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E-ISBN 978-3-12-939105-1
Introduction
1What is an essay?
2Critical essays
3How this book works
Chapter 1
Approaching Essay Questions
1Unpacking and Decoding the Question
2Sample essay questions: a stage by stage analysis
3Summary of chapter
Chapter 2
Planning an Essay
1The stages of essay planning
Stage 1Brainstorming
Stage 2Narrowing the scope
Stage 3Elaboration
Stage 4Ordering main points
Stage 5Listening to the plan
Chapter 3
Writing an Essay: Content and Structure
1Relevance
2Argument
3Structuring essays
1Overall structure
2Paragraph structure
2aThe topic sentence
2bDevelopment
2cIllustration
3Linking
4Summary of chapter
Chapter 4
Writing Introductions and Conclusions
1Introductions
1Contextual Introductions
2Methodological Introductions
3Combined Introductions
2Conclusions
Type 1From parts to whole
Type 2Significant exceptions
Type 3Beyond the frame of the essay
Type 4Self-criticism
Type 5Quotation
Chapter 5
Style
1Essay Style
1Register
2The Reader
3Expression
4Grammar
2Common Weaknesses of Style and How to Avoid Them: Five “Don’ts“
1Don’t generalize
2Don’t exaggerate
3Don’t moralize
4Don’t express opinions
5Don’t repeat
Chapter 6
Finishing Touches
1Presentation
1Titles
2Quotations
3Footnotes and Bibliographies
2Checking and Revision
3Improving essay-writing skills
1Practice
2Reading
4Ten tips for writing essays
Chapter 7
Other Types of Essay
1Introduction
2Descriptive Essays
3Reflective Essays
4Argumentative Essays
5Summary
Appendix
“Miss Brill” by Katherine Mansfield
An essay on “Miss Brill”
Bibliography
This book has been written in the belief that the art of essay-writing is only partly a matter of divine inspiration. The other parts – by far the greater in number and importance – are skills that most thinking and speaking mortals are fully capable of mastering with a little effort, a good deal of practice, and, I hope, a reasonable amount of pleasure. Good essays are a joy to read, and they are no less fun to write. Most of the obstacles to pleasurable writing can, once identified, be readily removed. This book is concerned above all with the obstacles; but I hope at least the odd glimpse at some of the pleasures will be afforded along the way.
The book is intended above all for students of English at German universities – the very people who, in one way or another, have had a major part in writing it. Not only have I helped myself rather freely to examples poached from genuine student essays, but much of the thinking behind the book has been informed by my teaching in the English department of the University of Cologne. I should like to take this opportunity to thank my students at Cologne, not only for their unsolicited contributions to this book, but for all they have taught me over the years. My thanks also to Selwyn Jackson and Ansgar Nünning who read and made valuable comments on the manuscript, and to Timothy Jones for supplying the essay on Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Miss Brill”.
Richard Aczel
October 1998
The essay as a genre remains notoriously difficult to define. It is probably fair to say that there are as many types of essay as there are types of essayist. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), himself a fine essayist, described the essay as “a loose sally of the mind, an irregular, indigested piece, not a regular or orderly performance”. Although the type of essay discussed and practised in this book will be anything but “loose”, “irregular” and “undigested”, it is worth bearing in mind that the term essay has, historically, regularly been associated with ideas of the tentative, unscientific, and even the amateur. This is reflected in the titles of some of the most famous essays in the English language, from Charles Lamb’s “In Praise of Chimney-sweepers” to J.B. Priestley’s “On Doing Nothing”.
The term “essay” comes from the French essayer (to attempt); and the generic term essai was coined by the French writer Montaigne in 1580, and used in the title of his famous volume of Essais published in that year. For Montaigne, the essay was a kind of trial or cross-examination of an idea.
This is as good a definition as any, but it leaves the field wide open – an openness reflected by the history of the essay as a genre itself. The “father of the English essay”, Francis Bacon (1561–1626), wrote short, moral and didactic essays on such subjects as “studies”, “ambition” and “travel”. By the end of the seventeenth century, the philosopher John Locke could use the term “essay” in the title of a full-length philosophical treatise, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Since then, the name “essay” has been applied to works as far apart as Alexander Pope’s philosophical poem in heroic couplets, An Essay on Man (1733–4), and G.K. Chesterton’s short meditation “On Lying in Bed”.
