PL1011 Political Concepts Assessment 1 Guidance: Essay Plan and Literature Review 2026 | University of Leicester

PL1011 Political Concepts

Assessment 1 Guidance: Essay Plan and Literature Review 

This assessment has three elements:

1.A 1-page plan setting out the argument, i.e. central claim and supporting reasons, of your intended essay.
2.A literature review for the topic, covering at least four scholarly sources.
3.A well formatted bibliography with entries for each of the sources cited in your literature review and plan.

1. The Essay Plan

The first part of the assessment is a 1-page essay plan setting out your intended approach to your selected essay question. The essay plan should include a “thesis statement”: a 1- to 2-sentence summary of your argument/response to the selected essay question. Your plan should also identify the supporting points for your essay’s argument and indicate where relevant examples/hypotheticals/or thought experiments or scholarly literature will be incorporated. A single page plan will usually contain roughly 250-300 words.

2. The Literature Review

The second part of the assessment asks you to create a literature review for at least four scholarly sources. Scholarly sources can include peer-reviewed journal articles and books. These should address the theory taught on the module.

For each source you should summarise the argument and core contributions of the source. Some questions you may want to consider in creating your summary:

• What does the source discuss?
• What is the central argument?
• How does the source speak to the selected essay topic? How might it help you evaluate the essay question?

Each source should be cited in the text using the Harvard author-date system (not footnotes).
When approaching this element of the assessment think: 'what sources are most important for answering the essay question, and can I explain why?' The reading list is a good place to start.

3. The Bibliography

The third part of the assessment requires you to produce a correctly formatted bibliography listing each of the sources cited in the plan and literature review. The bibliography does not count towards the word limit. 

Marking criteria for the assessment are as follows:

First Class. 72, 75, 78, 85, 95.
A first class assessment will show a high level of knowledge and understanding of the subject matter of the selected essay question. The essay plan will have a clear statement of argument, a clear structure, and incorporate identification of relevant examples/hypotheticals/or thought experiments and scholarly sources throughout. The structure presented in the essay plan will be coherent and logical.
The literature review will contain at least four scholarly sources. The discussion of these sources will accurately identify their central arguments, relevance to the essay’s topic, and demonstrate reflection on the usefulness of the source.

Marking criteria for the assessment are as follows:

First Class. 72, 75, 78, 85, 95.
A first class assessment will show a high level of knowledge and understanding of the subject matter of the selected essay question. The essay plan will have a clear statement of argument, a clear structure, and incorporate identification of relevant examples/hypotheticals/or thought experiments and scholarly sources throughout. The structure presented in the essay plan will be coherent and logical.
The literature review will contain at least four scholarly sources. The discussion of these sources will accurately identify their central arguments, relevance to the essay’s topic, and demonstrate reflection on the usefulness of the source.

Upper Second Class. 62, 65, 68.
An upper second class assessment will show a good level of knowledge and understanding of the subject matter of the selected essay question. The essay plan will have a clear statement of argument, identifying the overall structure of the essay, and will identify some relevant examples/hypotheticals/or thought experiments and scholarly sources. The structure presented in the essay plan as a whole will have a logical structure.
The literature review will contain at least four scholarly sources. The discussion of the sources will accurately identify their central arguments, relevance to the essay’s topic, and demonstrate some reflection on the usefulness of the source.

Second Class. 52, 55, 58.
A lower second class assessment will demonstrate an adequate level of knowledge and understanding of the subject matter of the selected essay question. The essay plan will include a statement of the argument, contain some indication of the overall structure of the essay, and may seek to identify examples/hypotheticals/or thought experiments or sources. The structure presented in the essay plan as a whole will be logical and generally coherent.
The literature review will contain at least four scholarly sources. One or two sources might not be from the scholarly literature or may be unrelated to the essay question. The discussion of the sources will provide some summary of the central arguments of sources. There may be some discussion of the relevance of these sources to the essay’s topic or some reflection on the usefulness of the source. 

Third Class. 42, 45, 48.
A third class assessment will show limited understanding of the subject matter of the selected essay question. The essay plan may include a statement of the overall argument but this statement may be insufficiently clear or precise. The essay plan may give some indication of the intended structure, but may be imprecise, illogical, or poorly structured. Examples or literature, if identified, may be vague, tangential, or irrelevant to the essay question.
The literature review will contain at least four sources though some of these may not be from the scholarly literature. The discussion of sources may provide a largely descriptive summary of their contents with little to no reflection on their relevance to the essay question. Some attempt may be made to identify the arguments of sources though this identification may be inaccurate.

Fail 35, 38.
A failed assessment may show little if any knowledge or understanding of the subject matter of the selected essay question. The plan may lack a clear statement of argument, and may have little or no sense of structure. The plan may be repetitive or contain points not well-linked to the question. The plan itself may be quite short and missing a statement of the essay’s argument.
The literature review may contain fewer than four sources or contain resources irrelevant to the essay question. There may be a very general summary of the sources which is lacking in any discussion of their relevance to the essay topic. Summary of sources or their arguments may be inaccurate. 

Clear Fail 15, 25.
A clear fail of this assessment will show a lack of basic knowledge or understanding about the subject matter of the selected essay question. Parts of the literature review or essay plan may be missing from a clear fail.
The essay plan provided will not provide a sufficient statement of argument and may be confusing or illogical in its structure. Examples or literature if identified will be unrelated to the essay topic. The plan itself may be quite short.

The literature review may contain fewer than four sources and contain resources irrelevant to the essay question. A brief summary of the sources may be provided though the summary may miss important information and not identify the arguments of sources.