Ideas for Intriguing Essays in Criminology: Everyone Will Succeed in Writing

Schools of criminology studies: one can always resort to fundamentals of criminological research; here, one can use such topics as the classical school, the positivist school of criminology (incorporating distinct Italian school, sociological positivism, and differential association), and the Chicago school as the distinct frameworks for crime consideration.
 
Theories of crime: this field enjoys very much popularity nowadays, since it is the key to solving major social problems. In case the roots and underlying reasons for crimes are identified, it will be easier to eradicate crimes. Hence, one can dwell on the social structure theories of crime (social disorganization, social ecology, strain theory, subcultural theory, or control theory), symbolic interactionism, or individual theories such as the trait theory or rational choice theory.
 

Criminology’s connection with other related disciplines: criminology is closely connected with such areas of social research as sociology, psychology, systems analysis, and decision theory. One can research the present field by visiting the site of an influential journal Criminology by following the link wiley.com. Here one can find many recent topics concerning criminology research and practice, thus acquiring a plenty of ideas for essays in criminology.
 
Crime prevention methods: Some methods to cover in a criminology essay are implementing and monitoring a national action plan to deal with prevention of violence, supporting researches on causes, effects, costs and prevention of crimes, strengthening responses for victims of violence, promoting gender and social equality, etc.

Title Page Format: To Check Before Starting the Creative Process

Before you begin to format the title page, make certain that you:

1. Checked the citation style you have to use;
2. Adjusted the title of your paper to make it look cool;
3. Made sure that the margins are 1” each;
4. Used a very specific paper title.

Just follow these tips, and you’ll understand how to format in APA or any other style. Speaking of various formats…

Title Page Format: Spot Five Differences. MLA and APA Variations

There’s a lot in common between the APA and MLA format for a title page. Care to check both the similarities and the differences?
 
Title page APA and MLA
 
Similarities

• The title is placed in the center of the page;
• The title is placed 1/3 down from the page top;
• The first name of the author is placed under the title;
• The date is placed 1” from the bottom of the page.

Differences

Title Page Format: Keep in Mind All the Important Peculiarities!

When dealing with the APA format title page, you’re dealing with running heads – that’s the hard truth you have to live with. Now let’s see how to handle this curse of an APA title page format:

• the running head has to be written in capitals;
• the running head is a shortened title;
• the running head must be up to 50 characters long.

That’s how a perfect title page for APA is made!

Title Page Format Guidelines: Make the Creative Process Easier!

Here are the tips that work for both title page APA format and title page format MLA:

1. split the title page in four parts;
2. make sure that the page title is above the horizontal line;
3. check that your name and institutional affiliation are below the horizontal line;
4. make sure that there are no unnecessary elements on the page.

Once you check all these items, you’ll get a fantastic title page in APA or MLA!

Title Page Format: Remember the Most Essential Recommendations!

Whether you’re writing a title page for MLA format or one for APA, remember to…

• Pick and use a single font (Arial, Times, etc.);
• Use a single font size (12 pt, 14 pt, etc.);
• Use uppercase and lowercase letters for the title;
• Use uppercase letters for the running head;
• Put the date on the title page (e.g., 24, March, 2012).

Hallelujah! Now you don’t have to Google for another set of “format title page” instructions – you’ve got all you need to create a really impeccable title page right now. So, what are you waiting for? Your title page is what gives readers the first impression of your research, so let’s start doing the make-up!

CV writer: avoiding confusion

A curriculum vitae is a summary of your academic and work experience, achievements and qualifications. It should not be confused with a resume that is much shorter. A resume is usually about 1 page. A CV can be from 2 to 5 pages and gives you much more freedom, because here you can provide a more complete picture of not only your experiences and accomplishments, but also your interests and even hobbies.

