INTRODUCTION
The skill of writing essays is an essential tool if you are to achieve the kind of grade you want in the courses you are studying. This is true whether you are studying at GCSE, AS or A levels at school or college, or trying to gain a degree at university.
There is no single, foolproof method of successful essay-writing. However, the advice and the practical guidance you will receive in this book will provide you with all you need to know about how to improve your grade assessments by putting into practice some simple, but invaluable, principles of essay writing.
These approaches will work for you whether you are facing assessment in timed examinations and/or being judged by coursework assignments. In essence, the principles of essay-writing apply to both situations: when you are under the pressure of an examination room, or, at home or in college with more time to produce your assignment essay.
There is no doubt at all that the people who do best in assessments of all kinds are those who understand exactly what is required of them and who manage to deliver exactly that. In other words, it is not just what you know, but how you apply that knowledge when you are being assessed that finally counts.
In the case of examination, you have to be effective at sitting examination in order to maximize your grade potential. Like almost everything else, there is an art to taking exams. In other words, what you are being examined on when you sit an exam is your ability to sit examinations.
Equally, with coursework, you have to know how to present yourself in the most favourable light to the assessor. There has been a good deal of controversy about the role of coursework in examination assessment and how important a component for the basis of a grade award it should be. Problems of plagiarism from the internet and how to ascertain that students’ coursework has indeed been produced by the students themselves without undue assistance have cast a cloud over the whole issue. However, it is highly likely that some element of coursework, however reduced, will remain an essential element of examination assessment. Thus, it will continue to be essential for examination candidates to produce coherent, well-written and structured essays for their coursework.
Essay-writing is, then, crucial in both instances: exams and continual assessment. In most subjects, a talent for essay-writing is essential to achieve high grades. Candidates who fall down in this aspect of their work will do harm to their own chances of achieving the higher grades. It is as important as that, not some optional extra you can add onto your knowledge of a subject. Essay-writing skills are an essential component of being a successful student at all levels.
My belief is that the basic essay-writing skills are not that difficult to acquire. The reason why so many students fail to acquire these skills is that not enough attention has been paid to teaching them. It is inevitable that schools, colleges and universities spend most of their time teaching the core subject-matter of a course, but hardly any time in advising students how to put their ideas down on paper in the form of an essay. Yet, these skills are neither obscure nor too complex for the average student to learn. This book will show you a method of essay-writing in several simple steps and will provide sample essays. Once you have learned this method, you should be in a much stronger position to face up to the demands of essay-writing in your various courses and across the subject range.
CHAPTER 1
PLANNING YOUR ESSAY
Think about occasions when in everyday conversation you are asked your opinion about something or about how to do something. Isn’t your answer more likely to be well-received when you give the matter some thought before you jump in with both feet?
It is the same with essays, whether they are for coursework assignments or timed answers in classroom or examination situations. A little prior thought which is transformed into brief notes will pay dividends.
WHAT ARE YOU BEING ASKED TO DO?
Whatever the form of the assignment you are given, you have to focus on the specific task you are being asked to perform: not what you would like the task or subject to be, but the actual task the question is asking you to perform. Forget the fact that you know a great deal about particular 1 aspects of a subject and focus your energies on answering on the exact topic you have been asked about. You don’t make up the assignments you are set, your examiners do! So give them what they want, not the answer you would like to write, but the answer you’ve been asked to write.
That means reading the words of the question or the assignment with great care. Remember, give the examiners what they want, a response to the task they have set. Many a student has come a cropper by misreading the assignment or question and banging down almost all they know about a subject, regardless of whether it is relevant or not. Your essay may be absolutely brilliant in its own way, but if it’s not an essay written in answer to the set task, then you can kiss a good grade goodbye.
Answer the specific question that is set, not some other question that you might like to be answering. Relevance is all!
EXAMPLES
To help you decide that, a useful approach is to underline three or four key words from the question. Why? Because that will focus your thinking on the approach you need to take and concentrate your mind on giving the examiners what they want.
Why does Shakespeare’s Hamlet delay carrying out his revenge for the murder of his father?
Consider the words that have been underlined from the question. Underlining ‘Why’ reminds you are being asked for an explanation of Hamlet’s motives.
Underlining ‘Hamlet’ reminds you it is Hamlet’s motives for his behaviour that are relevant, not the motives of some other character.
Underlining ‘delay’ reminds you the question is about the reasons for his delay in carrying out the revenge.
Underlining ‘revenge’ focuses on the subject of the task that Hamlet has been given.
What are you being asked to do here? What is your task? How can you give the examiners an answer in essay form that the examiners want? To help you decide, underline key words from the question.
What were the origins of the First World War?
By underlining ‘origins’ and ‘First World War’, you have focused your thinking on the events that led to the outbreak of the war, not some other aspect of the war or the course of the war itself. You may know an enormous amount about the First World War as a whole, but the only relevant information you need to answer this question are the reasons for the outbreak of the war. Don’t show off the breadth of your knowledge just for the sake of it. Pick and choose well. Sift through the knowledge you have and apply it in a relevant manner to the assignment.
Should the government intervene to prevent different media (newspapers, magazines, television and radio channels) from being owned and controlled by a few media moguls?
Consider what you are being asked to do here. What are the key areas you would need to focus on? Would these underlined words help you to focus on the task that has been set?
Should the government intervene to prevent different media (newspapers, magazines, television and radio channels) from being largely owned and controlled by a few media moguls?
