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The Basic Guide to Essay Writing

THE STAGES OF ESSAY WRITING:

1. Thinking about the question
This is perhaps the most important stage of essay writing. Make sure you understand the question or the terms of reference of your assignment. If you do not, ask your tutor. Before you begin your research for writing an essay, jot down any points that you think you may need to look for in your reading. Remember that in an essay, you are being asked to write an argument, therefore you should not be thinking about retelling the events or plots of a novel or film, unless they are relevant to your essay.

2. Research for your essay
Make use of all resources available to you e.g. libraries (including periodicals and slide library), CD-Roms and the Internet. There is never time to read all the books on a reading list, especially from cover to cover. Try instead to find relevant information by looking up indexes and contents pages. As soon as you read the relevant sections, take notes (there is nothing worse than knowing you have read something that will fit your argument perfectly, but not remembering from which of the ten books it is in!) Always keep the question in mind to avoid being swept away by notes. Finally, do not forget to write down the source details (title of book, author, year of publication etc.) and also the Library call number - in case you need to refer to it again.

3. Planning your essay
Making a plan for an essay is not easy, but it will help the structure of the work enormously. Everyone develops his/her own way of writing plans for how to write an essay- either in extensive note form or in a visual diagrammatic form. It really does not matter how, but it does help if you can divide your notes into three sections and think about what you are going to discuss in the introduction, the main section and the conclusion. Each new point in the main section will require a new paragraph so you need to make sure that your ideas run on smoothly.