3-PAGE ESSAY GUIDELINE
DUE: FRIDAY 10th MAY
Weighted 35% of Term 2 Mark
An important part of Term 2 mark is your 3-page essay, which should be based on
information learned in lectures and from readings. Essay writing is an important part of
university work, so please take this as an opportunity to develop these skills. To maximize
your development as a student writer, please do the following:
1. Your essay should consist of three to five, full pages of written text, excluding a title page
and bibliography. Make sure you provide your full name and student number, either in a title
page or at the top of the first page of your essay. Please make sure you abide by the
guidelines of the essay, including format and ALWAYS check spelling and grammar.
2. DO NOT PLAGIARISE. My tutors and I are a well-oiled machine at picking up plagiarism
and rest assured you will receive a 0 mark if you are caught plagiarising. If you have
questions on how to avoid plagiarism, consult the UJ Plagiarism Guide, come see me, or
refer to writing tutors at the UJ Library.
3. The formatting of any typed assignment must be: Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman, 12
font size, single line spacing, and UK/SA spelling. It is very important that you keep copies
of all your work because this is your main evidence (as well as your submission on
Blackboard (Ulink) that you have handed in an assignment. Also keep all marked
assessments until the end of the semester. THIS ASSIGMENT REQUIRE 3 to 5 PAGES
OF WRITTEN TEXT.
4. References: You must use in-text references and provide a bibliography at the end of your
essay. You may use any referencing system as long as the in-text and bibliography sources
match. You may use as many references as you like, please do independent research and
find your own sources and you are free to use the readings and supplemental materials
provided on Blackboard.
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ESSAY TOPIC
The significance of hunting in human evolution
Hunting is considered to be an important driver in the evolution of Homo sapiens, which
required complex cognitive and behavioural capacities. Provide a short essay on why hunting
was significant in human evolution. Discuss the following aspects:
1. What types of behavioural capacities are necessary for hunting?
Discuss both ‘individual’ and ‘group’ capacities.
2. What types of cognitive capacities are necessary for hunting?
Discuss individual types of cognitive functions.
3. How did these behavioural and cognitive functions impact social structures?
Discuss the impact of cognition and behaviour on social organization.
4. Briefly sum up why these capacities were important for the evolution of modern humans
GUIDELINES FOR ESSAY STRUCTURE
The following guidelines are meant to give you some help in structuring an essay. A good
essay begins with good structure, then spelling and grammar. Please use spell check when
writing.
Introduction
This section should introduce a topic and what evidence you will use to support your claims.
For example, I might say something like:
“The development of stone tool use was one of the most important events in human
evolution. Making and using stone tools gave our early ancestors a means of competing with
large carnivores for access to meat, which was a critical resource for the expansion of the
human brain. It is important to consider how stone tools developed, how they were made
and used by our hominin ancestors, which will be the focus of this essay…”
Discussion
This section should present all your ‘evidence’, which are your thoughts and supporting
materials, such as readings or class materials. You should present your ideas, then use
class resources to support your opinions.
Conclusion
This section should sum up your argument. Briefly state your opinions and why you think
they are supported by your evidence.
Referencing
You are required to provide both in-text citations and matching references in a bibliography
or reference list. For example, let’s say I read a paper on Oldowan stone tools by S. Semaw
and co-authors and then wrote a sentence based on this reading. At the end of the sentence
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I need to provide an ‘in-text citation’ consisting of the author’s last name and the year of the
publication, in parentheses. For example, let’s say I wrote the following sentence:
“The Oldowan industry is approximately 2.6 million years old and it’s oldest occurrence is
from the site of Gona in Ethiopia (Semaw et al. 1997).”
The author’s last name and year in parentheses is the in-text citation, and I would then list
the reference to the Semaw et al. article in my bibliography/reference list:
“Semaw, S., Renne, P., Harris, J.W., Feibel, C.S., Bernor, R.L., Fesseha, N. and Mowbray,
K., 1997. 2.5-million-year-old stone tools from Gona, Ethiopia. Nature 385: 333-336.”
PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism in the context of ATL1AA1, is defined as the act of taking someone else’s written
work and passing it off as your own. If you copy and paste sentences/paragraphs from
another body of written work without citation or reference, it is considered plagiarism.
Example:
You read the following sentence in an article entitled “When did Modern Humans Evolve in
Africa?”, by M.V. Caruana and published in the Journal of Archaeology (2021), volume 32,
pgs. 6-18.
“While the origins of modern humans in Africa remains disputed, the oldest fossil remains
now date to ~300 ka in Ethiopia.”
If you then copy and paste this sentence WITHOUT proper citation and referencing, you are
claiming it as your own voice and thought. It is clearly not. To avoid plagiarism, you need to
properly paraphrase or use quotations if you want to directly copy a sentence.
Paraphrasing is summarizing a sentence and then using an in-text citation to acknowledge
where this idea originated. The following sentence is a paraphrasing of the example above:
“The oldest evidence of modern human fossils is found in Ethiopia and date to approximately
300 thousand years ago (Caruana, 2021).”
So please note that I did not copy and paste the sentence above, I simply summarized the
important information and wrote a sentence in my own voice.
I can also paste the sentence directly into my essay, but I use quotation marks and cite the
page number in my in-text citation:
“While the origins of modern humans in Africa remains disputed, the oldest fossil remains
now date to ~300 ka in Ethiopia” (Caruana, 2021: 16).
HOWEVER, you should NOT use more than one direct quote in your essay.
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Please see the following resources to understand what plagiarism is, how to avoid it, as well
as the consequences of doing it.
1. Library - Plagiarism and Copyright: Plagiarism @ UJ
https://uj.ac.za.libguides.com/c.php?g=581132&p=4011528
2. UJ Plagiarism Policy PDF on Blackboard
