I recently failed this assignment on my referencing and structure so am just starting redoing it. could you please check I am on the right track.
I have to define power and privilege and give an example of how power has affected me in my past.
For the purpose of this essay I am going to begin by defining power, and also to reflect upon my own experiences of power. Power and powerlessness go together therefore; to have one you need the other. In our society there will always be inequalities which can either be on a personal or structural level. To understand the meaning of power we have to understand the distribution of power and privilege in our society. This can be done by looking at the different social divisions and class structure within today's society.
For the purpose of this essay I am going to begin by defining "power" , and also to I will reflect upon my own experiences of power. Power and powerlessness go together, therefore; one who gains power causes another to lose i to have one you need the other . In our society there will always be inequalities which can either be on a personal or structural level. To understand the meaning of power ...
You have to show us the whole essay, and then we can help with its structure. You need to add one sentence to the end of this first paragraph -- a thesis statement. Read about thesis statements online.
Then, make every paragraph support the thesis statement.
At the end, restate the thesis statement and talk about it in the last paragraph.
Great feedback Kevin.
"I am going to begin by defining power," What an excellent idea. In fact, why don't you actually include a definition of power in their somewhere. You might want to look at various types of power, and where they come from. Consider for example, when a strong man might be more powerful than an intelligent one, and vice versa, or what price a politician inevitably pays to gain power.
Thanks for the replies I really appreciate it. As this is my first academic essay Im finding it quite a struggle ive got up to 500 words can you check this see how Im going.
Thanks.
POWER, PRIVILEGE AND DIFFERNCE
For the purpose of this essay I am going to begin by defining "power", I will reflect upon my own experiences of power. Power and powerlessness go together, therefore; one who gains power causes another to lose it. In our society there will always be inequalities which can either be on a personal or structural level. To understand the meaning of power we have to understand the distribution of power and privilege in our society. This can be done by looking at the different social divisions and class structure within today's society.
One of the most important types of power is structural as it can bring about social changes. Jan Fook who is a social worker and an author of many social work books, acknowledged that there are some implications about power in relation to gender but on the other hand, power can be misused between genders. Jan Fook (2008)
One of my own experiences of power was when I was working as an informal care worker for a member of my family. I noticed that this job was very female dominated probably because it is assumed that caring comes naturally to women. It is also lowly paid. Because most of my work was informal I wasn't allowed to any entitlements or basic rights such as paid maternity leave leaving me quite powerless.
Fook (2008) wrote, if empowerment is about giving power to powerless groups, then we first have to identify the powerless groups or people to ensure that they have the power to carry on with their tasks. A lot of the times people mistake empowerment for reducing their inequalities. However, empowerment is actually about all groups being the same, but for some people being the same as others could actually be disempowering them. The most important thing about power is how it is practised by different people which can be a good or a bad thing. (Healy, 2000:45) states that a 'bottom up' view of power encourages looking at how power is expressed in the richness of everyday reactions.
Every person despite their social status has the potential to exercise some form of power. In our society today men are seen as being the more dominant figure. Through research for this essay I didn't actually realise how many more privileges they do have over women in our society, such as not having to change their name through marriage or being expected to bear children. Robinson (2003) wrote that the major feature of the social status of men and women is the dominance of men in virtually every aspect of modern life.
It appears you plagiarized some of the sentences (putting the author's name in brackets won't help).
Oh! Is that true? The thing is, you need to put their words in quotation marks if you quote them directly, and you are also supposed to use a page number. If you don't use quotation marks, you have to PARAPHRASE and then put the name in parantheses. Paraphrasing is easy! So, you should be able to do it. Rework those sentences that yu took directly from other sources. Good luck!!
You still need to work on defining power. You might start by going over to dictionary.com, which lists 20 separate meanings for the word just as a noun. It really is necessary for your essay to do this. For instance, if power is the "ability to do or act; capability of doing or accomplishing something," which is dictionary.com's first listed meaning, then your argument that power is always gained at the expense of someone else's is unconvincing. How does my having the ability to do something in any way prevent you from being able to do it too?
Likewise, when you talk about the work you were doing, which you claim ended up "leaving me quite powerless," surely you still had the power to seek employment in a more remunerative field? How does your decision to go into a field that you knew would be low paying reflect any particular social power imbalance? You can't answer these questions unless you have defined power, first.
Most of the rest of your essay suffers from the same problem. You talk about empowerment and powerlessness, but these all have "power" as their root word, so what you say about them doesn't hold up without a coherent definition of your key term.
