how to write a great essay
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How to write a great essay
Croydon, 2nd July 2011.
What is a good essay?
What makes a good essay?• Have you answered the question?• Have you drawn on the relevant parts of the course for the main
content of your essay.• Do you show a good grasp of the ideas you have been studying in
the course?• Have you presented a coherent argument?• Is the essay written in an objective, analytical way, with
appropriate use of illustration and evidence?• Is the essay clearly written and presented?
maps
Seven Stages of Essay Writing• Taking in the title: Underlining the key words in the essay title and thinking
about it for a couple of days. Formulating the overall purpose of the essay.• Gathering Material: Gathering together notes for the essay from your course
materials. Working out what use you can make of the course materials you have been studying.
• Generating Ideas: Getting ideas on to paper; quickly jotting down thoughts, your response to the notes you have been making, your response to the question, additional questions, etc. Capturing you own thoughts on paper.
• Planning: organising your notes into a simple outline plan. Working out what shape to give the argument of the essay.
• First draft: writing a first draft; ‘talking’ your reader through your argument, with explanations, illustrations. Translating your own ‘private’ language into a shared ‘public’ language.
• Reviewing: reading over your work in the light of the essay title and correcting errors and omissions. Quality control.
• Final Draft: Writing a final draft, paying attention to legibility, accuracy and general presentation. Presenting a polished end product.
Getting Started• Practice writing
– Do• start writing. • include everything that you know about a subject.• Make observations about the question• Think about how you feel about the TMA
– Don’t • look at your notes• stop writing• think about the quality of what you are writing (this isn’t the point)
• Brainstorming/ideas shower• Mindmapping
The Question• How did the Romantic theorists conceive of the imagination, and
what did their ideas imply about their view of the nature of art and the artist? (A207)
• In what ways does drama add to our understanding of the history and society of fifth-century BCE Athens? What are the main strengths and weaknesses of this kind of evidence? (A219)
• How has the development of feminist art history affected both the questions we ask about art and the selection of works for study? (A216)
The Plan
C E N T R A L I D E A
THEME THEME THEME THEME
topics topics topics topics topics
The Argument• You and your reader should know clearly what you are
writing about.• Ideas and events linked in a sequence• Clear sense of direction• Clear beginning and end• Sense of completion
Introduction
• Give an overview.• Present the central idea of the TMA.• Give reasons for writing the TMA.• Explain how you will interpret the title.• Give your reasons for answering the question in a particular way.• Introduce the questions that the TMA will be addressing.• Give background to the main topic of the essay; historical/contextual.• Make a bold statement that the rest of the essay will fill out and justify.• Quote from somewhere else in order to interest the reader and give them a feel
for what the whole essay will be about.• Present concrete example or story which your essay will explain or elaborate
upon.• Relate the assignment to work in the same field.• Convey the writers own relationship to the material and assignment.
Conclusion• Summarise ‘answers’ to questions the assignment sets out to
address, signalled in the introduction.• Refer back to the question posed in the title and show that it has
been answered.• Give a sense of an ending.• Point out what the assignment has and has not answered.• Show that the writer has done what she proposed to do.• Put forward the writer’s point of view in light of the evidence she
has presented.
• Allow the writer to be positive about ideas in the assignment.
Review• Does the piece have a central idea? Is this idea apparent or do you have to
‘search’ for it? Is the central idea clear enough for you to restate in a different way?
• Does it raise questions which it doesn’t answer?• Does it convey a sense of an argument developing?• Do points, both within and beyond paragraphs, seem to follow logically? Does
the whole piece hang together?• Why is a particular piece of information in the essay? What work is it doing for
expressing the ideas of the assignment?• Can you understand what is writer? If not can you see why? Does the writer’s
use of subject terminology seem clear and confident?• Does the introduction seem helpful as a signpost for the whole piece?• Does it have a satisfying ending?• Does the ending in particular and the piece as a whole answer the question
set? How do you know? Has the writer referred to the question clearly and explicitly?
Key Questions?• Does this example work?• Is this idea clear?• It there too much/not enough evidence?• Is it too personal?• Is the English OK?
