Exam essay AOS

[Vermilliona]

Which AOS are you preparing for, and how many words do you usually get down? I feel like I'm putting all my eggs in one basket by preparing only for Crises, but supposedly it's the most predictable one :/

[achre]

Every essay I've done for practice exams so far has been on Global Actors, its the AoS I feel strongest in and my essays for it come together easily.
But then everyone else is urging me not to do it - it's supposed to be too much content to review to do well in. Feeling less and less confident by the day.
Oh, and I usually get through about 2.5 pages. (Assessors apparently gauge essay length on number of pages rather than word count)

[Vermilliona]

I don't think Global Actors is too bad, it seems unlikely that they would ask you to write a whole essay on the ICC or WTO or IMF, so you just need the short-answer level knowledge of those to maybe use as a paragraph. UN, TNCs and state/other actor power then...
If you feel comfortable with it, you'll probably do better than if you did the essay on a less broad AOS. Plus if people are scared of approaching it, yours will stand out. Listen to your heart, listen to the beat, etc.

[HossRyams]

Yeah I'm preparing to write on conflict for crises and then human rights/ethical debates as a back-up. But what else could they ask aside from challenges/responses/causes? It's pretty predictable in that sense. I've also been advised (opinion of a previous student who got 48) to avoid Unit 3 topics unless you're sure you can really put it off, mainly because the better students tend to pick the Unit 4 topics as they're harder.

Since the topics I choose are pretty predictable I usually write 4 pages. So I think 1200-1300 words? I don't think you need to write that much though and it could be a waste of time, I've just been taught to write that much I guess ._.

[Vermilliona]

I've also seen essay q's for crises that centre around sovereignty... Like 'The concept of sovereignty poses the largest challenge to actors responding to global crises. Discuss'. It's a bit dodgy, but a presenter at the SEV lecture hinted that these political tensions within crises could be important. If they are, I'm screwed, my essay for that one is appalling, ugh.

Can you write 1200 in 40 minutes?? Mad

[HossRyams]

Haha yeah if you've prepared for the topic you can definitely write 1200 in 40min! I did it for my SAC - prepared 3 essays, and ended up writing out the one that related to the prompt on the SAC.

Hmm well perhaps you could be cheeky and be like yes, the concept of sovereignty does in fact pose a large challenge, then bring in stuff with the UN related to your crisis since that often faces sovereignty issues esp. with UN Charter, but then argue there are other factors that limit effective resolution of global crises! So since I'm doing Syria and Afghanistan for intra and inter conflict respectively, I'd be like for Syria there'd be legal difficulties, divided opinion on the matter and US reluctancy and then for Afghanistan I'd talk about incompetence of Afghan armies and the fact the US is perceived as an aggressive foreign occupier. So in the end, you use all the same examples, but the way you structure it is different. First pointing out that sovereignty is a challenge, but I guess I would PERSONALLY argue there's a lot more than that.

Politics is pretty limited in what they can ask you. Don't let a weird prompt scare you - most of the time, they can be twisted in a way. If you have all the examples, they can be used in one way or another - I just find how you format your essay ends up being the changing factor

Just my 2 cents

[Vermilliona]

Haha, that's pretty much exactly what I did for mine (also doing Syria and Afghanistan), I was just iffy because I felt like I didn't concentrate on sovereignty enough. It's so multifaceted, because you could say that sovereignty can be conducive to solving crises as well. I can't trust my teacher with the marking, so I don't ever know if my essays are good enough :/

[Vermilliona]

Another question, how do you structure your essays (esp. for global crises)? I usually just do an introduction where there is some general stuff about the crisis, then my contention and the points I will talk about. Then just TEEL, self-contained, single idea paragraphs. I know this is the generic structure, but I recently saw some essays that had been marked by an assessor who is a teacher, and they were structured very differently, and didn't seem to explore the question that much...   (he'd given them 20/20 though) Is anyone else worried about the fact that all the assessors seem to have very different criteria? (Maybe this is just nerves, heh)

[HossRyams]

I essentially do the same thing as you, but I ensure in the intro I immediately tackle the prompt. I don't really fuss over general background information. I don't know, I just have a lot of specific examples. I don't think you should worry thought - my friend and I seem to have had similar marks over the year and while she groups her paragraphs in a way that leaves her with 3-4 I somehow end up with 7-8 body paragraphs (I have very specific ideas and don't group them into a more general one I guess). But we get the same marks, so, I'm guessing as long as you've logically ordered your paragraphs and they all add up to your contention, what more could they ask for? It's probably just the nerves

[achre]

I've only spoken to one assessor about essay structure specifically, and apparently TEEL is pretty much the way to go, and that your into/conclusion are just formalities that don't really contribute anything towards your marks. (You can lose marks if you don't have them though) So yeah, I just rephrase the question, and state my contention and what points I'll address w/out reference to statistics, and then write it in a standard english essay format, treating every paragraph like one short answer question. Conclusion's usually one or two sentences long.
I'm worried though, because some of the paragraphs I've seen in some sample essays are enormous. Like, a paragraph for me is usually 7-8 lines, these monsters look like entire pages. I try not to think about it.