Examination Essays – A Dummy's Guide
Essay writing is a staple of our life from those first attempts in primary school decorated lovingly with wax crayon, to our painstaking written assignments at school and college, to writing references and compiling CV's in the world of work. In short, the writing of essays and the need to write them well is an inescapable part of all our lives.
If it is such a routine part of our lives though, why then is the writing of an essay often seen as such a trauma,? In what follows I want to dispel some myths about essays and their writing, and suggest some practical ways in which the writing of a 1000 word document can be changed from a piece of gut wrenching fear to a straightforward piece of craftsmanship, no more terrifying than learning how to bake a cake or repairing a puncture on a bike.
What is an Essay? Essay Writing on trial!
The first good news comes in the meaning of the word itself – as you probably know it comes from the French word essayer, to try; the very first essays were by the thinker Montaigne who used his 'Essais' to try out new ideas that he and his audience were unused to, back in the 1580's. And in essence that is what essays still are, they try out arguments or put ideas on trial. Essays are not binding legal documents, scientific papers or Acts of Parliaments. They are short to medium length texts which try to prove the validity of a given idea or fact. In the context of exams, very simply they exist so that you can try out for yourself what you have been taught, and provide logical and readable evidence to back up your point of view. An A level essay is not meant to be definitive – even if you've read all of Wikipedia and attended every holiday course going , you won't be likely to say anything new about Newton's First Law, or why Hamlet dithers such a long time in taking his revenge. What you should be ready to do is read a question carefully and provide a clear answer, touching all the bases that you've decided are shown in that question. It is your ability to be clear and logical that is on trial, not you as a person...which leads to:
Oh my God, the examiner's going to think I'm stupid!
As a teacher and examiner over many years, I've noticed many things about the way essays are answered but the one that most often leads me to tears is the heartbreaking case of the examination room egotists, the people who somehow forget that the exam is about the subject, and bring to their essays all their anxieties, nerves, and a range of complexes that would fill a psychiatry textbook. And we've all been there, forgotten why we're taking the exam and instead tried to use the question to show the examiner that we're not as dim as we suspect we might be.
My all time favourite was a GCSE essay by a candidate who clearly knew nothing about his set text, so instead wrote me a hilarious and totally irrelevant comic piece. He finished with 'Hey, Mr or Mrs Examiner, I know this is trash, but I'm a nice guy and perhaps you could give me credit for making you giggle'. Well he did make me giggle, but an examiner's job is never to think about the person writing, merely the relevance of what they write.
One of the saddest examples of 'Tell me I'm not stupid, Mr Examiner' is the candidate who is convinced that if they throw every fact they know at the question it will turn into an essay. So they present a list of facts like a telephone directory, loosely strung together with 'and' and 'also' and usually a weedy little 'So it can be shown that..' to finish. They may have written like a zombie on steroids for 45 minutes but they have forgotten that basic fact -
You are not being tested, your powers of organisation are
The good news continues, because if you, your intelligence and your feelings about yourself are not on trial then acquiring a good exam method is a good and foolproof way of doing well. When you take a driving test it is not whether you would make a caring responsible driver that is at stake, but your ability to drive a car – and so with essays.
Blank Page Syndrome
All very well you say, but how do I get myself started and make some mark on that threatening empty white page of A4. This is where method comes in and where, we hope, panic disappears and essay technique takes over. The dud student and the A grade student alike will be concentrating very hard upon
The Question.
In examining at every level over the years from KS2 to postgraduate level, one thing that is clear to me is that the majority of essays stand or fall by the care the candidate has put into examining the question set.
In essence you have to do two things at this initial stage; the first is to
Examine the scope and nature of the question itself.
This will include bearing in mind the time you have to write (never forget to weight your time according to the marks available), working out what aspects of your syllabus or set text are being referred to, and how you are expected to answer. If the question ask s you to discuss a topic, that is not the same as asking to what extent do you agree or disagree with an opinion, as we shall see later.
The second thing you must do at this initial stage is
Work out what information you have at your disposal and how you are going to use it.
In my experience this is the most crucial step of the whole essay writing exercise and the step which is most often fluffed – chiefly because of the 'OMG the examiner will think I'm stupid' complex which we have already discussed. The temptation at this stage will be either to bombard the examiner with all relevant facts and ideas to show how clever you are, or to list in desperation anything you can remember, relevant or not, in a bid to prove that you have at least one functioning brain cell. Whether you are cocky or convulsed in self doubt however, the result will be the same. If you don't select your information carefully, and use quotation, evidence and formulas wisely, the essay will fall apart so you must make it second nature to -
Make the Most of Your Knowledge and Memory.