CV writer: the right attitude

Having the right attitude is arguably one of the most important aspects when writing a CV. And to have the right attitude, you need to know the main goals to aim for:

• to give the committee concrete and powerful reasons why to choose you instead of another candidate;
• to “sell” your qualifications (convey the best image possible);
• to provide a realistic account of your experiences and competence.

CV writer: parts to include

Here are the main parts that are usually found in a good CV example (you may use them as sections for your CV):

1. Personal profile. Use 5-7 bullet-point phrases to describe your personal strengths; consider what your employers are looking for and try to tailor your personal attributes to their expectations. You should have different CVs for different positions.
2. Experience. Use 5-7 bullet-point phrases to describe your knowledge, skills and strengths that fit the job you are applying for.
3. Achievements. Use 3-5 bullet-point phrases to discuss your professional achievements. Try to show that you can make a difference in the new position.
4. Career history. In the form of a table, list your prior jobs, employers and positions. Start from the most recent one.
5. Education and qualifications. List your qualifications, the institutions where you received them and the years of study.
6. Hobbies and interests. Try to match this information with job requirements and employer’s expectations.
7. Personal details:
   • Name;
   • address;
   • contact information (phone number, email – use a professional email address, no dark angels or sparkle boys this time);
   • date of birth (optional);
   • marital status;
   • references (optional).

As you see, in this guide for action, you as writers of CVs can find answers to the most burning questions. So, use these sections and be sincere in your CVs, but try at the same time to convey the best image possible, perfectly fitting the requirements of your potential employers.

How to Write an Informative Speech: Interacting with the Audience

If you want to make a good speech, you should first understand the needs of the audience. These people expect you to describe or explain a specific concept, phenomenon, event, or process. They want to you to be clear and concise. So, there are several things that you need to avoid, namely:

1. Attempts to persuade the audience. Remember that you are not writing a persuasive speech which is aimed at convincing listeners or urging them to take an action. Your task is to inform these people and enable them to make their own conclusions.
2. Complex and verbose sentences and phrases. Listeners may not grasp them immediately, and your speech will be lost upon them.
3. Excessive use of quantitative information that is not illustrated in any way. If you have to cite numerical data, try to illustrate it with a chart, table, or diagram.
4. An appeal to people’s emotions – this is not permissible in an informative speech.
5. Information overload. Sometimes, students simply pack their speeches with data, figures, or formulas. Listeners may not be able to retain them all.

How to Write an Informative Speech: Formulas of Success

If you have never written an informative speech, you should take the following steps:

1. Identify the key ideas that you intend to discuss or describe.
2. Write an attention-getter which can intrigue the audience. Eloquent orators can do this by asking a series of rhetorical questions about a topic. Moreover, one can do it by contradicting a common stereotype about a certain problem or question. In other words, you should demonstrate why this topic is worth attention.
3. Secondly, you should write your main ideas using bullet points. In this way, it will be much easier for you to find necessary examples and data.
4. Practice your speech by reading it aloud. It is a good way of identifying awkward or vague sentences. Remember that you will have to keep within certain time limits and you’ll have to remove sentences that are not relevant to the topic of your speech.
5. If you have the opportunity to display visual aids, you can use charts, tables, or even animated sequences. They will make it much easier for the audience to follow your speech.

How to Write an Informative Speech: Other Points to Consider

Hopefully, this article has shown you how to write an excellent informative speech. Yet, you should also be able to overcome stage fright which is common among people who don’t like to speak before a large audience. To overcome this anxiety, you should practice your speech before your friend or relatives who can encourage you.

Educational Research: Its Definition and Key Objectives

1. The assessment of various instructional models and teaching methods. For example, some researchers performed studies in order to determine whether games can be used productively during math classes.
2. The evaluation of various mnemonic systems;
3. Learning styles and ways of making education more productive;
4. The peculiarities of second-language acquisition;
5. The development of instructional models for people with disabilities;
6. The use of online technologies in the classroom.

