Essay Writing for Students

Essay Writing for Students

First off, this is informal, meaning this is how I do my essay plans, not what some academic that lives under a rock has handed out for use. It’s a rough skeleton or framework that you can use to plan for the contents of your academic essay without having to write a proper, full draft. Drafting a complete essay isn’t always an option for in-class essays where the question is given to you on the day or you simply lack the time. If you know your material well then this will be all you need to pump out a nice A grade for your in-class essay. For assignment type essays, it can be used for the initial planning stages of your essay, but in that case a full draft will still be required for editing and handing in purposes (naturally). Think of it a shorthand prompt guide for your essay which you only have to expand on come exam day. If your memory is terrible like mine, then this method will be your best friend. I’ll attempt to explain how each section works and why it should be done in a certain way.

Alright, a quick explanation on some Australian terminology. You see, here in Australia there's this insane group of people that take your beautiful, miniskirt wearing bombshell of an essay and deface it with huge red writing, slander, generally useless comments and, alas, also your grade. In Australia we call them "markers" (or "bastards" depending on our grade) because they "mark" the paper, but in America you guys call them "graders". I'll be using the term "marker" because that's what complaining students here usually use and who am I to defy tradition?  So, moving on now that's been cleared up~

With any luck, by the end of this you’ll have learned how make the markers lap up your every word and send you into the 90% range~

How-to

Introduction:

Thesis statement – Your response to the essay question. A thesis is just a rewording of the essay question that states your argument “for” or “against”. Often you’ll be making a “positive” response which means that you agree with the question as opposed to a “negative” response which means you’ll be arguing against. “Positive” tends to be the way to go when choosing sides unless you know that they want a “negative”. It’s good to write your thesis out in whole so you have an idea of the wording for the exam otherwise you might forget out of pure nerves. Often you’ll at least have vague notion of the wording for the essay question, so this is easily tweaked in the exam. Usually it’s just switching out some words so that the thesis matches the question.

Brief overview of concepts – A quick covering of the concepts that you’ll be discussing in the actual essay. Usually something like, “Science fiction’s generic conventions are inherently predisposed...” will work for the discussing of your concepts. It’s a broad overview which informs the marker that the main point of your essay will be about the conventions of science fiction, which is really all they need to know for the introduction. You give the marker a rough idea of what you’ll be covering without using a “shopping list” of ideas. A "shopping list" is quite literally a list of all of your arguments, i.e. "... will discuss the history, context of the author, cognitive estrangement, devices and general conventions of science fiction." and the markers despise them with a religious zeal. “Shopping lists” are very bad in an essay and you will be docked marks for using them. Something vague like the aforementioned overview of your arguments should work fine and if you’re feeling anxious you can add on another expanding sentence to solidify what you’ll be discussing like, “This demonstrates...”. It’ll give it some substance while keeping it from being a “shopping list”.

Texts you’ll be referencing –Simply stating the texts and the composer of said texts that you’ll be using to prove your thesis. Integrating the texts into your concepts is a great way to score brownie points. So something like “Science fiction’s generic conventions are inherently predisposed... as seen in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” will make your marker swoon with delight and automatically give you a higher chance for better marks. This is part of “synthesis” and markers have a hot steamy love affair with it in essays which means a huge marks boost for you. I’ll expand on synthesis later.

Body:

Topic sentence – Your mini-thesis for the paragraph, stating the concept you will be discussing within the paragraph and how it relates to your thesis. One concept per paragraph is advised otherwise you’ll go off on a tangent and lose track of what you’re doing very quickly. It should only be a sentence or two long to direct the marker to the concept that you’ll be covering. Another sentence can be used to further explain what it is you’ll be arguing in the paragraph.

Concepts/themes– This will be meat of your argument. Here you will discuss and explain the concepts in relation to answering your essay question. Concepts will include whatever ideas that the essay question is asking you about. It’s all well and good to state how your concepts work in relation to your question, but you need evidence to prove it to the marker.  Each concept needs at least one piece of textual evidence to back it up. Evidence will help you explain your concept as well.

Evidence – Now your concepts mean nothing without textual evidence to prove that what you’re saying is valid. Let me stress that your concepts will be worth nothing to the markers if you don’t explain them with evidence. You must use one or more piece(s) of evidence for each concept you cover. Evidence, for literary essays, is typically the writing techniques (symbolism, metaphor, allegory, simile, monotomy etc.) that the composer uses to get their message across. This means quoting or paraphrasing from your texts and explaining how this technique (shown by a quote) managed to pull it off, then relating it to your essay question.

Integrating quotes – This is very important for you to score a good mark. By integrating your quotes you can keep your essay flowing and stylish for the markers to salivate over.

o   DO NOT - “In the quote “incessant buzzing” Huxley...” The markers know it’s a quote from the “quote” marks. You’ll only waste your time and break the flow of the sentence, making a very unstylish and unsexy essay. Yes, essays can have sex appeal (according to the markers).

o   DO – “Huxley’s description of the “incessant buzzing” of the helicopters promotes insect-like imagery which in turn...” Now do you see how much better that rolls off the mental tongue? Markers fall over themselves for this type of integration.

