Choosing a topic

Some students find it easy to think of a topic, while others have more difficulty coming up with a good subject. DO NOT USE GOOGLE – it will provide essay topics that are too general and will already have been written hundreds of times around the world. Choose a topic that is relevant to you personally or your subject matter in university. Ideally, writing the essay should help you understand more about an event and will give you more knowledge. Your lecturer will probably reject one or two of your suggestions before saying ‘yes’ to your idea. This is not the lecturer being cruel. They are trying to help you get the best score that you can. Our lecturers have read hundreds of these essays and will find it easy to spot a problematic essay suggestion.

 

Choosing sources

When you choose a source, your choice is judged by your lecturer. If your information is coming from websites that are intended for those with no knowledge, it makes you look bad as a researcher. When you are writing an essay, you can use these websites to educate yourself, but your sources should be from experts. If you use Wikipedia, you will get a low score as this website is potentially written by non-experts. If you use HowStuffWorks.com, it indicates to the reader that the writer does not really know what they are talking about.

 

Citations

Binus University International generally uses the APA referencing style. This means that you provide citations from experts in a set style. If we are writing about the causes of the fall of President Suharto in 1998, we might find an expert called Patrick Smith who was a witness in the Trisakti University shootings with the following quotation:

“The soldiers opened fire on the students. At first it was assumed that the loud noises were            firecrackers. When students started to fall, obviously wounded, the students panicked and    dispersed in whatever direction they could. The shooting was the final straw that turned the            protests into a movement that would bring down the president for sure.”

First, we look for the date of publication. If the source that you are reading from is a book, we look at the publisher’s information in the front of the book. If it is a website, check the page for the date the article was posted. So if Patrick Smith wrote the previous passage in 2003, we have different ways of citing him:

1) Direct citations

According to Smith (2003, p. 14) “the shooting was the final straw that turned the protests into a movement that would bring down the president for sure”.

Smith (2003, p. 14) states that “the shooting was the final straw that turned the protests into a movement that would bring down the president for sure”.

Smith (2003, p. 14) said that the shootings changed the students motivations and “turned the protests into a movement that would bring down the president for sure”.

The Asian financial crisis, the increasing call for democracy and the Trisakti University shooting all culminated in Suharto’s downfall. “The shooting was the final straw that turned the protests into a movement that would bring down the president for sure” (Smith, 2003, p. 14).

We include the page number so that others can find the original citation easily.

2) Indirect citations

Indirect citations involve paraphrasing. This means that we take the author’s idea and phrase it in our own words.

Up until the Trisakti shooting, the students’ demonstrations had a different motivation. The shooting polarized the students’ feelings and the shooting was the tipping point that led to the inevitable downfall of Suharto (Smith, 2003).

With this type of citation, we do not include a page number, as these are not his exact words, but we still give credit for the idea. You are expected to use both types of citations. If you use one type but not the other, you will lose points.