So, there are many interesting research areas and questions that you can choose. By answering these questions, one can make modern education more effective. Scholars can adopt various methods to pursue their research. Here are some of them:

1. Qualitative methods, such as observation, learning blogs, experiments, observation, case studies, etc. The methods are used to study the perceptions and individual experiences of students and teachers. In this case, the main purpose of educational research is to formulate a hypothesis, not to test it.
2. Quantitative methods, such as meta-analysis, structured interviews, surveys, and correlation research. They are aimed at examining the relations between dependent and independent variables. For example, the independent variable can be the use of a specific instructional model, whereas the dependent variable can be the academic performance of a student.
3. Mixed-method design, which is based on qualitative and quantitative methods.

Educational Research: Its Key Principles

1. The research should be based on a testable hypothesis that can be proven or refuted empirically.
2. Such research cannot be carried out without the full consent of participants, namely parents, teachers, and students. These people should be informed about the purposes of the study and its methodology.
3. Educational research has to aim for practical, useful results. This is why you need to think of how your research can improve classroom experience of students and teachers.

On the whole, educational research is an interesting and developing area. There are many questions that are still open to discussion. Hopefully, now you have a better idea about its objectives, methodology and principles.

Study skills and styles

What are study skills? These are your abilities to understand, memorize information and apply it in new situations if necessary. Even though instructors expect all students to learn the same things by the same deadlines, there are no two students who acquire information in exactly the same ways or with exactly the same results. However, there is no need to be discouraged right now, because your uniqueness can become your advantage and a key to advanced academic skills. There are three main learning styles, namely visual (see), auditory (hear) and tactile/kinesthetic (touch). Check the following criteria to know which one is yours:
 
If your style is visual, you are likely to

• picture something in your head to remember it;
• prefer reading a lecture to listening to it;
• take notes during discussions to review later;
• need to see speaker’s facial expressions to better understand him/her.

If your style is auditory, you are likely to

• read aloud instructions to understand them;
• enjoy participating in discussions;
• talk to yourself when alone;
• prefer music to visual arts.

If your style is kinesthetic, you are likely to

• be good at putting jigsaw puzzles together;
• constantly play with keys in your pocket;
• be good at repairing things;
• frequently touch others to show feelings (hugging).

Note that your learning style may be a mixed one. Still, understanding your preferences is essential to choosing the best suitable techniques to improve your study skills.

Study skills: reading and listening comprehension

As it was already mentioned, rote learning or rewriting of materials is absolutely ineffective for developing study skills. It is like eating food without digesting it. Active learning and critical thinking could significantly improve your ‘digestion’ of materials and your reading and listening comprehension. Here is one effective method:
PQRST are not only letters of alphabet, but also a 5 step strategy of active reading (appropriate for all learning styles):

1. Preview – look through the logical organization of a text and its main headings;
2. Question – look at the questions you need to answer, before you start reading;
3. Read – read thoughtfully, choosing the information to answer the questions;
4. Summary – summarize in the best suitable way (choose the best suitable method from the following section);
5. Test – answer the questions.

Study skills: summarizing

If your preferred learning style is visual, you may want to build a mindmap for your text, which is much more effective than conventional summaries:

• choose a nonlinear form for your unusual summary (diagrams, trees or anything you like);
• find the most important concept(s) and circle it (them) into the center; (e.g. weather)
• find subsidiary concepts, define how they relate to the main one and arrange them around the circle in the center (e.g. storm, rain, snow…).

If your preferred learning style is auditory, you may want to speak your summary aloud, discuss it with someone or even audiotape your summary.
 
If your preferred learning style is kinesthetic, you may use flash cards, writing different parts of your summary on them so that you could touch them.

Study skills: memorizing

Even though the above-discussed methods are good for memorizing information, you may want to use additional mnemonics (specialized techniques for learning something). One of the ways to memorize something is to use funny phrases to learn longer lists. The first letters of the words you need to learn can be used as the first letters in your funny phrases. Here are a few study tips:

1. FANBOYS stands for 7 coordinating conjunctions in the English language: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So.
2. Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally stands for the order of math operations: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add, and Subtract.

