Essay Writing Skills

The Miss McDonald Way!

Writing a Solid Introduction

• The destructive force of time is evident through Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress". The poem explores how a young man is trying to gain the love a woman, and explains there is no time for them to take their relationship slowly. Many different techniques and ideas are used to portray the destructive nature of time throughout the poem– Why is this Introduction successful?– Covers the basics - TART – Provides a brief summary – Mentions the above things in an interesting way. – Links back to question.– Could we improve it further?

Things to Think About

• TART (Title, Author, Refer to Task) is just a good way of remembering what BASIC INFORMATION you should include in your intro, not a template for writing one.

• Your summary of the poem/play/story/film should be VERY brief - only a few lines. Use this as a good revision task at home: try retelling the story over and over until you've whittled it down to just 1 or 2 strong sentences. Get this on a study card and use it on every essay you write for that text

• Always mention what you're going to write about - imagery, word choice, recurring motifs, etc (poetry) or characterisation, key scenes, symbolism, setting, etc (plays/novels/etc)

Writing Paragraphs - Topic Sentences

• Your topic sentences (or POINT in a PCQE paragraph) should cover the following:

• introduce the point of your paragraph with a linking phrase

• mention what technique/area you will focus on

• mention the question.

Including Quotes• In English you can argue black is white as long as

you support your argument with EVIDENCE. This should be in the shape of a quotation from your text.

• You MUST back up all your points with a quote.• But how do you select the right quote? Some tips on

what to include:– Find the quote that best suits your point. If you want to

say that he considers his mistress to be wasting time, find the exact point when he says this, for example when he describes her coyness as a "crime".

– Keep your quotes short. You don't need to quote lines and lines. Just quote the section you want to analyse.

– However, try to maintain the integrity of the line. Quote it exactly as it is in the poem, or work your sentence around it so that it still makes sense.

Analysing Quotes• A good tip when analysing your

quote is that the length of your analysis should be at least 3 times the length of your quote. So if you've got a quote that's 2 lines long, your analysis should be at least 6 lines long. If you remember this, not only will your analysis be long enough, but it will stop you using ridiculously long quotes, too.

Analysing QuotesThings to Think About:• Are you analysing a specific

technique? With poetry you should be microanalysing - focusing on the smaller details like word choice and imagery. With plays (or novels) - you should be considering things like characterisation, key scenes and setting.

• Are you just regurgitating my notes?

• DON'T JUST TELL ME THE STORY! -that includes poetry!

Good Examples

• Even from the very first line in the poem, they don't have time. Time is destroying their chances of being with each other. He finds her refusing his advances a crime as they don't have any time to waste. If there was time there wouldn't be crime. The theme of the destructive nature of time is eating away at them and their time to make the relationship work. Time is presented in the first stanza by the writer saying everything he wants to do if they had time.

Another Example

• “This evokes the image that time is chasing them. The use of “winged chariot” refers to the Apollo greek god who pulled the sun through the sky on a winged chariot. Marvell is being chased through time, soon the sun will become darkness which is being referred to as his love for her quickly disappearing. This elevates the speakers persuasive ability by adding in an element of fear.”

Linking and Evaluating• This is a section that many people struggle with. Linking

is about ensure that your paragraph always focuses on the questions, while evaluating is showing that you can consider how effective the writer has been with a certain technique.

• To be honest, if you are using the PCQRL structure, chances are that your linkage is just a sentence slammed on to the end of the paragraph. However, if you use PCQE (point, context, quote, explain) then you can work in your link and evaluation throughout the final part of your paragraph.

• For example, if you are just sticking "This shows the destructive nature of time" at the end of every paragraph, chances are you'll pass, but you won't get any higher than 17 out of 25.

• If you work in your linkage and evaluation throughout, that is what markers like to see and you'll be a step closer to that A!

A Good Example of Merging Analysis, Evaluation and Link

• “The author is suggesting that as time passes away her beauty will deteriorate as well. By saying this, the author is trying to persuade her to be with him now because he won't want to be with her when time destroys her beauty, which suggests he's very shallow as he only wants to be with her for her looks. The author is also presenting time as a destructive force here as it's destroying the woman's beauty. This part of the poem is a dramatic change from the beginning as the author is now trying to frighten the woman into being with him and is also making her aware of the situation by presenting time as a destructive force.”

Now it’s Your Turn

• Using one of your essays, find your weakest paragraph which you consider to have little to no evaluation or linkage.

• Considering everything we have gone over in class, work to develop your paragraph until you have something that you feel is worthy of a higher mark than you received.– TIP: the key to evaluation is that you can comment on

how EFFECTIVE a writer has been in achieving a desired effect.

– TIP: an easy way of creating links is to simply ensure that every point you make is relevant to the question. That means everything will link itself!

Writing Conclusions

• Your conclusion is pretty much your introduction in reverse, so you should aim to cover the same areas as before with a little twist:– Start with a phrase like "To conclude" or "In

conclusion", to show your reader that they're almost done reading.

– Review the basic info - TART – Instead of summarising the text, summarise your

essay's main points (combining your topic sentences into 1 is often a good way to start doing this).

– Finally, include a last sentence that gives your overall view on the topic of your essay.