Effective essay planning

One of the things that I have encountered time and time again and that is around the nature of essay planning. Number one, students often don't plan an essay and therefore the feedback in their exam answers is that they tend to waffle. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is that students get quite overwhelmed and don't get the marks because they're missing bits. So they answer some sections really well and other sections really poorly. typically the the parts of the essay that's about evaluation which is that higher level stuff and actually it doesn't need to be higher level it's just a matter of have I done it and if you don't have a clear plan you can get yourself into a pickle so this is my shorefire essay plan that I have used for everything from English to economics business studies geography history if You have an essay, it's basically asking you to present an argument and it's about how do I put that together.

So this is what I've put together to help you put it together. First of all, I've given you two possible essay questions. Okay?

So one from English and one from economics. The English, how important is the theme of friendship in Lord of the Rings? Right?

So you need to have read the book. Let's let's do this one first of all. What is the question asking me?

So go through and highlight the key parts of the question to start with. We might highlight for example, how important is the theme of friendship in Lord of the Rings. So obviously that's our that's our book.

We're not about to get that one wrong. Most people usually talk about the right text. However, they don't often get this word sorted out.

So what is the question? It's in ask how important is it very important? Is it not important at all?

Is it a little bit important? Now obviously this requires something more than a one-s sentence response. This is an essay question.

So, we need to be making a number of different points to support how we feel about it. But ask yourself the question first of all, how important do you think it is? To my mind, I've seen the movies.

I've read the books as well. But it's about Yeah, you know what? I think this is kind of important.

So, that's going to be my argument. I think I think friendship is kind of important in Lord of the Rings. So, that's the question.

Step two, I'm going to brainstorm points, right? all of the things that I can think of that are about friendship in Lord of the Rings, who the different people are friends with, what that friendship leads to, how it influences stuff. Okay, so I might off the top of my head go, okay, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding.

All of those points and just write key words. I don't need full sentences. This is all done on a piece of scrap paper, okay?

or you know the inside of of of the essay of of the um exam paper if you have space there. So so brainstorm our points right the next thing we're going to do now most people do that and they do that quite well they understand what the question is asking and they brainstorm points but then they dive into writing and that's where it all falls apart. Step three, you've got to fill out my little plan here.

So the headings are paragraph number. Nice and straightforward. 1 2 3 4 5 6 for example.

This is our point. What's the point we're making which corresponds to these points over there? What's our example which might often be a quote?

Does it support or refute what it is we're saying? Okay. So how much is it in agreement with that?

is or it not in agreement with that. Right? And then finally, how much is it in agreement with that or not in agreement with that?

And this is really important because that's our evaluation piece. Right? So in our in our first paragraph, we come to our introduction and in in our introduction, it's pretty straightforward.

And we're just going to say we believe that it's important for a number of different reasons. for example. Then we come to right what order are we going to take our points?

We go well I might take this point first of all and that goes in there as my point number one. I give my example of that. Okay.

And I give a quote. I then say yes, it supports my argument and it supports it a lot because of what happens as a consequence in that situation. And you just keep going through there.

You get next one down there. Give an example. Does it support it?

Next one goes down there. Give an example. Does it support it?

You get the idea. Okay. So this way you've evaluated, you've done the how for every single one of those points comes to the conclusion and a lot of people struggle with a conclusion.

But the really cool thing with this approach is that actually if you've done all of this your conclusion is just a summary of those two columns. Okay, it just summarizes summary. It just summarizes what you've said here.

In other words, some of these points are really important and the friendships support it because of this and it by this much. So therefore, in my opinion, I believe that the theme of friendship is very important in Lord of the Rings. Bish bush bash.

And you can do the same thing with an economics essay. Okay, similar sort of thing. Evaluate the importance of quantitative easing as a government policy on the UK economy.

What's the question asking? Go and underline, say evaluate. Okay, so we know that these are going to be really important.

We know quantitative easing. Okay. Um, on the UK economy as a government policy on the UK economy.

So we understand what's the question asking. We brainstorm all of the points that we know about quantitative easing and its impact on on the government economy on the government as a government policy on the UK economy. And we then go right these are all of our points and this time we add in because we know for economics for example it's really important to go and put in definitions and diagrams and things like that.

So in our examples column we just go reminder if a diagram applies we need to in a diagram there and give some definitions. And the only thing that changes really is that when it comes to writing an essay, as far as economics or business studies is concerned, in your introduction, you want to make sure you've given your definitions as well. Okay?

So, you just know intro definitions as far as an economics essay is concerned, but you go through and you do the same thing. I've brainstormed all of my points. I've tied it in with any of the reading that I've been given as part of because you know you're often you're given some things to read as as part of the exam question.

I've tied it in with that given all of my examples. I give my conclusion because often you'll have uh that you you could have some positives and negatives remember. So some stuff it might be actually quantitive easing is not terribly important uh for these reasons fine but it might not be a significant point to sway your entire argument in that direction.

But you know what you follow the same protocol you summarize these last two columns and what you put in there and all of a sudden you have an entire essay plan. You then go you start writing. You go right paragraph one introduction.

This is what I'm writing. Paragraph two. This is my point.

This is what I'm writing. Paragraph three. Donk donk.

You've got it all. You cover all of the points. It's a really simple essay plan.

And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But that's going to take me ages. " Actually, no.

It won't take you ages, but it will take you ages to start with. So, you have to practice it. So, in your preparation, practice essay plans.

It might start off taking you about 15 minutes to do something like that, but you can whittle it down to about five. And that five minutes is time really well spent. And you factor that into your time management with your essay planning.

Because a lot of these essays, they're worth a lot of marks. And for an extra five minutes put into time planning to get how many more marks? I've known people go up like 10 marks in essays easily just by using this protocol.

So, welcome to the Miranda method for essay planning.