As you see, with these innovative methods, you can improve your skills and study with pleasure. Make the clear understanding of your learning style your advantage and advanced study skills a guarantee of your academic success.

1. What are the applications of social accounting? How is it different from conventional reporting?
2. The management of intangible assets in private businesses.
3. The use of financial statements for business valuation.
4. What are the dangers of creative accounting for investors and companies?
5. Fair value accounting and its connection with the subprime mortgage crisis.
6. The advantages and disadvantages of Lean Accounting
7. Conflicts of interests in accounting and financial reporting
8. The implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for accountants
9. The importance of external audit for preventing fraudulent activities.
10. Current methods of cash flow forecasting.

Accounting Research Topics: International Standards and Law
 
Many interesting studies have examined the differences between accounting standards in various countries. If you need a good accounting research topic, take a look at such examples as:

1. Discuss the limitations of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
2. The responsibilities of the Financial Accounting Standard Board. Its role in preventing crime.
3. Financial reporting standards in international non-profit organizations.
4. The adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in developing countries
5. Disclosure of financial information by companies that operate at an international level.
6. Accounting standards in Islamic countries.
7. Provide examples of international corporate accounting scandals and their effects on various stakeholders.
8. The development of online technologies and their impact on financial reporting.
9. Professional standards set for certified accountants.
10. The connections between financial accounting and environmental accounting.

Accounting Research Topics: Analyzing Financial Statements
 
Many scholars focus their attention on various methods of analyzing financial documents. Students looking for excellent research topics may choose one of the following questions and prompts for their papers:

• The methods of calculating the earning per share.
• The advantages and disadvantages of EBIDTA as a tool for assessing financial performance
• The limitations of ROI (Return on Investment) as a measure of a company’s performance.
• The methods of analyzing depreciation
• The application of accretion analysis. The benefits and drawbacks of this approach

On the whole, interesting research topics can be quite challenging. Hopefully, you will pick one of them for your paper.

1. Your grandfather shows you a painting which he treats as your family relic. You look at it and see that it is a good copy of Mona Lisa. However, your grandfather insists that it is the original, whereas the copy hangs in the Louvre.
2. Writing an essay about your hobbies, you decided to write about cooking. It is not half the truth. However, your classmates remember about your essay and ask you to make a pizza for a party…
3. Your grandmother wears earrings with diamonds on your family holiday. She says that these are a love present from the days of her youth. Your grandfather who enters the room is astonished. He says that he has never seen these earrings before…
4. Your friend shares a family secret with you. On his 18th birthday, his parents told him that he was an adopted child. He is irritated and wants to distance himself from his family…
5. Your roommate tells everyone that he has got extrasensory perception. Your fellow students are going to consult him before the next exam…

Short story topics: extraordinary situations

6. A doctor examines a female patient who comes to him over and over again though she is healthy. He starts suspecting that she invents new symptoms because she is actually falling for him…
7. Your close friend sends a love letter to a girl he really likes. However, for unknown reasons, the girl thinks that it was you who sent the postcard. She comes up to you and confesses that…
8. One day you receive a message congratulating you as a winner of a lottery. Surprisingly, it is not a joke. You do receive this money. The most astonishing thing is that you never bought any lottery tickets…
9. Your parents want to present you with a trip to Paris on your birthday. You tell them that you are afraid of flying. In fact, you have played truant from French lessons…
10. Your roommate thinks that she can sing very well. Your neighbors do not think so…

Short story topics: detective plots
 

11. A hamburger disappears from your kitchen table. Who will you suspect?
12. Your friend receives bullying letters and she is really annoyed with them. One day you see a student from your college running quickly not far from her house…
13. One day you log into your Facebook account and see that several messages are marked as read though it was not you who read them…
14. Your grandmother complains that somebody has stolen her glasses…
15. Your driving license disappears from your pocket the day before weekend. Now you will not be able to go to the open air concert. You recollect that your Mom asked you not to go there, but could not persuade you…

Short story topics: diaries

16. A diary of the last surviving dinosaur.
17. A diary of a newborn baby.
18. A diary of a mosquito.
19. A diary of Cupid (a god of love whose arrows promise endless love).
20. A diary of a small village boy coming to New York for the first time.

