By the end of this section, I hope you’ll be better able to:

(1)       Plan your essays effectively.

(2)       Make sure that each essay has a beginning, a middle, and an end!

(3)       Make sure that you don’t spend too long on each essay!

(4)       Get good marks for assessed essays.

(5)       Write essays effectively “against the clock” during exams.

How long does it take to get together all the information you need for that perfect essay you’re going to write? Approximately infinite time! It’s impossible to collect together all the books, literature references, and other sources of information you would need for an all-embracing account of the topic involved. So, you’ve obviously got to make some sort of compromise, and get together a reasonable amount of information. How can you decide what’s “reasonable”?

Well, for a start, your essay needs to be balanced. So if there are different views possible, your reference material needs to include all main points of view. Your sources need to be as “respected” and “authoritative” as possible, so you may have to do a bit of asking to find out which to select.

Look carefully at the title, if you’ve been given one. Look for key words, such as:


explain
compare and contrast
describe
analyse
decide
and so on.


When selecting your source materials, try to make sure that the relevant key words are firmly in your mind. The chances are that if you stray off on tangents, you’ll not only be wasting time and effort, but you may even be losing marks.

You’ll often be given guidelines about the expected length of an essay. If you’re asked for 1000 words, you’ll be doing yourself no good by writing 10,000 words! It’s often, in fact, quite hard to keep the word-count down. Being able to keep it down is, however, a measure of your ability to summarise information concisely and coherently. This ability may be one of the things that your mark will depend on.

One of the best ways of sticking to relevant content is to use the “Lay an Egg” technique described in the previous section of this study skills guide.

This helps to ensure that you have as many as possible relevant points in your essay. It helps to make sure that you don’t go off on tangents.

When you’ve “laid your egg” you can look carefully at the different sub-topics and decide which is the most sensible order to bring them in.

Every good essay has these. The beginning is about showing the reader where the essay is heading. The middle is about getting there. The end is about reminding the reader where you’ve taken him or her. The end is also about summing up your main conclusions.

Which is the best order to write the beginning, middle and end? Why? Drag '1st', '2nd', and '3rd' against the words below and then compare your order with mine in the response.

1st 2nd 3rd


Beginning
Middle
End

There’s a problem with getting marks with essays! See if you can spot it with the next activity.

Suppose you've written a really good essay. You've got in it just about everything which relates to the task. You've got a logical beginning, middle and end. You hand it in for marking. When you get it back you look eagerly for your mark. Suppose its marked out of 20. What is your score likely to be and why?

There’s one big difference: the clock is against you! However all the same points apply. You need to plan - an “egg” will help a lot. You need to have that beginning, middle and end. You can still write your beginning last - even in exams. You can leave a half-page “gap” for it and press on with the “middle” first. You can continue logically on, and come to your “end”, re-stating briefly your main conclusions. Then knowing what your conclusions were, you can write your “beginning”. Allow yourself some vital minutes for the “end” and the “beginning”. These parts can carry more marks than you would have earned by having a little bit more in the “middle” instead.

Paragraphs and headings, and readability:

Whether writing essays in exams or not, you want the essay to be as “readable” as possible. Some lecturers like you to use headings for different sections of your essays - others don’t. Try to find out what their preferences are - ask them. Personally I like headings and sub-headings - they can help your work to appear well laid-out. What if you aren’t “allowed” headings?
Each paragraph needs to be more-or-less complete in itself. However, it’s best that paragraphs don’t get too long. A hallmark of a good piece of writing is that the reader should be able to “scan” it. One way of making this possible is to take particular care with the first sentence of each paragraph. The first sentence should set the scene for the rest of the paragraph. It should be possible to read just the first sentence of each paragraph and get a reasonable idea of the structure of the essay. How can first sentences be made to serve such purposes?


•       the first sentence can state a major point - the rest of the paragraph justifying the point and adding detail.

•       the first sentence can pose a question - the rest of the paragraph answering the question.

How can you make your sentences as “readable” as possible? Here are a few suggestions.

•       Keep them fairly short. A sentence should only try to say one thing. Too many phrases can cause the main point to get lost!

