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When your essay has been marked and returned, set aside time to carefully consider the feedback given. This will give you useful information about how to approach your next essay. If you do not understand the feedback given, it is important to seek clarification and advice. Although lecturers cannot always provide one-to-one meetings, your university is likely to have study advisors who can help.
Tips
Think carefully about your essay question and why it is worth asking. This will help you choose a worthwhile focus for your paper.
Do some initial background reading. If you discover that there is not enough information to support your chosen essay focus, you can choose another essay title.
Write a rough outline plan before you start reading and taking notes. This will help you read efficiently and with a clear purpose.
Understanding the essay question
Sometimes set essay questions can be difficult to interpret. You may not know exactly what you are expected to do. However, if you break the question down into parts, you will find it easier to answer.
Essay questions can generally be divided into two parts:
Glossary
trait A trait is a particular characteristic, quality, or tendency that someone or something has.
1The topic – this tells you the general area of your research.
2The focus – this tells you what you need to find out about the topic.
It is important to pay careful attention to the focus of the essay question because this indicates the boundaries of your research. The question ‘Is generosity an innate human trait?’ limits your discussion to the issue of whether human beings are generous by nature. You should not be tempted to discuss at length other issues such as whether generosity is morally good or bad.
Glossary
boundaries The boundaries of something such as a subject or activity are the limits that people think that it has.
Notice also that the question requires you to focus on generosity in humans. You may find it useful to make comparisons, for example to behaviour in animals. However, you should keep your focus on human beings.
Once you understand the topic and focus, you need to think about how you are expected to approach the question, that is, what you need to do to answer it.
Exercise 2
Choose the option a, b or c which best describes how you should approach the question.
Is generosity an innate human trait?
a You should answer ‘yes, it is’ or ‘no, it isn’t’ and give your reasons.
b You should evaluate the arguments for and against the notion that generosity is an innate hum an trait and come to a conclusion expressing your opinion.
c You should write everything that you have been able to find out about generosity in human beings.
Instruction words in essay questions
Sometimes essay questions contain an instruction word or expression which indicates the approach you should take.
In this case, you are instructed to make judgements about the media coverage. You might ask yourself: How good or bad was it? Or: To what extent was it fair, accurate, or thorough?
Notice how changing the instruction word changes the approach.
For example:Analysemedia coverage of the 2008 banking crisis.
This question requires you to study media coverage in order to come to an understanding of why it was the way it was. This might involve looking for patterns or dividing it into categories in such a way that allows you to understand it more deeply. You might ask yourself questions such as: How frequently was the banking crisis mentioned in the news? Which aspects of the crisis were given most attention? What sort of language was used to describe the crisis?
Exercise 3
Instruction words often appear in the introductions to essays and reports. Complete the essay extracts below by underlining the most appropriate word in italics.
1 Section 1 will discuss/justify racial stereotyping with regard to the ‘big five’ personality traits. Section 2 assesses/examines the interplay between cultural stereotypes and media representations of minority ethnic communities.
2 This essay compares and contrasts/outlines the main components of the government’s poverty reduction strategy… A final evaluation will trace/assess the extent to which government measures to reduce child poverty have met targets set in 2000.
3 This study will trace/justify the one-thousand-year history of the Catalan language. It will then outline/compare and contrast Spanish policy on minority language protection with that of the Scottish government in relation to Gaelic.
4 This essay will argue that there is little evidence to justify/outline arguments in favour of state intervention.
Exercise 4
Eight common instruction words and expressions along with examples are given in the table below. Match each expression with the correct definition a–h.
Exercise 5
Write definitions for the instruction words in bold below.
1Comment on the key components of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
2Illustrate the impact of management style on teamwork in organizations.
3Relate the principal factors that are commonly thought to influence a person’s choice of life partner to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Describing versus presenting an argument
Some essay questions require you to describe, that is, to display knowledge without necessarily giving your opinion about it.
For example:Which regions of the world are most seriously affected by conflict over access to water resources?
This question asks you to list and describe the parts of the world where there are the most serious conflicts over lack of water.
Other questions require you to present an argument, that is, to give your opinion backed by supporting evidence.
Glossary
supporting evidence Supporting evidence is information that is used to prove something.
notable Someone or something that is notable is important or interesting.
