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Lc's Guide to Writing an Essay!
HMSChocolate's At-a-Glance Guide to the Logical Academic Argument
Plagiarism, Academic Dishonesty and How to Avoid Them
Frequently Asked Questions About Essay-Writing and IB Essays
Julie's "The 6+1 Writing Trait System"
VIP Only: Downloadable PDF supplement documents on writing skills.
See also this thread for guide about Extended Essay
Looking for help/advice with referencing and citations? Click Here!
Lc's Guide to Writing an Essay!
Well, I've been correcting a few world lit essays and TOK essays.. and I've noticed that most of what is discussed is amazing! And I find myself correcting the structure of the essay itself rather than the content. So I decided to make this handy thread to direct you all as to how to write an Essay. Not a TOK essay, not a history essay, not an english essay. Just a general essay!
Introduction
Body
Conclusion
Introduction
The oh so feared start of the essay. Most of you find yourselves uncertain as to how to start your essay, and you may feel uncomfortable at the start.
Try starting your essay with a claim related to the title/question you are discussing. For example for the title: Define the religious role of Mecca in Pre-Islamic Arabia something along the lines of : "Mecca was considered as a religious center in pre-Islamic Arabia" would be an appropriate way to start your essay. Then some description of the location of Mecca and a general cultural mentality of that time would be appropriate to follow this sentence.
Next you're going to start thinking of your Thesis. Of course you can have a Thesis statement in one sentence or various sentences,
really depends on your topic. For the same above topic this might be appropriate: Mecca was considered a religious center mainly because of the presence of the objects which were the Zamzam spring, and the Kaba where pilgrimage had taken place for three months every year, by pilgrims from all over Arabia and further countriesSee that little sentence just defined the whole of my essay. It clearly gave the reader (AKA the examiner) an idea of what exactly I will be arguing later on in my essay.
Let's take another example you might relate to better. Since Islamic History is not such a popular subject, I'll go for English A1.
To start an unseen commentary, describing what exactly is happening in the poem/prose or what the poem/prose is about would be the most appropriate way to start. You may think this is uncreative and cliche, but trust me the simpler you are the better you are understood and show understanding of what you are reading. So for example - if you can access the "Bell Jar" text which was May 05 if I recall correctly - something like the following would be a good way to start your essay:
"The text speaks about a ski trip which two characters, Esther and Buddy, took."
Can't be more blunt than that can you? This clearly shows that I understand the text overall. Next is to show you understood it's specifics hence where you start defining the literary most RELEVANT in this prose, like so: "Symbols of authority are evident although the text, mostly associated to Buddy. He pushes and pushes, until she is pushed down a mountainous slope, which could be a metaphor in itself. The chronology of the events parallels to the chronology of Buddy's effect on Esther; as the distance between Esther and Buddy increases, so does his psychological affect on her." So I've made it clear through this thesis that I will be discussing imagery, characterization and the relationship between characters, and the structure of the prose.
One last example would be when writing a TOK essay. Like any other essay, the introduction of a TOK essay is the most important part in the sense that it will clarify to the examiner what you are to discuss later on in the essay. So if you were to have a good argument and a bad introduction.. it would make your essay seem vague and in need to just GET TO THE POINT...
Ahem sorry this is just really sensitive *sniff*.
Quote
Explaining an idea or claim is the process of providing a proof, or otherwise logical conclusion about the cause of a phenomenon. Although the previous definition I have claimed may categorize many situations, the word explain is too subjective to have a clear definition. Its subjectivity lies in its meaning being relative to what it is a person is trying to explain. I noticed through the different ways of knowing people express and obtain different method of explaining. So how do mathematicians, historians and scientists use the word explain?
Body
Ahh the body! Where your argument resides
This is where you prove your thesis wrong or right! Where - by providing the proper examples - you may convince me that milk is green and grass is white! Now here's what helps you look like you know what you're talking about:
A topic sentence for each paragraph: Basically this means that you should have like a mini intro to your paragraphs. A topic sentence is a sentence in the beginning of the paragraph which clarifies to the reader what you intend to discuss in the paragraph. In my first year English A1 course, I found myself writing topic sentences which showed that I want to discuss a certain image in a poem I would be writing a commentary for, and then I'd just randomly move on to talk about tone or something else
This showed how confused I was about writing commentaries An example of me doing this is in my first world lit draft:Quote
There is also a difference in portraying the two authorities through imagery. Bernardas authority was mainly emphasised with the presence of her stick, especially the physical authority on her daughters. Bernarda achieves respect by inflicting fear on other character, especially the servant and Poncia.
See I started off by indicating I would talk about imagery and only that in my paragraph, then after writing one sentence about the imagery I moved on to how Bernarda inflicted her authority! DO NOT DO THIS!
Well structured paragraphs: this means you should jump form one idea to another which has nothing to do with the previous one in two consecutive paragraphs. Your essay should show some form of flaw of thought, when you go from discussing for example the problem of knowledge of history being written with the bias of the historian, to discussing the fact that knowledge in the natural sciences is objective in the next paragraph. Your transformation from one idea to another should be flawless
else you will seem confused to the examiner.Well argued ideas: Don't just state your ideas; provide analysis, examples, comments and anything which shows that you're not just stating the obvious but are discussing something you fully understand!
Be convincing: The most helpful notion which I had in my head while writing essays was to try to convince people that what I am saying is right! This would help you to write strong essays in general
Conclusion
By the time you get to the conclusion you could either:
- Be too frustrated by the whole of the confusion in the essay, you'd write anything just to finish it off and get on with life
- Reread the whole of your essay, realize what it is you argued all through your essay, then conclude your ideas in one small paragraph in the end.
I'd suggest the latter. When I say conclude your ideas I don't mean mention each one in the end and make a conclusive statement about each, you don't want to end up with a 400 word conclusion paragraph
there are no 1,2,3s of writing a conclusion which I know of... so here are some examples that might give you an idea of what I'm talking about:
Quote
In conclusion, Mecca was formed in a religious base, and had flourished due to the presence of religious objects such as the Zamzam water, the kaba, the Haram, and the black stone. So the religious role of Mecca is the basic function of the presence of Mecca.
Quote
Overall the poet used imagery, structure and diction to portray his idea of the unreliability of speech, or in his words the sentences (which) starts out like a lone traveler. Although he was successful in portraying his idea he was, however, not convincing in a realistic sense.
