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How to structure an Ideal Essay!

Writing the perfect essay can be a nightmare! No matter how well you know your subject matter, if you are unable to successfully structure your response to the posed essay question, you are at risk of scoring a big fat F! That's hardly a fair trade for all the hard work you have put in to learning your subject material.

But don't worry there is no need to panic quite yet! Follow these simple steps and all your essays will always be wonderfully structured!

1- Understand the Question What are you really being asked to do?!

One of the biggest mistakes people make when answering essay questions is THEY DON'T ANSWER THE QUESTION. Instead of taking some time to digest the question posed, they jump straight in and regurgitate everything they know about the subject. And whilst this approach may illustrate that you know your subject, it also suggests that you haven't read or understood the question. This then just leads to the examiner stamping your work with a bright red F.

So the most important thing you can do when writing an essay is really get to grips with the question posed. Establish exactly what you are being asked to do, and then constantly keep checking your answer to make sure you are ANSWERING THE QUESTION!

Take a look at the questions below; what words do you think are the most important? What are each of them asking you to do?

Critically compare Austin's Sense and Sensibility' with Bronte's Northanger Abbey'.
How important was Churchill in raising the morale of Wartime England?
Darkness'. Discuss.
Which character is the most pivotal in keeping the character's in Friends' bonded together?

The most important words in all of these questions are the ones that tell you what to do! These words are, Compare', How', Discuss' and Which'.

Therefore, your essay relating to the first question must COMPARE the works of the two authors. Simply writing about both books would not be sufficient. You would need to take specific sections of each novel and demonstrate how they are similar, and potentially, how they are different.

Similarly, in a response to the second question posed above, you would need to focus your essay on HOW Churchill's actions and behavior impacted on the morale of England during the war, and make an assessment as to HOW MUCH of an impact these actions had. This is very different to just talking about Churchill's wartime actions, or stating the morale of England at this time.

Spending time getting to grips with the essay question,

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