At this point I hope you will put up with a somewhat cheesy analogy that I developed while teaching English as a foreign language. If you've ever tried to speak in a language that's not your own, you will remember that sinking feeling as you start a sentence full of optimism and then run out of remembered words half-way through, leaving you spluttering and feeling like an incoherent plonker. This can happen in exam essays, only facts, not words will give out. Here's the analogy:
You're at home on a Sunday night, shops are closed, when you get a call saying that some old friends are in the area, and could they drop by. Feverishly you scan your fridge and cupboard to see what you have to give them. Eggs, milk, bread, butter, a dribble of red wine, couple of mushrooms, tin of value tomatoes, and an onion.
In scenario one, you worry it's getting late, don't bother to look closely at what you have and think you'll do a stew..obviously you're short of ingredients and half way through see that the watery mess in the pan is looking distinctly inadequate..desperately you stir in the eggs, the only ingredient unused and in no time at all you have ready for your oldest friends and their kids...cat's vomit a la carte.
In scenario 2, you pause a bit, see that although what you've got is a bit sparse something can be done with it – and half an hour later you have a reasonable mushroom omelette and tomato soup.
I hope the comparison is clear – if you are speaking another language you have to make the most of the words you know, and if you're writing an essay you have to consider carefully what facts you have in your mental store cupboard, and how they will fit together well. Because connecting the facts, reasonably and interestingly is the most important part of your
Essay Plan.
Remember the plan is just a sketch, a reminder to you of what the course of your writing will look like. Whether arrows, spider charts, mind maps – do what suits you best, note the quotes and evidence you will use, but be speedy (no marks for maps) and make sure you have established the logical connections between points because you are going to
Write!
Dare I say, the easy bit has arrived. You know where you are going, you've read the question thoroughly, you've worked out what facts or quotes you're going to use, and you've decided (I hope!) where you want your essay to end up. You also know that you need an introduction, a discussion and a conclusion. Your introduction will lay out the material you are going to use, and say how you are going to approach the question. You do NOT try and tell the examiner at this stage what your conclusion will be, because it is just possible, particularly in subjects that require interpretation such as History, Politics and English, that you will have new ideas as you consider your
EVIDENCE
If most marks are lost in careless reading of the question, then the second greatest loss of marks results from poor use of evidence. If you read detective novels or watch Sherlock you will know that ideas spring from evidence, not the other way round. You should show the examiner that you are responding to your material, not that you've had a wicked idea and have scrabbled around for evidence to back it up. Let me give you an example from Shakespeare's Othello. This is a play about a powerful African man, Othello, who is manipulated by a vindictive colleague into thinking that his innocent wife has committed adultery.
Searching around for why this [imagined] adultery has happened he says:
Haply for I am black,
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or for I am declined
Into the vale of years
Let's imagine that the essay question asked why Othello is so easily convinced of his wife's crime. One candidate is convinced that this a play almost entirely about race – a common if inaccurate viewpoint – and so seizes on the first part of the quotation 'Haply [perhaps] for I am black'. It looks like a cut and dry case, but if we examine the evidence – Shakespeare's words – carefully – we see that it is nothing like as easy as it first appears. Another candidate is much more perceptive, allows herself to be guided by the evidence, at the same time showing the examiner her sensitivity to language, and notices that the easy first idea of his racial difference, 'I am black' is quickly followed by other ideas, ending up with the worries about his age, 'I am declined into the vale of years'. If she is thinking hard and prepared to argue in an evidence based way, she might gain maximum marks by noticing that Othello blames external characteristics for his plight, and never once asks questions about his own character. She is making her essay discussion sharp and also showing what the text does, not merely telling, and this is a crucial point:
Show, don't tell
We have passed through our introduction and discussion, and hopefully rather than listing facts, presenting formulas or quoting endlessly, we have got back to what an essay does – our first point. An essay puts ideas, concepts and opinions on TRIAL and TRIES them out. As much in a humanities essay as in a scientific one, we show how meanings and theories are made, we don't tell the examiner . And we hope the conclusion will be a natural summing up of what we have managed to show in our 45 minutes concentrated effort. Perhaps save a couple of facts or quotes for the ending, and if you can, avoid the pat formulas of 'thus it can be seen that' or 'Therefore I have shown' and all their dull counterparts. All that is left is to remind ourselves of
THREE GOLDEN RULES
Read the question with care, interpret it, work out how it can be answered with your available information.
Plan the essay as a series of connections between facts, not unconnected lists of facts.
Draw your conclusions from intelligent and sensitive examination of the evidence; never, ever, ever, draw your conclusions then look for evidence to back them up.
Happy Writing,
Rob Beddow