What all these types of essay have in common is an interest in argument. They do not simply state facts or opinions, nor do they tell a story: they argue a case. They take an idea, or cluster of ideas and, in Montaigne’s sense, put them on trial.
As in most trials, the purpose is to prove a point and reach a verdict. To reach the desired verdict, the essay must do three things. It must produce strong arguments, express these arguments clearly and forcefully, and support them with convincing evidence. Whether you are writing an essay on the rights and wrongs of capital punishment, or on the use of metaphor in a poem, the success of your essay will depend above all on these three factors. They will form the central focus of this book.
How to Write an Essay is a practical guide to essay writing for students of English. It focuses on the planning, structuring and formulating of critical responses to literary texts. The type of essay discussed and practised in this book is generally referred to as the critical (or literary critical) essay.
In spite of the book’s particular literary critical focus, the practical and analytical guidelines it offers should be relevant to all forms of essay writing. To write an essay of any kind, you need to know certain basic techniques. These include: how to analyse an essay question; how to select and order the main points of an answer; how to write well-structured paragraphs, introductions and conclusions; how to express your arguments clearly and convincingly; how to check and revise your work; and how to practise and improve your essay-writing technique. All of these points are covered in detail in the individual chapters which follow.
“Writing” as such forms only one relatively small part of the essay-writing process as a whole. One can only “write up” an essay when one has decided what to say and how best to say it. Essayists who begin writing before they have finished thinking usually get in a muddle and lose sight of the question they are meant to be addressing. This is not to deny that some of our best thoughts have the annoying habit of coming half way through the composition of an essay. But there is a lot we can do to train our thoughts to arrive in good time and sort themselves out in an orderly fashion before we launch into the first words of our introduction.
Good writing is the result of good thinking. To say that someone writes well is to say that they have organized their thoughts in a clear and convincing manner. This book, therefore, is above all a book about thinking – or rather, about thinking aloud. It attempts, step by step, to go through a series of more or less automatic thought-processes and to render them conscious. Once we have seen what these processes involve, and how we can make them function as effectively as possible, they can become automatic again. When it is no longer necessary to think aloud while planning and formulating an essay, this book will have served its purpose. Like all guidebooks, its ultimate aim is to render itself superfluous.
Presumably, you will never have to write an essay quite as long as John Locke’s An Essay concerning Human Understanding. This book will primarily be concerned with short essays of five to ten pages (1,500–3,000 words). To write a whole book on something so small is inevitably a risky business: it can seem a bit like trying to open an envelope with a fork-lift truck, or like a hippopotamus trying to pick up a pea, as someone once said of the prose style of Henry James. You might find yourself asking: “Do I really have to read all this just to write an essay? Do I have to follow all these steps and stages and checks and double-checks? If so, writing a single essay is going to take me a lifetime.”
The type of “thinking aloud” practised in the following chapters is rather like an analysis of a goal in a football match, played back in slow-motion. Of course, it only takes seconds for the ball to land in the back of the net. Likewise, when the processes described in this book are actually executed, they only take a matter of minutes to perform. By looking at them in slow-motion, we simply see more exactly how they are best carried out.
Most of the stages of thinking described in the following pages are matters of common sense. Once you have grasped them they will become reflexes that you perform quickly and automatically. A sprinter watches his or her race in slow-motion replay in order to learn how to run faster. I hope it will be the same for essayists using this book.
The book’s chapters are presented in the order in which you should go about writing an essay. Before you start planning essays you will need to know how to analyse essay questions. This is the focus of Chapter 1.
Chapter 2 shows how to plan an essay. It is the longest, most detailed, and probably the most important chapter in the book. A full, coherent plan is an essential ingredient of a good essay. This chapter discusses ways of selecting relevant points and of putting them in a clear and logical order. It also shows how a good plan can generate ideas for introductions and conclusions.
In Chapter 3 we turn to the writing process itself. This chapter focuses on how to structure and link essay paragraphs.
It is followed by a chapter on those problematic paragraphs that form the beginning and end of an essay: the introduction and conclusion. Chapter 4 discusses various types of introduction and conclusion and illustrates their appropriate use.
Chapter 5 concentrates on questions of style. It offers a series of positive guidelines for expressing ideas clearly and concisely, and offers a list of important stylistic weaknesses that should be avoided.
