|
|
|
|
|
How to Write a Great Essay
|
How to Write a Great Essay
Students are taught how to write an essay from a young age, and yet essay writing is still a process that mystifies many people. Part of the problem is that the basic essay writing technique drummed into students during years 7-9 gets lost as the pupil begins to confront more complex texts and ideas. Essays become a race to show the examiner how many excellent ideas a student has on the subject, rather than a carefully thought out and skilfully executed response to a question. The following guidelines below offer some suggestions on ways in which A Level students can go back to basics when planning essays. By applying these processes to their work they can make sure that they do not risk losing any credit they might receive for their ideas, simply because they failed to accomplish the most basic requirement of all; answering the question.
Pinning Down the Argument
1. Every essay needs to have an over-arching argument that links all the strands together in order to present a coherent answer to the question. It may not always be entirely obvious that this is what the question is asking you to do. Sometimes the title will not even be put to you in the form of a question. For example, “discuss Austen’s presentation of male and female characters in Pride and Prejudice”. What this essay title really wants you to do is to answer the following; what are the key characteristics that either separate or unite male and female characters in Austen’s novel? Your answer cannot just randomly switch between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet without any explanation, there has to be a clear structure that shows the reader how and why your comments serve to answer the question that has been put to you.
2. It needs to be clear immediately from the start of the essay what the argument will be and how all the different points that you discuss are going to build upon and support this point of view. The best way to start thinking about your argument is to write a thesis statement. This is just a paragraph or so that sets out your own answer to the question and can be used to help write the introduction and to remind you of your central focus at every stage of the essay-writing process.
Introduction
1. This needs to begin confidently by setting out exactly what you think the answer to the question is and how you are going to prove it through your textual analysis. Think of it as a signpost, telling the reader what he/she should expect from your essay. This will help because later on if the reader discovers a point whose relevance to the question is not immediately obvious, he/she may have a better idea of where the point will eventually take him/her. The reader knows that you know what you are doing and right from the beginning he/she will have a lot more confidence in your writing.
2. Introductions can include historical context and biographical information but only if it is relevant to the essay question. Do not be tempted to include something just in the hope that you will impress the reader with your knowledge of the subject.
Writing the Body of the Essay
1. When you move onto the main part of your essay, make sure that every paragraph opens and concludes with a statement that shows how this point contributes to your argument and thereby answers the question. One useful technique to check whether or not you have actually done this is to copy and paste the first and last sentence of every paragraph into a word document. You can then read these and check whether you can see an argument develop through these sentences. If the sentences appear to be a mixture of random points then it is clear that you have not used each paragraph to structure your argument effectively enough.
2. Do not be tempted to ever finish a paragraph with a quotation. It might look effective but your last sentence should always be used to link the paragraph back to the question.
3. Be careful with grammar, as simple mistakes here can obscure the meaning of the sentence. It can be frustrating to read an essay where the writing does not flow properly and this could result in lost marks in the exam room. Try reading parts of your work aloud in order to check that it is grammatically sound.
4. When you work with secondary criticism, make sure that you resist the temptation to make it all fit together into one neat interpretation. What is often most interesting about studying criticism is the way in which people can view the same texts completely differently. Do not just skip over what appears to be complicating detail, instead look closer into why there seems to be a contradiction between two approaches to the text. However, what is most important with using literary criticism is to keep in mind how it relates to your own ideas and thoughts on the text. Do not be afraid to challenge somebody else’s opinion and remember whose argument this essay is. Having said that, be careful not to go too far in the other direction. By all means challenge an argument, but do not insult it or question the intelligence of the person who wrote it!
5. You will have probably been taught the formula “point, evidence, analysis” at GCSE and you still need to follow this through at A Level, just at a more sophisticated level. Many students make the mistake of making the point, giving a quick quotation in order to offer some form of supporting evidence, and then moving straight onto the next point. It needs to be completely clear to the reader exactly how that quotation supports the point that you are trying to make.
6. To gain the higher marks at A Level you need to show some awareness of how language, form and structure contribute to the text’s meaning. To do this, you need to look into quotations on a profound level and analyse the image being created and how the language has led you to visualise this. Take the following example from Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”; “in all my dreams, before my helpless sight,/He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”. Think about how the language works in these two lines, especially within the triplet at the end. Rather than just giving us a vague indication of how horrendous this man’s death was, Owen uses these powerful words to help us actually visualise the man as he stands there suffocating, feeling the gas seep deeper into his body until he is “drowning” in the poison. Instead of walking towards Owen, he “plunges” at him, desperately and violently throwing himself forward. By using verb forms, we see the man going through these actions before our own eyes, and Owen forces us to recognise the devastating vision that he relives every night. If you can tease your quotations apart in this manner then you show how well you understand the text and how in command of the evidence you are. This then gives the reader more confidence in your argument and shows that you have thought about the writing on a multi-dimensional level.
Conclusion
1. This part of the essay is used to draw your points together and to make it clear to the reader the final destination that your argument has reached. He/she needs to be able to understand why you have taken the reader through the points you have and to feel that you have done everything you promised to do in your introduction.
2. However, one thing to be careful of is simply repeating everything that has already been said. If you repeat everything again word for word then it will make your essay sound clunky. A conclusion should not just feel like a copy and paste of your introduction. As you bring all your points together, it is sometimes worth thinking about how what you have done fits into a wider context and to raise other potential questions and ideas you could explore if you had more time. The best conclusions should leave the reader with the impression that the author could have gone on for another ten pages if he/she had had the time because they are so confident and in command of their topic and argument. A conclusion should show that you are aware that what you have written can only ever be one tiny fragment of everything there is to say about a novel/play/poem.
One of the most important things to remember when you are writing an essay is that you may not always get it right first time. Yes, you will probably have some very lucky person in your class who has the Midas touch with essays and can pull off a perfectly structured, brilliantly insightful, A grade argument first time. But for most of us mere mortals, essay writing is about being flexible and prepared to accept that the structure of the argument needs revising. It is also about very careful planning. If you rush into a first draft of your essay without having given any thought to what your answer to the question actually is, then do not be at all surprised when you find yourself having to do it again. Things do change when you are writing, and the chances are you will have sudden strokes of genius, and uncover a point that simply has to be inserted into your essay. However, you will find it a lot easier to make these kinds of changes if you already have a well thought out essay structure and a sense of how every point that you have made is relevant to your answer. Examiners do want to see how well you know a play, novel or poem and you will get credit for remembering quotations and character names. But this is not enough. The vast majority of candidates will know this information. If you want to secure the top marks then you need to show what you can do with this material, and this means translating your knowledge and understanding into a mature, coherent and compelling argument. This is what separates the students who know the superficial details of a text from the ones who truly understand it.
Article Author : Joanna Woods
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
