Essay Writing - brief notes

How to write an essay – a brief guide1. How to read for an essayDon’t try to read any book from cover to cover. You can get a good idea of what a writer istrying to say by reading the introduction and the conclusion. The other chapters, just like theother paragraphs of your essay, will be argument and evidence. Once you know your essaytitle, use the contents page and the index to work out which bits you need to read.Whenever you read a book, always make a careful note of the information whichyou will need for your bibliography: author; title; publisher; date and place ofpublication.Make brief notes. Try to summarise in one or two sentences at the end of a section what youthink is the main point the writer is making. If you want to write down a particularly usefulquotation, make sure you copy it accurately and put it in quotation marks in your notes sothat you will know it is a direct quotation. Whenever you make a note of views or a quotationthat you may want to use in your essay, make sure you make a note of the page(s) onwhich you found it. You will need this for referencing your essay.2. When to start thinking about your essayIt’s generally a good idea to start thinking about your essay as early as possible and certainlybefore you do anything but the most general reading. This means that you will be able tochoose your reading with the essay in mind and focus on what is relevant.3. Make sure you understand the questionThis may seem obvious but it’s all too easy to get a general idea of what the essay should beabout rather than a focused understanding of exactly what you’re being asked to do. Look for words like ‘discuss’, ‘describe’, ‘account for’, ‘compare’, ‘contrast’. These eachask for a different way of approaching the topic. Make sure you really understand each word in the question. Look up anything you’renot absolutely sure of Ask yourself what you think the question is ‘getting at’. Why are you being asked thatquestion in that way?4. Make an essay planYou can do this quite early on but keep returning to it and refining it as you read so that youdevelop a clear structure for your essay. The simplest and most universal essay plan is1) Introduction2) Argument and evidence3) ConclusionIntroduction: this could be one or more paragraphs and should cover What you think the question is asking for How you understand any difficult words or concepts How you intend to tackle the question (methodology)Argument and evidence. These paragraphs are the meat of your essay. Argument iswhat you think the answer is and why; evidence is the information and opinions of othersthat you’re using to back up your argument. It is very important that your essay containsboth these elements. All too often essays lay a lot of evidence before the reader withoutgiving a clear idea of what the evidence is there to demonstrate. Less often, but equallydisastrously, they present the reader with a lot of unsubstantiated statements and

opinions, without any reference to the information or scholarly writings on which they’rebased.When you’re thinking about your argument it may help to imagine yourself discussing theanswer with another student on the course. Suppose they disagreed with you, whatarguments might they use against what you want to say? How would you present yourideas in a way which would convince them? If you can convince the other student youshould be able to convince the marker.Conclusion. This is where you make absolutely clear what conclusions you want to drawfrom the evidence you have produced. The conclusion will seem rather repetitive. Youwill have said this already as your essay has developed but this is where you bring it alltogether. It’s a very good rule never to bring any new information into the conclusion.5. Essay structureEven before you start reading you will probably have some ideas about what you might wantto say in your essay. As you read you will develop new ideas about the essay question and youwill begin to know what points you want to make. The structure of the essay is about gettingthese points into a logical order and deciding how important each one is and how much roomyou want to give it. There is no single pattern for getting the structure of an essay right. Theimportant thing is that you know why you’re presenting your ideas in a particular order, andthat you’ve thought about which points are the most important, in making your essayconvincing. If you’ve really thought about this beforehand you will get much better resultsthan if you start writing with a vague general idea of what you want to say and just keepwriting until you’ve run out of words.6. QuotationsThere are two different kinds of quotation: quotations from the Bible or from historical writers which you want to use asevidence or as matters for discussion (primary sources). quotations from other scholars (secondary sources)In general you should be sparing with quotations from secondary sources. Unless thequotation is using a particular form of words which you need to have in full, you should alwaystry to give the views of other scholars in your own words to show that you have fullyunderstood them. You will find this easier if your notes have included summaries of writers’views (see above)7. ReferencesBoth the Cardiff programme and Exploring Faith have study guides which give details of howto reference. There are likely to be slight differences between them so make sure you followthese instructions consistently when writing footnotes. Don’t be intimidated by this. You justneed to make sure that you have made clear where you got your ideas and quotations fromand given all the information others would need if they wanted to find these for themselves.Your computer will insert footnotes automatically for you and renumber them if necessarywhen you alter your text so it’s well worth finding out how to use that function.8. PlagiarismWhen you fail to make it clear that you are using other people’s ideas and words it is calledplagiarism and is a serious academic offence. It can lead to your being penalised or failing themodule. This is why it’s so important to get quotations and references complete and accurate.If you’re conscientious about that you should have nothing to worry about.