Chapter 6 deals with finishing touches, such as presentation, checking and revision. It also offers ten tips for improving your essay-writing technique, and a simplified summary of the main points of the book.
Chapter 7 looks beyond the literary critical essay and shows how the skills developed in the book can be applied to other types of essay (descriptive, reflective, and argumentative).
Although you are advised to read the chapters in order, each chapter forms a relatively independent unit. So, if you have particular questions about, say, introductions and conclusions, you will be able to go directly to the chapter concerned.
How to Write an Essay is a practical guide. For this reason most of its points are based on, or illustrated through, examples. Therefore a wide range of essay questions are referred to in the book, dealing with a variety of literary texts. It is not necessary to have read all the texts mentioned to understand the practical points that are being made. Chapter 3, however, is based on one text in particular: Katherine Mansfield’s (very) short story “Miss Brill”. The text of this story is given in full in an appendix at the end of the book. You should read the story in conjunction with Chapter 3.
A further appendix provides a sample essay based on the question discussed in Chapter 3.
Most of the examples in the book have been taken from genuine student essays. Sometimes the content has been slightly altered to strengthen the point being made. In several cases the style has been improved to match the level of a fairly articulate native-speaker. This is because the examples perform two functions. On the one hand, they illustrate the various techniques and problems under discussion. On the other hand, they are also intended as examples of essay style. Where the examples are negative this will be made clear. Otherwise they suggest the type of discourse appropriate to critical essay-writing.
However practical this book aspires to be, it can never take the place of the best method of improving your essay-writing: practice. The more you write, the more natural the habits encouraged by this book will become. Literature is all about the effective and engaging formulation of our ideas. To become a better essay writer is also to become a better student of literature. We all need to be exposed as regularly as possible to the exciting, frustrating, inspiring challenge of putting pen to paper which faces all writers. The pleasure we experience in producing a clearly organized argument or a well-turned phrase will add to our pleasure in enjoying similar, if perhaps greater, achievements in our reading. I hope this book will go some way towards cultivating such pleasures, but it is through practice alone that they will deepen and multiply.
Before beginning to plan and write essays it is essential to choose a suitable question or topic and to be quite sure that you understand exactly what the question requires you to do. Some of the most common (and serious) weaknesses of students’ essays stem from a basic failure to pay close attention to the wording of essay questions and to recognise both what the question suggests and what it demands. Even in the mad rush of producing essays under examination conditions it is essential to devote sufficient time to the careful study of questions and topics. This chapter offers a brief outline of the basic stages involved in analysing essay questions, then gives a series of examples of typical questions and how to approach them.
Some essay questions are fairly straightforward and the type of response required will at once be clear. Other essay questions may be more complex, and it will be necessary to unpack and decode them before setting to work on planning and writing. As a general rule it is safer to expect most essay questions and topics to be more complex than they appear at first sight. For this reason it is always wise to read them at least twice through.
Here is a fairly simple example of an essay question which appears to be self-explanatory, but actually needs to be unpacked and decoded:
Discuss the function of symbols in James Joyce’s short story “Eveline”.
Unpacking a question means opening it up and breaking it down into its basic parts. These basic parts are: a) the keywords of the question; b) what the question suggests; and c) what the question demands.
The keywords of a question are the basic terms which will define the scope and focus of your essay. They are of absolute importance, and you must bear them in mind at every stage of planning and writing your essay. A momentary loss of concentration on these keywords will lead to the cardinal sin of irrelevance.
There are two types of keywords to look out for in essay questions.
The first are focus-keywords which set out the topics on which you will have to concentrate. Focus-keywords can be either general (setting the essay’s overall frame of reference), or specific (defining the essay’s central concerns).
The second type of keywords are approach-keywords which tell you what you are required to do with the topics identified by the focus-keywords. Typical approach-keywords are words like “discuss”, “define”, “describe” “examine”, “characterize”, “compare”, “identify” (etc.). While focus-keywords tell you what to write about, approach keywords tell you how to write about it. The ability to identify both kinds of keywords quickly and accurately is an essential of good essay writing.
In the example essay question given above, most of the keywords are focus-keywords. The general focus of the essay will be James Joyce’s short story “Eveline”, while its specific focus will be on the function of symbols.
The only approach-keyword is discuss. This very common approach-keyword is actually rather vague. It leaves the angle of approach to the question relatively open. It will be decoded in the next section.