Anchor/linking sentence – This is the sentence which links back to your main thesis statement to tell the marker that yes, what you’re saying does still relate to the question. You restate your reworded topic sentence so that it refers to your thesis AND acts as a lead in to your next paragraph.

Rinse and repeat this same method for each paragraph you do.

Conclusion:

Restating your thesis – All this involves is the rewording of you main thesis statement so that it answers the original essay question. Remember to let the markers know that it’s a conclusion with “In conclusion...” or something like that seeing as most seem to be prissy over being forced to use their brain while reading an essay (you’d think that it being the last paragraph would be a give away, but try telling them that). High school students typically need the "In conclusion" because the markers or whoever sets the guidelines seem to be idiots and need to be told it's a conclusion. For our tertiary level students (college, university, etc.) it's the exact opposite. Be warned that markers HATE seeing "In conclusion" and anything telling them that it's a conclusion. When it comes to you guys, you just restate your thesis minus the "In conclusion...". You just slap them in the face with your conclusion  as though it were a large trout, then dive into some nearby bushes and the markers will love you all the more.

Concepts – You gloss over the concepts that you covered and how they helped to answer the question. Remember to keep it brief like in the introduction. You can get away with it being vague as you’re NOT doing a “shopping list”. It’s just another overview plus how it answers the question.

Anchoring the essay – The final couple of sentences should be purely on how the concepts you discussed answered and relate to the main essay question. There should be a tone of finality so that the essay feels finished. Don’t leave any hanging words because it looks really bad and the markers won’t be as satisfied. Remember, you want that essay to be the sexiest inanimate object they’ve ever laid eyes on. They should be giving it looks of barely restrained lust by the time you’re done.

Example

How it Looks in Practice~

You write these out in point form for the most part, apart from the thesis, topic sentences and anchor sentences. For the thesis/topic sentences and the anchors I'll give you a simple version and an advanced version. They are both saying the same thing, only the advanced version has turned the vocabulary up to eleven for the marker. This will be explained later in the Notes section.

Introduction:

Thesis - The simple version: "Science fiction aims to teach the responder by using allegories present in the genre's rules. Science fiction reflects the context of the author's time period by the logic and distance formed between the responder and the text."

Advanced: “Science fiction offers a didactic purpose via the inherent allegories present within the generic structure. Science fiction texts reflect the context of time span in which they were composed through the rationalisation as well as distance established between responder and text.”

Concepts – Generic conventions of science fiction, including cognitive estrangement etc.

Texts referenced – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Body 1:

Topic sentence – The simple version: "Science fiction cannot be easily defined, but a key feature is it's ficional element which separates it from reality."

Advanced: “Science fiction resists absolute definition with its key recognisable characteristic being the fantastic element which isolates it so heavily from reality.”

Concepts – Context/conventions of science fiction.

Evidence – Historical overview of science fiction as a genre.

Anchor – The simple version: "Brave New World is an example of science fiction's ability to create an allegory that confronts the responder."

Advanced: “Brave New World exemplifies the genre’s eventual capacity to reflect an issue through a fictional means, thus generating discussion.”

Body 2:

Topic sentence – The simple version: "Brave New World's negativity was the result of many utopian texts like H.G. Wells’ Men Like Gods which were more optimistic about advanced in technology and society."

Advanced: “Brave New World was the dystopian by-product of utopian texts like H.G. Wells’ Men Like Gods which presented utopias optimistic of the rapid advances in technology and society.”

Concepts – Huxley’s context that influenced the writing of the text.

Evidence – Historical context and perspectives of Huxley’s time period.

Anchor- The simple version: "Brave New World's content was a contrast to conservative views and aimed to shock the responder which creates the distance between responder and text as well as allowing the allegory."

Advanced: “Overall, the content of Brave New World was a contrast to the traditional conservative views that was designed to shock the responder and create the structural component of cognitive estrangement that allowed for the issues to be discussed by proxy.”

And so on for as many arguments or concepts that you have.

Conclusion:

Restating of thesis –The simple version: "In conclusion, Brave New World's level of detail and use of the genre allowed highly effective allegories which in turn lead to the discussion of issues in reality."

Advanced: “In conclusion, Brave New World’s extreme sophistication and exploitation of science fiction’s base generic conventions allowed an unprecedented level of allegorical didacticism, in turn forcing society to confront contemporary issues no matter how distasteful.”

Concept – Inherent nature of science fiction’s conventions in creating an allegory.

Anchoring the essay –The simple version: "Huxley raised science fiction from simple fantasy texts to a credible genre that focused on the education of the responder."

Advanced: “Huxley elevated science fiction texts from “pulp” escapism texts to legitimacy and cemented the genre as one inherently skewed towards the confrontation and education of the responder.”

There we have it, your essay plan soon to be a very sexy piece of paper sought after by all markers. When it comes to the actual essay all you need to do add some meat onto your skeleton and expand on what you’ve written down. This means you don’t need to memorise the whole essay so long as you know your material intimately. For the Evidence section it’s a good idea to write to down your quotes so that you what you’ll be using to explain each concept.