•       Watch your commas! Ask yourself: “is this comma really necessary?” It may be possible to replace a comma by a full stop and a new sentence. (I admit that I tend to use far too many commas - but I’m working on it!)

Don’t just write your essays - read them too! It’s amazing how often people don’t seem to read what they have written! Before you make your final draft of an essay that’s going to be handed in for marking, you may want to make several drafts. I don’t mean writing the whole thing out several times. I mean working several times through the material.

You could have many sheets of paper spread out on your desk, each dealing with a particular point or paragraph. If you space your draft answers out, you’ll have room to edit and make changes. You could use different colours for later editorial changes. This makes it easier to spot your later revisions when you come to write out the final version.

You can “shuffle” the pieces of paper containing draft sections. Gradually arrange them into the most logical order. Put numbers on them to record your decisions about order - you can always change the number if you have later better thoughts.

Spread the sheets out again so you can see everything at once when you start to draft out your “end”. Keep the whole lot in view as you carefully write out your “beginning”.
Allow yourself time to come back and have another look after a day or two. You may have thought of other things which could go into the essay.

If you’ve access to such a tool it can make editing and adjusting a lot quicker and easier. However there are disadvantages of word-processors as well. For a start it’s not always easy to see the whole thing at once. Of course you can overcome this - print out various “bits” of the essay every now and then and spread them around you. One word of warning though: word-processors are addictive! It’s easy to spend a lot of time playing rather than creating! And another danger: if you have to go somewhere special to use such a tool, it could mean that nothing happens to your essay all the rest of the time when you’re away from the word-processor. If you’ve got constant access to it there’s no such problem of course.

Keep a copy - and use it!

There’s always a danger with an essay that gets handed in. The danger is that it’s “out of sight, out of mind”! It could be weeks before you get it back. By the time you get it back you could have forgotten much of it. essays are often practise for exam questions. It’s best not to forget all about them even when they’re “in for marking”. That’s where a copy is useful. I don’t mean write it all out again - a photocopy is much easier! Having your own copy means you can keep your essay “in mind” - you can continue to learn from it. It also means that when you get the marked version back you will find the comments written on it by your tutor much more useful. You will be able to make maximum use of this feedback. The topic will still mean something to you rather than having been forgotten.

Activity 1

I would suggest the following as the most sensible order:

Beginning:    3rd
Middle:       1st
End:    2nd

This may at first look a bit odd. Let me explain. The main part of the essay is of course the middle. This is where you go into details about all the relevant components of the essay. You can only really make your summary when you know exactly what you’ve done. So it’s sensible to write your conclusions after writing the main part of the essay.

What about the beginning? Well it’s much easier to explain where the essay is heading when you know exactly where it’s going. You know this best when you’ve already written the middle and the end!
By using the above strategy, you give three-stroke power to your essay. You start by telling your reader what you’re going to do in the essay. Then you do it. Then finally you sum up what you’ve done. This makes the whole thing much more logical and coherent.
If you were to write your beginning first you may not manage to get where you set out to go. If you don’t write a good “end” your reader may be left “up in the air”. A good essay is a bit like a conducted tour. It’s most successful if it goes where it’s supposed to!

Activity 2

(a)       Fullmarks for that essay?

Not too likely in fact. Why not? Perhaps because the person who marks it knows a bit more about the topic than you do. Perhaps because there’s always going to be something you haven’t covered. Perhaps because the person marking it doesn’t want to admit that your essay is as good as he or she could do!

(b)       17 marks or so is a more likely score for a really good essay.

Sad, isn’t it? The reasons for not getting 20 may be the ones I mention in (a) above. Of course if you do get full marks don’t complain!

So, you should now be accepting that even if you write a perfect essay you’re not too likely to get a perfect score. This has a message for you. The message is about how long you should spend on essays. It’s not worth spending a vast amount of time hoping to get that perfect score. The last few marks are very elusive. You’re much wiser to spend a reasonable amount of time - and earning a reasonable score. If you were to spend vast amounts of time on each essay you’d have little time or energy left for all the other things you need to be doing. Important tasks like revision may get put into second place.