How to Write Better Essays

Bryan Greetham

• Publisher: Red Globe Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781352001143
• eBook ISBN: 9781352001150
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

This indispensable guide takes students through each step of the essay writing process, enabling them to tackle written assignments with confidence. Students will develop their ability to analyse complex concepts, evaluate and critically engage with arguments, communicate their ideas clearly and concisely and generate more ideas of their own.

Chapters are short and succinct and cover topics such as reading purposefully, note-taking, essay writing in exams and avoiding plagiarism. Packed with practical activities and handy hints which students can apply to their own writing, this is an ideal resource for students looking to improve the quality and clarity of their academic writing.

This book will be a source of guidance and inspiration for students of all disciplines and levels who need to write essays as part of their course.

Stage

1

Interpretation of the Question

Introduction

Often, and for the best of motives, our problems in essay writing begin the very moment we are given the question. Anxious to get on with the work and not fall behind, we skip the interpretation stage and launch straight into our research. As a result, we read sources and take notes without a clear idea of what’s relevant, beyond some very general idea of the subject of the essay. Then finally, after hours of toil, tired and frustrated, and no clearer about what we’re doing, we’re left with a pile of irrelevant, unusable notes.

Yet just an hour or two spent interpreting the question would not only have saved us this wasted time, but would have given us a clear idea of what the question is getting at and a better understanding of what our tutors are looking for in our work. And even more, it would have given us the opportunity to get our own ideas and insights involved at an early stage. Without this, our work can seem routine and predictable: at best just the recycling of the ideas that dominate the subject.

So, what should you be looking for when you interpret a question? All essay questions tell you two things: the structure your essay should adopt for you to deal relevantly with all the issues it raises; and the range of abilities tutors are expecting to see you use in answering the question.

Interpreting the question

1Saves us wasted time.

2Gives us a clear idea of what the question is getting at.

3Tells us what tutors are looking for.

4Gets our own ideas involved so that our work is not so predictable and routine.

Structure

Take the first of these: the structure. In the following chapters you will learn how to unwrap the meaning and implications of the question, so that, before you go off to do your research, you will have prepared for yourself a clear structure of the issues that the question raises, so you know what you’re looking for. In many questions this will develop out of your analysis of the key concepts in the question. Most of us struggle to do this well, but the skills involved can be easily learnt. You will be shown a simple three-step technique for analysing the most difficult concepts.

Then you will be shown how to brainstorm the question. Again, this is not a time-consuming task, but it will help you to use more of your own ideas and avoid wasting time in your research. Once you’ve learnt to do this, you will be able to make two important things clear to yourself before you start your research: what you know about the issues the essay question raises, and the questions you want your sources to answer. Without this the authors of the texts you read are likely to dictate to you and you’ll find it difficult to distinguish between what’s relevant and what’s not.

Two things become clear:

1What you know about the issues.

2The questions you want your sources to answer.

Range of abilities

Then, once you’ve brainstormed your ideas and know what questions you want your sources to answer, there’s just one more thing you need to be sure about before you begin your research. You must be clear about the range of abilities your tutors want to see you use. Otherwise you may find yourself tackling the essay in a way that doesn’t answer the question, and noting information that is irrelevant.

Chapter

1

Revealing the Structure

In this chapter you will learn:

•how to avoid irrelevance in your essay by carefully interpreting the meaning and implications of the question;

•how to reveal from the question the structure your essay should adopt;

•how to make sure your essay qualifies for the highest marks on offer.

Obviously it’s important to realise that you’re not embarking on a piece of open-ended research. You’re answering a particular question that raises particular sharply focused issues. You must, therefore, be rigorously selective in collecting your material in the research stage, and in planning and writing the essay. You should use only material that is relevant to answering this question.

There are times in the research of every essay when you find yourself collecting material that is interesting and so closely argued that you find it difficult not to take notes from all of it, particularly when it’s relevant to the wider implications of the topic. But if it’s not relevant to the problems raised in this essay, ditch it! File it away for other essays, by all means, but don’t let it tempt you in this essay. Otherwise your writing will lose focus and the reader will fail to understand what you’re doing and why.

Analyse the key concepts

With these warnings in mind, it’s essential to pin down two things: how many parts there are to the question and what weight you will need to give to each part. With many questions these structural problems can be solved by analysing the key concepts used in the question. Indeed, in most, if you fail to do this, the examiners will deduct marks: they will expect to see you show that you can analyse difficult abstract concepts and allow this to influence, if not determine, the structure of the essay.

Concepts reveal:

1How many parts there are to the question.

2What weight you should give to each one.

For example, markers for the University of London are told to award the highest marks (70–100 per cent) to those students who ‘note subtlety, complexity and possible disagreements, [which they] will discuss’, while only average marks (40–60 per cent) are to be awarded to the student who adopts a ‘More relaxed application’ of the question, and who ‘follows [an] obvious line [and] uncritically accepts the terms of the question’.¹

Similarly, in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University students are told:

Papers will be graded on the basis of the completeness and clarity of your analysis and the persuasiveness of your recommendations. As always, we will be appreciative of well-organized and well-written papers.²

The same emphasis can be found at the University of Oxford, where examiners look for a good analytical ability to distinguish first class and upper-second class scripts from the rest. In the marking criteria it’s only in these two grades that any mention is made of analytical ability, with those failing to display it more likely to end up with lower-seconds and below. A first class script should show:

analytical and argumentative power, a good command of facts, evidence or arguments relevant to the questions, and an ability to organise the answer with clarity, insight and sensitivity.³

An upper-second class script also displays these qualities, but ‘less consistently’ or ‘to a lesser degree’ than a first class script.

Questions

To give you an idea of what this means in terms of actual questions, listed below is a selection of essay questions from different departments at different universities around the world. You will see that the answer to each of them hinges upon the same ‘clarity, insight and sensitivity’ that we can bring to the analysis of the key concepts in the question.

Some of them, as you can see, incorporate the concept in an assertion or opinion, which is not always obvious. Others present it in a statement of incontrovertible fact, which you must analyse before you can evaluate it to see whether it is consistent with the facts or just a subjective opinion.

Alternatively the concept could be presented in the form of a generalisation.

Concept

Indeed this is, in fact, exactly what concepts are: they are general classifications that we develop from our observation of individual instances of something. When we ‘conceptualise’ from our experience we abstract the general concept from a group of things that all share particular characteristics. All occupations that share particular characteristics are grouped together and classified under the concept ‘profession’.

So it is important to identify the opinion, the statement or the generalisation and let the markers of your essay know that you have done so. The first thi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• Why Write Essays?
• The Stages
• Stage 1 Interpretation of the Question
• Stage 2 Research
• Stage 3 Planning
• Stage 4 Writing
• Stage 5 Revision
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index