How to write the main body of your coursework essays

Owen Clayton's first podcast deals with how to write effective introductions and conclusions. Here, he examines how you can write effective essays by focusing on planning and writing the main body of your essay. Very valuably Owen also shows how to use critics in your essays.
How to write effective essays (Part 2)

Very useful for writing introductions and conclusions.
Part 1 of how to create effective essays

Understanding a question's key words

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for writing an exam answer is simply understanding the question and its key words!
These words have featured in exam questions on Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and other Unit 4 novels over the last few years. Write brief definitions for these words. It is better that YOU do this rather than me – as you will remember YOUR definitions if you do. (It’s all about active learning!)

Anecdotes

Caricature

Presentation

Tale

Transformed

Fragmentation/fragmented narrative

Different points of view

Catastrophe

Frivolous

Comedy and tragedy (find definitions from Aristotle for a deeper understanding. Wikipedia will be good enough, too.)

Treatment of social issues

Structure

Post modern nature of the text (This needs to be defined, otherwise you will be using it as a cliché) Post modernism

Discourse

Aesthetic

Writing Exam Essays - preparation and structure

For Shakespeare/Emma/Poetry/Drama questions

In mixed ability groups of four
You need: a group leader to keep you all in line, a recorder to write down the group’s ideas and paragraphs and one or more spokespersons for feeding back the group’s essay work.

Choose a past question (Don’t waste too much time on this)
Analyse the question’s key words and phrases to get to the root of what is being asked of you.


Form the essay plan which will be composed of:

One main argument (the seat and support with four sub arguments –legs)

Write the introduction. This should contain your main argument. The sub arguments can wait until you reach them later.

Write one of the sub arguments up as a sustained paragraph. Remember to introduce with a topic sentence, give appropriate evidence, comment on your evidence and link it to the question’s key words or phrases or other aspects of the text and its arguments.

Explain your essay plans and read out your introductory paragraphs. Discuss all the group's essay plans and introductions in class so you can take into account other viewpoints and arguments.

Consider the relevance and richness of the evidence (quotations) that you intend to use in your essays. For instance, will you be able to sustain your points with them/or make links to other relevant parts/themes, etc. of the text?

Afterwards, write the essay for homework.

Conjuncts And Connectives To Help With Writing Essays

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How to study poems and write essays about them

My Last Duchess

Lord knows I've prepared advice sheets like this one several times. Still it's worth giving another take on this. This advice on how to write about poetry comes from the excellent CEA, Northern Ireland's Exam Board. The internet back-up support and notes for their anthologies is superb. Here is the link to their site. Scroll down to see the available poems for notes, interpretation, etc.

http://www.rewardinglearning.com/poetryanthologies/anth1.htm


Writing about poetry: some general pointers
To begin with it is likely that you may be asked to write about an individual poem and later you’ll find yourself faced with more complex tasks that will require you to compare and/or contrast poems.
We’ll first look at how to analyse a single poem. Later, we’ll look at working with more than one.

Analysing an individual poem
Below are a series of sub-headings that should allow you to break down the task of analysis into more user-friendly bites.

a. To begin by looking at the SUBJECT MATTER of the poem is logical: what event, situation or experience does the poem feature?

b. Does the poet have a PURPOSE or a THEME or a MESSAGE? What was the poet's purpose in writing this - what is being conveyed?

c. What is the MOOD or FEELING of the poem? Is there a key emotion or mood within the poem? Does that mood change during the course of the poem? What response does the poet conjure up in his/her reader?

d. What are the poem’s KEY FEATURES? What TECHNIQUES has the poet used, what are the specific skills that have been employed in creating this poem? (This would be a major element within your analysis and it has been considered in detail in the section below.)

e. Finish off with YOUR SUMMARY. You’ve analysed the poem, now pull together the significant information. What impact has the poem had upon you? How successful is it? Do you think that it succeeds in its purpose, or if not, why has it failed?

KEY FEATURES - POETIC TECHNIQUE
This deals with the HOW question: how does the poet achieve a particular effect? What techniques have been used, and what is their effect?
The following outline is to help you understand the major elements of craftsmanship.

STRUCTURE: how is the poem structured? Does it have a conventional structure such as a sonnet, or an ode? Does it have stanzas with a regular number of lines, or any other features in its structural make up?

LANGUAGE: how would you describe the poet's use of words – are they vivid, striking, effective, drab, predictable or unusual? Is the language in keeping with the subject and/ or theme, and what part, importantly, does the language play in the poem's achievement?

IMAGERY: are there any striking examples of similes, metaphors, personification or symbols in the poem? Of much more consequence, what is their effect and what has been achieved by their use?

RHYTHM: does the poem have a regular (slow or fast) or fragmented rhythm? And again, most significantly what is the effect of a poem’s rhythmic qualities?

SOUNDS: Does the poem have any significant sound features? Is it musical? Does the poet use onomatopoeia, alliteration, or assonance? Does the poem rhyme? Having recognised these, your major emphasis should be on what influences these features of sound have on the achievement of the poem?

Analysing two poems
Let’s begin by stating the obvious - a successful comparison of two poems demands a close understanding of the texts.
So what methods of organising such a comparison are open to you?
Two alternatives immediately present themselves:

• the titles
• a thematic approach
A sequential approach is where you work your way through one of the poems and then work your way through the second after that. This is appealing in that you only have to concentrate on one poem at a time, however, the need to compare the two poems will mean that, as you comment on the second poem, you have to make cross-references with the first. This can be more difficult than the second approach.

The thematic approach is more difficult, initially, only because you have to plan thoroughly before beginning to write your response. This will require you to be confident enough to use some of your precious time for planning as opposed to writing - which is what every exam candidate feels they should be doing all the time! No matter which of these approaches you choose to use, what you must bear in mind throughout is the focus demanded by the question. (One final thought before leaving this – practising will certainly help!)

The following planning strategy might help:
• the titles
• the context of the poems
• their perspectives
• their form
• the use made of imagery
• their mood and tone
• your preferences and conclusions

Advice on essay structure/paragraphs for writing up your presentations on ballads/other poems

Go over your exam board's assessment objectives to help you organise your paragraphs.

Introduce each paragraph with a clear topic sentence (a sentence that introduces and sums up your paragraph.)

Here is a suggested paragraph plan (although you can vary the order when writing).


1.  Give the title of your poem/ballad and sum up what it is about.


2.  Write about the point of view, symbolism, themes and ideas.


3.  Analyse the poem's language for imagery, use of adjectives, verbs, etc. where appropriate.


4.  Write about the poem's form and structure.


5.  Give various interpretations of the ballad/poem and explain how and why different versions of ballads changed over time.


6.  Give your interpretation of the ballad/poem and what you think of it.


7.  Write about the ballad/poem's literary, cultural and historical contexts. (This may lead you into linking them with the ballad/poem's themes.)


The advice above mostly relates to ballads.

How to plan and write an essay

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