Detective work

Writing an essay can be the final step in a puzzle, a mystery to solve. Treating it as an investigation can intrigue you, motivate you to research from different angles, different sources. When the essay titles are provided you can try to find one you. Think you know something about, but do you? The lectures haven't happened yet. How do you know what the lecturer is thinking? What if it relates to the last lecture of the semester just before the assignment is due to be submitted? Have you been given the lecture notes ahead of time?

A student we will call Jane for our fictional purposes, was intrigued by the subject of the last lecture, but was wary of starting to research it before hearing the lecture. She could not wait that long. She thought she'd get an idea of it from a student a year ahead who had tackled the module. No, that would not work. The essay titles had been changed. However, the lecture had been given and yet the senior student had only a vague recollection of it. So Jane was back to square one. Ask the lecturer? Maybe. Ask if there are several angles on the subject. This topic was on African Pentecostalism. Jane reckoned she understood something of general Pentecostalism but had no experience of African Pentecostalism. Books? Articles... Try Ebsco, the big online library. Most colleges have some access to it. So Jane tried to put the topics in the search engines. "African Pentecostalism": 10000s of items come up. Narrow the search. Add extra keywords. Add an author. Who are key scholars on the topic? For the past 25 years people like Allan Anderson, Richard Burgess, Paul Gifford... have written on Pentecostalism in Africa. Yes they had experience of Africa. What of African writers themselves? There are quite a few. Cephas N Omenyo provided a chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism edited by CM Robeck Jr.. His endnotes provide quite a compendium of sources and their authors. His summary chapter is a great place to start.

Investigating like a Sherlock Holmes looks through the obvious issues which trigger other angles.

See if certain authors have their own angles. This provides you with the beginnings of an essay's framework.

If you want to know more on academic critique we could have a discussion as a starter for ten on my tutorial zooms. If a few are interested together we can plan. So please get in touch with me.

Find out what Jane did next!