For example:How can conflicts over Nile River water resources best be resolved?
To answer this question you need to give your opinion about the best way or ways to deal with conflicts over access to Nile River water. You need to give reasons for your opinion and supporting evidence, that is, examples and data to prove your point. You also need to show that other ways of dealing with the problem are or have been less effective.
Often essay questions ask you to both describe and argue.
For example:What have been the most notableconflicts over water resources over the last ten years and what are the most effective approaches to resolving these types of disputes?
To answer this question you have to list and describe and present an argument based on your evaluation of the evidence. Be careful! It is often easier to describe than to evaluate. Less experienced students often focus too much on displaying information and not enough on developing an argument. Instruction words can also be categorized in terms of whether they require mainly description or mainly argument in the response.
Tip
Remember that to achieve higher marks it is usually necessary to critically evaluate information and present a strong argument.
Exercise 6
Look again at the instruction words a–l below and answer questions 1–3.
1 Which require mainly description?
2 Which definitely require you to give your opinion?
3 Which instruction word is most common?
Note that the answers given in the answer key are suggestions only. In practice, you should interpret each assignment task in the context in which it has been set. Remember that certain instruction words, for example, ‘compare and contrast’, sometimes require a more descriptive response and sometimes a more evaluative response.
For example:Compare and contrast horizontal axis design wind turbines and vertical axis design wind turbines.
This instruction requires a straightforward description of the similarities and differences between two types of wind turbine.
For example:Compare and contrast electricity generation from wind power versus electricity generation from hydropower in terms of efficiency, value for money and environmental impact.
Here you have to describe the similarities and differences between two forms of electricity generation in order to make judgements about them.
Understanding long and complex essay assignments
Sometimes essay assignments can be wordy and complex. However, these too can be broken down into parts:
Glossary
preamble A preamble is an introduction that comes before something you say or write.
1 The preamble: background information about the context of the question.
2 The question (or questions): what you need to find out.
The preamble gives you important information about the topic and its limitations. Notice that you need to focus your discussion on secondary school pupils (not primary school pupils or university students) and their performance in three subjects: language, mathematics and science.
Note that there are several questions that need to be answered.
Question 1 requires you to describe similarities and differences and to analyse the two sets of figures in order to identify the most significant trends.
Question 2 requires you to evaluate the evidence that the trends you have identified were caused by changes to national educational policy. Here you need to present an argument.
Question 3 requires you to consider at least one other possible explanation for the trends you have identified. Here too you need to present an argument.
Tips
Divide long assignment instructions into parts: the preamble and the question or questions.
Study the preamble for information about the topic.
Analyse each question separately.
Make sure you answer each question when you do your research.
Writing your own essay question
Sometimes you may be asked to write you own essay question. This is more likely to be the case towards the end of your course when you have had some experience of writing research essays. To write an essay question you can follow steps which are similar to those involved in interpreting a set essay question. Select:
1 The topic: the general area you want to investigate.
2 The focus: what you want to find out about the topic.
3 The approach: how you are going to investigate it.
Choosing a topic
You will probably spend a lot of time and effort on your research, so it is important to pick a topic that interests you. However, your topic should also be relevant to your course. You need to use your essay assignment to demonstrate that you can think more deeply about an issue covered in your lectures and/or reading.
If you have difficulty identifying a suitable topic, try looking at your course outline and lecture notes. List the topics that are most interesting to you and that seemed important to your lecturers. Put your list away for a time. When you come back to it, see what grabs your attention most.
Narrowing the topic down
Once you have chosen a topic, you need to narrow it down until you have a focus. If you write about a topic without first identifying your focus, you will probably end up conveying a lot of information without examining it in any depth.
Glossary
impact The impact that something has on a situation, process, or person is a sudden and powerful effect that it has on them.
Before you start your research, you need to think about what aspect of the topic is most interesting to you. For example, if you want to write about the topic of the internet, you may decide to focus on: the impact of the internet on how people relate to others.
This is a good start, but the topic is still rather broad. One method for narrowing your topic further is to highlight the key words and list specific words under those categories:
For example:the impact of theinterneton howpeoplerelate to others
Under internet you might list: online gaming, social networking, or access to information.
Under people: children between six and ten, adolescents, young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, people who spend more than five hours per day online, etc.
