One of the most important things you’ll ever learn in your educational journey, is how to write an essay. Whatever subjects you choose to study, you can be sure that there will be essays to write! It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are on a subject, if you can’t put that information down on paper in a clear, concise and compelling manner. Learn to write the perfect essay and suddenly education becomes a lot easier!
So how do you do this? Well, let’s start at the beginning. The basic concept of an essay is often misunderstood. Many essay titles are posed as a question, and this is key. Examiners are looking for opinion backed up by facts, don’t presume there is a ‘right’ answer. However, don’t just stick to your own opinion, follow every angle and put forward every viewpoint you can think of.
Whatever essay you are writing, bear in mind the different viewpoints, how the issue affects different people, and any possible benefits or problems associated with that which you are writing about. For long essays, coming at it from every possible angle helps you to reach your word target without ending up with lots of unnecessary waffle. Don’t try to trick the examiners – they’ll see straight the filler fluff. Make all your words count and try not to drag out an essay.
The essay title is vitally important. Don’t skim-read and presume you know what it is asking. Scrutinise it, and very importantly, note the key words. Perhaps the title is ‘How and Why did WWII Start?’ How and Why are two different issues. You may find that half the marks are allocated to ‘how’ and half to ‘why’. Get carried away describing how the war started, and you may forget to mention why it came about. Do this, and you risk losing 50% of your marks before your essay has even been handed in.
Looking at these key words can be a rough indicator of how much essay space you should give to each topic. In the above example, you could write approximately half of your essay on how the war started and half on why. If the title had also asked you where it started, and who were the main people involved, then you could appropriate a quarter of your word count to each section. The important thing is to make sure you have answered every part of the question.
Go beyond your own personal opinion. Writing an essay is much easier if you look beyond your opinion and examine other options. For example, if an essay title was ‘Is Abortion Ever Right?’, your own opinion may be a simple ‘no’. So firstly you need to think deep about why you have this opinion. Many of us have strong beliefs without truly understanding why we think so. Perhaps you have this opinion because you believe it is a murder, so you can make this point, but then you must think about other reasons why someone would not agree with abortion (religious reasons for example).
Next comes the harder task, to put yourself at the other side of the argument. Why would people think abortion is right? Remember, this isn’t about your own views, this is about seeing an issue from every side. You may not agree, but some could state that an unborn child is not conscious, or that perhaps abortion is justified if the mother would be unable to look after a child. The ability to see any subject from different perspectives gives you a lot of material for writing essays.
Structure is very important in an essay. It needs to be well laid out and easy to read. The classic Introduction, Body and Conclusion layout is well worth following. Think about your essay in this way while you’re making notes and it will help you to get the work clear in your head. Your opening paragraph should acknowledge the question, you should then summarise the topic and briefly introduce the points you’ll be going into more deeply later.
Within the body of your essay, give each point or argument its own paragraph. Don’t cram too many points into one paragraph, make a single simple point and make it count. Elaborate on it and backup your points with facts and evidence where relevant.
Stay on the point. It can be easy to go off on a tangent and find you’ve written an essay predominately on an entirely different topic. Keep referring to the essay title to make sure you’re still on track, and never try to steer an essay on to another topic you’re more familiar with. Examiners won’t fall for this and will mark you down!
In your conclusion, again refer to the essay title. Summarise the findings you came to within the body of the essay and mention any overall insights you can draw from this information. Finally, read it over a couple of times, you’re bound to spot some errors you can correct!