The document provides guidelines for writing an EMA essay, emphasizing the importance of answering the question and constructing a clear argument based on module materials. It stresses the need for careful planning, proper referencing, and a structured approach to ensure clarity and coherence in the essay. Additionally, it outlines specific submission requirements and encourages critical self-review before final submission.

1. Preparing for the EMA
Hastings, 23 August 2014

2. Your EMA essay must, above all else, answer the question,
so make answering the question your top priority. Most
importantly, make sure you know what the question is asking
you.

3. The answer to the question forms the basis of your
argument. Your argument will solve the problem posed by
the question, by assembling, synthesising and re-arranging
the module material into a new pattern.

4. Arguments can be simple or complex, but they need to be
carefully constructed or they will fall down.

5. You are being assessed on how well you
demonstrate knowledge of the module materials.
Use them.

6. Plans can take many forms, and will be as individual as you
are. How you plan your essay is entirely up to you but as
Benjamin Franklin said: “if you fail to plan you are planning to
fail”.

7. You will have a lot of material to choose from, a throng of
ideas, masses of evidence, crowds of concepts? How do you
choose? Your argument will guide you. Your plan will keep
you on the straight and narrow. But if you find a face in the
crowd that you fall for, you can always change your plan.

8. Your plan will prevent you from going round in circles.
Although your plan may not be linear, the structure of your
argument will be. Keep moving forward.

9. Structure
beginning
middle
end

10. If you are inhabiting someone else’s ideas, speaking their
words, utilising their arguments or borrowing their analysis
you need to make it clear to the reader that it is not you. You
do this by referencing.

12. Your reader needs to be able to locate all the material to
which you have referred. Asking your reader to find your
sources without giving them accurate references would be
like asking them to find a particular pebble on Brighton
beach.

13. Your EMA is written. It was a labour of love, it is perfection, it
could not be any better. Leave it for a couple of days, and
read it again with a critical eye and you are sure to find
something you can improve.

14. Finally, please will EMA patrons refrain from:
• writing more than 2,200 words;
• using more material sourced from Google than Book 4;
• submitting in a non-specified file format;
• submitting after the deadline (12 noon!).
Thank you

15. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

16. Jennie Osborn
jennie.osborn@open.ac.uk
www.open.ac.uk