Short story topics: personification

21. What if a computer mouse could speak?
22. A dialogue with a video camera.
23. A monologue of a Christmas tree.
24. A dialogue with a refrigerator.
25. A monologue of Wikipedia.

You are welcome to choose any topic for your short story. Consider your interests and take your chance to awaken creativity with any short story topic you find above. These 25 best writing topics can become either effective exercises for your imagination and writing skills or even story ideas for a novel.

• Use pictures to emphasize your ideas and capture readers’ attention.
• Use clear, concrete examples to support your ideas.
• Make the structure of your article clear and helpful by using short paragraphs throughout and bullet points whenever helpful.
• Always give credit to ideas of other authors you use in your article to make it original and more reliable.
• After proofreading your article for the first time, proofread it again and again. Stop only when you do not see any space for improvement. You may also use article writing services to edit and improve your article.
• Remove any unnecessary words or sentences from your article. Leave only valuable thoughts, ideas and arguments.

Article writing: emphasis on introduction
 
Give serious consideration to the introduction part. You may use the best article writing techniques, but nobody will know about them if you do not capture the attention of your audience in the opening passage. When writing an article, start with a joke, a rhetorical question or a relevant quotation. Most readers judge too quickly. They will look through your introduction to see if the article is worth reading. Even your tutors look at the introduction in the first place to see if you have put your heart and soul into your article. Avoid too long introductions, provide minimum background information and get to the point. Otherwise, your readers may stop reading before you even mention the problem you are going to discuss.
 
So, Einstein’s principle of making everything as simple as possible, but not simpler is the key to the success of your articles. Reasonable simplicity is needed for brilliant writing.

• The proper title for an APA style bibliography is “Reference List”. Don’t use other titles such as Works Cited or References, because those should be used only with MLA and Harvard citation styles respectively
• The lines in each entry have to be indented or shifted to the right; the only exception is the first line of each entry
• Each entry in the reference list must have at least one corresponding in-text citation in the body of the paper. Don’t include in this list any source that you don’t cite, even if it may be related otherwise to the topic

APA Bibliography: Examples of Various Entries
 
According to APA style, bibliography entries for various types of sources should have different formats. For instance, if you reference a book, you should follow the following format: 1) the last name of the author (or authors) with initials; 2) the year when a book was published; 3) italicized title; 4) place of publication, and 5) the name of the publisher. Here is an example of a book correctly referenced in an APA bibliography:
 
Trimmer, J. (1998).The essentials of APA style: A guide to documentation for writers of research papers.
 
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

When compiling an APA bibliography, students struggle with entries of peer-reviewed journals. But you don’t have to struggle with that, just follow this simple template for referencing a journal article: the last name of the author or authors, with initials; the title of the article without italicization; italicized name of the journal; the number of volume and issue if they are available; page numbers. The following example illustrates the use of this template:
 
Fisher, S. (2003). Citation styles and their main distinctive features. The Journal of Linguistics, 15 (31), 10-13.
 
Very often students use peer-reviewed articles from online databases. In this case, it is advisable to specify when the document was accessed, and most importantly, its URL address. According to APA guidelines, a student is not actually obliged to provide this type of information. Yet, you need to take into account that your professor may want to take a look at the articles that you cite.
 
APA Bibliography: Performing Independent Research
 
A student may have to use a variety of sources such as films, interviews, government reports, official websites, and so forth. According to APA bibliography format, each of these sources should be referenced differently. There are various examples of APA bibliographies available online. If you choose to read them, you will find it easier to work on your papers.