ABSTRACT
Essay writing is a skill that an undergraduate student needs throughout the whole of a psychology course. In fact, in most institutes of further and higher education essays can make up a large part of a student’s coursework, so taking the time to get it right is time well spent. The composition of an essay can take any one of a number of forms, depending on what key phrase or phrases are contained in its title. Some key phrases likely to appear in essay titles are provided further on in the chapter. The size of essays on undergraduate courses varies, but usually the word length increases from about 1200 to 1500 words in the first year of a course to about 2000 to 2500 words in the second year, and up to around 3000 to 3500 words in the final year. An example of a good coursework essay can be found in Example 3.1, which follows the information provided here.
