of relevance and parsimony are usually employed to defend a thesis. Law, on the other hand, often requires students to use these writing techniques to seek a practical solution to a problem by invoking legal rules. This mode of writing is clearly too pragmatic and constrained by practical exigencies (i.e. not wanting to waste the client’s money, pre-determined rules, etc.) to harmonise with academic writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
One possible way to circumnavigate this problem – and maintain that all the disciplines analysed require virtually identical writing skills – is to claim that this aspect of law writing is not really “academic”. On this view, it can be argued that a mode of writing cannot really be counted as academic when it is not determined by a disinterested, quasi-scientific attempt to get at a deep and truthful account of a particular phenomenon. Since the mode of law writing hitherto considered is determined by concerns relating to the time and money of clients – and since it is more concerned with relevant ‘rules’ than a philosophically robust notion of the truth – it perhaps fails to display these defining characteristics.
There are, however, problems with this kind of argument. To begin with, in a certain sense, all writing which is required for the conferment of a degree and which students are required to do in a tertiary context is academic. A mode of writing cannot be disqualified as ‘academic’ simply because it fails to display some of the most conceptually demanding features of academic prose. Secondly, as the note indeed mentions, ‘problem-solving Law writing’ (for want of a better term) requires aspects of academic writing which are of foundational importance (e.g. the construction of arguments, the use of secondary readings, etc.). Finally, the note specifies that “legal writing may sometimes amount to a combination of these two types, as where one is
47 required to assess or evaluate the manner in which the law resolves a particular type of problem”. This makes it possible for the more ‘trade-orientated’ parts of Law discourse to be synthsised with the conceptually rich parts of Law, something which again accentuates the academic nature of both kinds of writing.
2.4.3 Comments on the similarities between matric and first-year essay marking