Other approach-keywords are more specific. They include keywords like: “characterize”, “compare”, “contrast” “describe”, “evaluate”, “list”, “specify”, etc.
Once you have identified both focus- and approach-keywords in the essay question, you can go on to the next stage of unpacking. Our sample question makes several suggestions and demands. These suggestions and demands need to be identified before the question can be effectively answered.
The question suggests, for example, that there are symbols in Joyce’s short story and that these symbols also have a function. You may agree with these suggestions, but you do not have to. Your essay may wish to challenge the question’s assumptions. As long as you can provide convincing arguments for your position, such a challenge is perfectly legitimate. Indeed it can form the basis of a lively and interesting essay. However, before you can either agree or disagree with a question’s assumptions, you have to be able to identify what the question suggests.
In addition to suggesting ideas, questions also make demands. Whatever you feel about the question’s suggestions, you must fulfil its demands.
The above question demands that you discuss the function of the symbols in Joyce’s story. It does not simply ask you to identify or explain these symbols – although this may be part of describing their function. An excellent interpretation of the symbols in “Eveline” – however detailed, intelligent, and well written – will not fulfil the demands of the question. Therefore it will not score many marks. A proper understanding of the question’s demands is essential if you are to write a relevant answer. Just like question keywords, question demands must be borne in mind throughout the whole process of planning and writing.
In order to be fully clear about what an essay question requires, it will often be necessary to decode the question’s keywords and demands. What, for example, does the question really mean by “symbols”? And what would be involved in discussing their “function”? If you are unsure about either of these questions, or about the meaning of the keywords, it is clearly advisable to choose another topic. “Function” questions are very common. As they seem to pose particular problems for student essay writers we will pay special attention to decoding the term function in the example section below.
You should go through all the stages outlined in this section whenever confronted with a new essay question. This may seem like a very long and drawn out process – and one for which you would have no time at all in an examination. With practice, however, these stages become automatic. They are, after all, little more than an extension of common sense. Once you are used to thinking systematically about analysing essay questions, the whole process should take no more than about a minute per question.
In this section we will look at some sample essay questions and practise going through the stages of unpacking and decoding described above. We will begin with simple questions, then move on to more complex ones.
Discuss the importance of money in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
The keywords here are not difficult to identify. “Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice” will form the broader focal context of the essay, while the “importance of money” suggests the essay’s more specific focus.
The only approach-keyword is the familiar “discuss”. It is useful to get into the habit of marking the keywords in essay questions. Use a circle for approach keywords (AKs), and a rectangle for focus keywords, distinguishing between specific focus keywords (SFKs) and general focus keywords (GFKs). Example 1 would then look something like this:
What does the question suggest? Clearly it suggests that money is important in Shakespeare’s play. In discussing the question you will have to respond to this suggestion. If you agree that the suggestion is justified, you do not necessarily have to say so explicitly. You can simply answer the question taking the fact of money’s importance in the play for granted, focusing your essay on the various ways in which it is important. If you disagree with the suggestion, however, you will need to say so explicitly and give reasons for your position.
The demand of this essay is apparently quite simple. You are asked to “discuss” the theme it suggests. But what does “discussing” this theme actually involve? It is clear that this favourite approach-keyword requires some decoding.
The word “discuss” comes from the Latin discutere: to shake to pieces. In this historical sense, to discuss a topic means to break (or shake) it down into its component parts.
Today, we think of a discussion more as an exchange of ideas between more than one speaker.
In decoding the approach-keyword “discuss” in essay writing, both senses of the word are important. A good “discussion” essay is one that breaks its topic down into its basic parts and considers them from more than one angle.
The focus-keyword “importance” also needs decoding. Importance is a very general word, with several potential meanings. Important in what way (economically, morally, thematically, metaphorically)? And important to whom (to one specific character, to several or all characters, to the playwright, to the reader)?
Notice how in attempting to decode this keyword we are already beginning to “discuss” the topic, by breaking it down into different parts. In this way unpacking a question can immediately provide you with ordered material for your answer.
Identify and contrast the perspectives of narrator and character in Katherine Mansfield’s short story “Miss Brill”.
Here the general focus-keywords are again the name of author and text. Therefore information on other authors and texts will not be relevant to your answer, unless, by way of comparison, they reveal something distinctive about Mansfield’s “Miss Brill”.