Steps of writing a good essay

Chapter One
Unit Two
Essay Writing Skills
Grade III
English Department
Faculty of Arts

Why do we write an essay?
O To inform your reader about your position
in relation to a particular issue.
O To argue for change or recommend
action.
O To analyze problems and present
solutions.
O To present and evaluate research
findings.

Essays written about studied
courses!
O Writing an essay is an opportunity for you
to develop new ideas and apply concepts
and theories from your course.

O You’ll develop a thesis and use reasoning
and evidence to support your point of
view.

Tertiary Essay
O Citing all the sources you use is extremely
important. If you don’t, you’ll be guilty of
plagiarism, which is taken very seriously by
the university.
O Most essays will be longer than you’ve written
at secondary school (most are between 1500
and 2500 words) and will be worth a large
percentage of your semester’s marks.
O You’ll usually be expected to analyze issues
at a deeper level than you did at secondary
school.

Analyzing the question
O Once you’ve selected your topic, you
need to be sure you understand what it
means before you begin any researching
or reading.
O A common problem is to make a quick
assumption that you know what it means
and what’s expected of you.
O However, if you’re wrong, even if you
write a great essay, you won’t get very
high marks if it doesn’t do what the
topic says it will do.

Strategies
O 1- Underline or highlight the key content
words or phrases and direction words
(such as discuss, evaluate, analyze, etc.)
and make sure you understand them. It’s
easy to overlook the direction words, but if
you just describe something when you’ve
been asked to analyze it, your essay is
likely to get few marks.

Example!
Essay topic
O ‘Explain the double-binds that managers
are faced with in hierarchical
organizations.’
O Even if you think you understand the
question and that you know the meaning
of the key content verbs, it is worth it to
double check and make sure you have it
all together!!

Key Content Verbs
O Explain: to analyze, focusing on the ‘how’ and
‘why’ of a particular issue; to identify reasons, causes
and effects; to go beyond describing and
summarizing.
O Double-bind: a dilemma; an argument forcing an
opponent to choose one of two equally bad
alternatives
O Manager: a person conducting a business or
institution; a person controlling activities of a
person/team
O Hierarchical Organizations: an organized system,
or set of connected things or parts in some type of
order such as order of importance.

REWRITE!
O ‘Analyze why and how the dilemmas
come about that are faced by people
who lead, guide and direct systems
(organized with levels and ranks).
Identify the causes and effects of
these dilemmas.’
O ‘Analyze the causes and effects of
dilemmas faced by persons leading,
guiding and directing ranked systems.’

Strategies
O 2- Brainstorming the question: Get a large
piece of paper and let your mind go – write
down anything that comes to mind when you
think of the essay topic. It’s important that you
don’t stop to think about whether what you’re
writing is relevant or not.
O The next step is to look at what you’ve written
and look for the beginnings of a plan for your
essay. At this stage you can cross out
anything you don’t think is relevant and, of
course, add other things you think of.

Strategies
O 3- Beginning your research… Now you
need to locate appropriate references.
You need to first read widely to get an
overview of the topic, problem, issue or
debate, and then narrow your reading
down to a few specific authors or key
issues.

Strategies

O 4- Planning your essay… An essay
outline is like the skeleton of your
argument. You can do this linearly (writing
a list of main points with secondary points
indented) or visually (for instance, drawing
a mind map or other diagram).

Planning your essay

O Whichever format you use, you’ll need to
identify:
O The main point
O Your supporting points or elaborations
O The evidence you’ll use to support
each point.

Strategies
Writing your essay
O You don’t have to write your essay in the
same order that people read it.
O Write the body first (because this is the
most important part) then write the
conclusion. (So you can sum up while
your main arguments are fresh in your
mind).
O And finally write the introduction (because
sometimes it’s difficult to write it until
you’re clear about what it is you’re
introducing).

Strategies
Writing your essay
O This is the stage when you need to think
of the writing style. You need to write in an
academic style and you need to write
clear paragraphs and sentences.

Writing the body of the essay

O In the body of the essay, all the
preparation you’ve done so far comes
together. Follow the outline you’ve made
already and write paragraphs with:
O Main Points
O Supporting Points
O Elaboration

Main Point
O Write down one of your main ideas, in
sentence form. If your main idea is:
O ‘private enterprise should not run
public utilities’, you might say this:

O The Longford Gas Inquiry revealed to the
community the damaging consequences of
private ownership of public enterprises.

Supporting Point
O Next, write down each of your supporting
points for that main idea, but leave four or
five lines in between each point. One of
your supporting points may be:

O Private companies are obliged to run their
operations in an entirely different way to
government.

Elaboration
O You may find the visual outline useful
here. In the space under each supporting
point, write down some elaboration for
that point. Elaboration can be further
description, explanation, examples, and
support from research or discussion:

Elaboration
O When the main point of an operation is to make
a profit, efficiency and safety can be the first
to suffer.

O A private company is not answerable to the
Victorian community in the same way that the
government is.

O Public utilities remain a matter of political
importance even when they are privatized.

Writing the introduction
O The introduction should:
O be designed to attract the reader’s attention;
O and give an idea of the essay’s focus.
O You need to set out clearly, concisely and forcefully
your approach to, and interpretation of, the
question as well as your point of view on it. You
might wish to agree with part of the question but
disagree with other parts.
O If so, make sure this is clear in your introduction.
The introduction should also include a general
broad outline of the more detailed arguments you
will write about in the main body of your essay.

Writing a Conclusion
O A conclusion should:
1. Remind the reader of the thesis of the essay.
2. Provide a summary of the main points and
arguments.
3. Point to the significance of your findings.
4. Point out the implications of the issues.
5. Not simply restate the introduction.
6. Contain no new material (i.e. it should not
introduce any new points).

Steps of writing a good essay

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