Writing: B2+. Els Geyte Van

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      Quiz

       Self-evaluation

      For each statement below, circle the word which is true for you.

       Making your essay more readable

      Your assessor is mainly concerned with the content of your essay. This partly depends on your research skills but also on your ability to get your points across.

      You can make your essay easy to read in a number of ways, e.g. by using a clear structure and by guiding the reader through the text.

       Essay structure

       Glossary

      outline (outlines) N-VAR An outline is a general explanation or description of something.

      principle (principles) N-COUNT The principles of a particular theory or philosophy are its basic rules or laws.

      When you wrote shorter essays, you learnt that the basic structure is: introduction / main body / conclusion, and that each separate idea needs a new paragraph. When you are writing a longer essay, the main principles are the same, but there are some differences.

      The same three-part structure applies to any essay. In a longer essay, the introduction and conclusion will be more developed, but the biggest change will be in the main body, where there will be much more space to develop ideas. Although each new idea will still require a new paragraph, these separate ideas are likely to need more than one paragraph each to be fully developed. Before you do your research, you won’t know how many paragraphs you will be writing, but you are able to do an outline of the structure of the whole essay from the start.

      The method we used in Chapter 1 can be used here to help with structure too. Look back at the example essay question about parallel trade and the three-step analysis of this question in the section Analysing key words and structure of essay titles.

      This breakdown will lead to your outline, which can function as a plan for your writing as well as a starting point for your research.

      Here, it would look like this:

       Exercise 1

      Write an outline for the essay title below, from Chapter 1 Exercise 3. Before you start the outline, look at the Answer key for Chapter 1 for the three-step analysis of the essay title.

       What are the most important key urban planning theories of the post-war period? Outline in summary their key characteristics. With reference to one of these theories, explain how they help us understand the nature of planning practice.

      The last thing you want to do is confuse your reader, so it is important to structure your work in the order that they would expect to find it.

       The introduction

      In an introduction you would normally:

      1 give a description or explanation of the situation or problem (more general)

      2 say why this situation or problem (or a more specific aspect of it) is important

      3 say what your aim is, what your position on the situation or problem is, and what the organization of your essay will be.

      The main function of the introduction is to show your reader you have understood the question and to indicate that you will be discussing it fully. You do not have to go into detail yet.

      It is difficult to say how long an introduction should be, but as you won’t be starting to discuss anything in any detail yet, it won’t be long. It is likely to be less than 10 per cent of the word count.

      Until you have finished your research, you might not be sure exactly what the structure of your essay will be, so it is a good idea to write your introduction last.

       Exercise 2

      Look at these two introductions of 1,000-word essays. Look at the three things you would normally include in an introduction above and then think about how you would improve the introductions.

       ‘It would be better not to let pupils use calculators at all in their maths lessons.’ Discuss.

       Introduction A

       It may be a good idea not to let students use calculators in maths classes, but there are also reasons why they can be helpful. This essay will first address the role calculators play by considering their benefits, as well as possible drawbacks. Then I shall present a simple argument for the use of calculators by examining the fundamental purpose of an educational system before concluding that we should not reject the use of calculators in a learning environment.

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