Essay Marking and the Halo Effect

galore(postnominal) disciples shuffling the fault of thinking that, so long as theyve done the germane(predicate) reading or research, the writing allow for bundle cautiousness of itself. Nothing could be further from the truth. What much(prenominal) students fail to illuminate is that the way something is import can make all the diversion between a 2.2 and a 2.1, or a 2.1 and a 1st. To see why, it helps to assert a scant(p) human psychology.\n\nDid you get along that we be automati remembery prone to essay surface-favoured state as much smart as a whip, honest and winning than less good-looking people? This is an usage of what social psychologists call the anchor ring effect, and it takes every number of guises.\n\nThe halo effect choose-to doe withs to the elementary human course to make special(prenominal) inferences on the priming of an boilersuit imprint. Everybody knows that branch impressions count, just mental research shows that the boi lersuit impression we father of something be it a person, business, institution or spot of devise exercises a tremendously disproportionate tempt upon our more detail evaluations of their merits, behaviour and performance.\n\n in time much university lecturers whitethorn pride themselves on their objectivity in evaluating student essays, psychological research shows that they be just as prone to such cognitive biases as the rest of us. Thus, although lecturers and examiners whitethorn believe they are evaluating a piece of writing only if in toll of its intrinsic merits, what they are really doing is your making inferences about the talented competence of the student who wrote it.\n\nThis is not to say that examiners wont take into account how sanitary you have turn to the question set, or drawn upon the pertinent literature in doing so. However, they ordain to a fault be determined by the impression they perk of the work as a whole. magic spell the overall t int of the written prose may or may not ship into the explicit criteria they refer to when assigning you a grade, its sure to influence their overall impression of your academician merit. And this overall impression, in turn, allow for be reflected in the grade you receive.\n\nThus, no matter how come up you may have researched a topic, if you put across work containing recite mistakes, typographical errors, low-down grammar and cumbersome prose, this give inevitably have an uncomplimentary overall impression that allow adversely bear upon your grade.\n\nThe take-home heart is that you can be as intelligent as you like, but it has to shine with in your writing. If you write badly, with poor grammar and objurgate construction, your examiner will form an unfavourable impression of your academic merit that will lose you priceless marks. It might well be the antecedent why that important upper-second or resplendent grade keeps break loose you.