Thud

[major_clanger]

...As papersky would put it. Two 1000-word essays for my OU course: one on the development of the relationship between the UK courts and European law; the other on the background to, and effects of, the Human Rights Act.

1000 words is not much, and it's considerably more effort to write two essays that length than a single one of 2000 words. The OU's advice was that this course should take about 16 hours per week of effort, with each TMA (i.e. both essays together) taking perhaps 4 hours. Well, I find that my weekly study is more like 10-12 hours - I read, and assimilate, fairly quickly - but each essay took me easily 5-6 hours to plan, write and then edit to length. Fortunately, years of practice mean that I even though I draft essays and papers in note form, I know roughly what the notes for 1000 words should look like. However, the end result always comes out long and then it's a case of revising my slightly wordy prose into something a little more concise.

Oh, and doing that down to a set word limit is made a bit more complex by the rules for wordcount for legal assignments: case citations don't count, and there tend to be a lot of quite long ones to mention when writing about EC law - Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen (Case 26/62) [1963] ECR 1, for instance.

But, all done now. Well, all except printing out, proof-reading for the silly mistakes invisible on screen, printing again and posting off. Fortunately my tutor seems to mark quickly so I should have the results back in a week or so.

MC

Comments

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's the horizontal efect case.. I didn't actually know the name, I'm ashamed to admit..