University Preparation Course Extended Essay 2

For your extended essay, you have already taken the first steps. You have….

· chosen a subject area and decided on a topic.

· formed a clear research question or topic statement.

· carried out some basic research (i.e. read books and looked at online sources).

Introduction: you must introduce the topic, giving some basic information to interest the reader and show why the topic is important. Include the research question in the introduction. This will be in the form of a question or a topic statement (or both). It must be clear and focused. This will show the aim of your extended essay.

Example: Here is the topic of an extended essay.

Read this introduction to the extended essay title above and do the tasks on the next page:

· Showing the aim of your essay.

1. Highlight the sentence that is the research question.

2. Highlight the research question changed into a statement.

· Creating interest and giving information.

3. Highlight the sentence that….

a) …introduces the country that is the main focus of the essay.

b) …informs the reader about which countries fought in the 2nd World War.

c) …explains why the involvement of soldiers from that country is still important.

d) …creates interest in the 2nd World War.

Check your answers in pairs. Were they the same? If not, decide on the correct sentence for each answer.

Here is a topic statement for an extended essay. Read it and do the tasks.

1) Write a sentence to create interest in this subject

2) Write sentences (2 0r 3) to (a) give some basic information, (b) introduce the subject of ‘Qatari teenagers’ and (c) explain why the subject is important.

3) Write a topic statement or research question.

Now write the introduction to YOUR extended essay. Remember to…

· include a research question, or a topic statement (or both) showing the aim of your essay.

· create interest, give the reader information about the topic, introduce the main parts and explain why your topic is important.

· Getting information for an extended essay.

To get information, we need data. Data is a collection of facts. There are two kinds of data; qualitative and quantitative:

Quantitative data is numbers. E.g. More than 11 000 Spaniards fought in WW2.

Qualitative data is information that describes something. E.g. People were dying in front of my eyes. There was no place to hide.

We get data from two kinds of sources: primary and secondary.

A primary source is a speech, document or evidence produced at the time by someone who was there at the time. Example: “…we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender”. (Winston Churchill 4th June 1940)

A secondary source tells us about the primary source. Winston Churchill encouraged and motivated the allies to fight to the last.

In your extended essay, you can use primary and secondary sources and your results will be either quantitative or qualitative.

Are these sources (1-5) primary or secondary? What kind of data is it? Write primary or secondary and qualitative or quantitative in the spaces.

1 / A face-to-face interview talking about a wedding. / Primary source, Qualitative data,
2 / The National Records Bureau stated that over
60 million people were killed in WW2. / ______source ______data
3 / Counting the number of patients in a hospital. / ______source ______data
4 / cia.gov website, world factfile. / Qualitative and quantitative data
______source
5 / A book by Lionel Messi about his life in football. / ______data
______source