More words have been underlined than in the two examples above because it is a longer and more complex question. The words ‘government intervene’ have been underlined to focus on who or what should be or should not be intervening. The words ‘different media’ emphasises that you are being asked to consider several forms of media. The words ‘owned and controlled’ reminds you the question is about who holds the power in the media, and ‘few media moguls’ tells you to deal with the question of media power residing in the hands of a few people.
By underlining these key words, you should have focused your thoughts on the specific question you have been asked to discuss.
Whether it be a coursework assignment or a question in a examination paper, the best way to focus your thinking at the start is by underlining the key words of the question or assignment.
PRACTICE
1. In the following assignments or questions, underline the key words that would help you focus on what exactly you are being asked to do.
a) Argue the case for or against the banning of smoking in all public places.
b) Which is your favourite character from the set books you have read? Give your reasons for your choice and an analysis of how the character is represented by the author.
c) How did the Vietnam War expose some of the rifts in American society of the 1960s and 70s?
d) What does the term ‘post-feminism’ mean and do you agree or disagree that we are now living in a ‘post-feminist era’?
2. Look at some examination papers in different subject areas and consider the questions. Underline the key words that would have helped you answer them.
MAKING A PLAN
Essays must have a planned structure. This is important for you, the writer of the essay. If you have a clear structure in your own mind, then it will be easier for you to organise your content and present it in a way that will represent your knowledge of the topic in the best possible light.
However, it is equally important for the reader of your essay. This will be the teacher or examiner(s) who will have to read your essay. It is essential that you make things as easy and understandable for them as possible. If you don’t have the assessors on your side because you have made things difficult for them by your lack of essay organisation, focus, clarity and continuity, then it is highly likely they will down-grade your essays. Meet the assessors more than halfway. Make their job easy for them. Impress them with your essay structure and your methodical way of setting about the set assignments.
Any essay has to have an overall structure and make sense as a whole. However, for the purpose of instilling a structured approach to essaywriting, it is useful to think of an essay as consisting of three main sections:
As you would expect, the second section, the development or body of the essay, will be by far the longest of the three. However, the opening and conclusion of the essay are equally important if you are to impress your assessor. Without this basic shape to your essay, your reader will query whether you have supplied a coherent response to the set task.
From now on, approach your essays with this structure in mind: an essay must have a definite opening, a considered development and an emphatic conclusion. All three sections have to be integral to the whole and be linked, but for the purpose of inculcating good practice, think in terms of essays with three parts to them. The body of the essay will be much the longer section of the three, but this main section must be preceded by an opening section and succeeded by a closing section.
PLANNING AND WRITING COURSEWORK ASSIGNMENTS
Clearly, you have much more time to make a plan for an essay answer when you are writing it for a coursework assignment than when you are in an examination or timed essay situation. As you have time at your disposal, it would be silly not to use it to create a structure for your essay in the form of notes and a step-by-step sequence.
There are various ways of how to do this: the important thing is for you to find a way that suits you. Having read the wording of the assignment carefully and underlined the key words, as advised in Golden Rule 2, you can now move to the next stage: making brief notes that will help you write your essay using relevant facts and analysis in a coherent structured manner. Begin by jotting down brief phrases that come to mind that seem relevant to answering the assignment.
Once you have done that preliminary work and you have chosen what is relevant to the assignment, you should then make a plan of how best to employ the notes to create a structured essay. To do this you need to work out a paragraph structure for your essay:
The overall objective is to impress your reader (the person who is going to assess your work) that you have written a relevant, coherent and wellstructured essay that answers the question that has been set.
In writing coursework assignment essays, it will pay to make a detailed plan before you start putting it down on paper.
EXAMINATIONS
In examination situations, where you are working against the clock and you have several questions to answer, you do not have the same time at your disposal to make such a detailed plan. However, despite the urgency that inevitably is part-and-parcel of any examination situation, it will be profitable to spend a few minutes making an essay plan, rather than plunging straight into writing your answers. Remember, in examinations, it is not how much you write, but the quality of what you write that will bring high grades. ‘How much did you write on question 3?’ is a very common enquiry of students to one another after the examination has ended. The implication of this question is that the longer your answer and the more pages of the answer book you have filled, the better you will have performed. That is decidedly not the case. An examination is not a competition among students to see who can slap down as many words as possible. There is absolutely no point in filling up booklet after booklet with answers that are not relevant or structured. As a former examiner, it was occasionally my sad duty to put a line through page after page of essay answers because they were totally irrelevant to the question.
Length of answer, then, is not the be-all and end-all. It is as well to remember that in any examination, you will normally only be able to use a fraction of what you know about any given subject. You have to reconcile yourself to that fact and decide what is most relevant to the assigned task from your body of knowledge about a given topic. Making brief notes before attempting an essay answer will help you to decide what is relevant from your overall well of knowledge and what is not.
When you have read the question and underlined the key words to focus your thoughts on what it is you are being asked to do, make brief notes in the form of words and phrases to help you focus further. These can be fairly random. Then take these notes and put them in the order you want to deal with them.
Now you have a structured approach to your examination essay. How long should you spend on this planning? My advice is not longer than five to seven minutes if the time allotted to writing the essay is an hour or less. You can get carried away making so many notes that you deprive yourself of vital time in writing the actual essay answer.
Allow time within an examination situation to make a brief structured plan for each of the essay answers you attempt.
PRACTICE
1. Look at some examination papers. Choose the questions you would have felt confident in answering and make a brief plan for your answers, bearing in mind the restricted time at your disposal.
2. Take some coursework assignments and make detailed plans of how you would write a relevant, coherent and well-structured response to the set task.
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