Writing an Essay
Essay questions, term papers, “take-home” finals, research
papers, and project reports are standard components of most political science
courses. Professors may ask students to write an essay as part of a mid-term of
final exam, or to hand in extended papers completed outside class that have
required substantial research in the library or elsewhere. These kinds of
assignments not only give professors a chance to evaluate your skills as a
writer and as a critical thinker – two skills that you should take away from
any university course – but they also provide the opportunity for you to
reflect seriously on particular issues and to use your creative powers to
address fundamental conceptual questions in the study of politics. In other
words, essays, term papers and other written assignments give you the chance to
“get your hands dirty” by grappling with the same broad questions that inform
the work of professional political scientists. Writing essays and papers allows
you to think long and hard about such critical issues as: What is democracy?
What makes people vote for Party A and not for Party B? Do ideas affect the way
people behave politically? Why do revolutions occur? How do states interact in
the international arena? What determines the shape of a state’s foreign policy?
Why do countries go to war?
In tackling essay-writing, especially in the “essay
question” section of exams, students often face three problems:
First, some students may feel that they just don’t know
where to begin. “How can I answer a question that’s so broad? I just don’t have
enough information.”
Second, even if they feel they know something about the
subject, they may wonder how to organize the information in order to present a
coherent and convincing argument. “How do I begin to put together all the
various pieces to the puzzle so that what I say makes sense?”
Finally, students may be unsure about the relationship
between the presentation of factual information and the expression of their own
views on the issue at hand. “The professor never told me whether he wanted me
to repeat what he had said in class, or if he was just looking for my opinion.”
Below are some general guidelines on how to deal with these
troubling questions, especially in the area of writing answers to essay
questions on exams. Clearly, professors have their own individual – and
sometimes idiosyncratic – views on the place of essay-writing and other written
assignments in university education. But the ideas below should help you begin
to assess how you should approach essays, term papers and other assignments
that require both extensive writing and serious reflection on important
conceptual issues.
Start at the Beginning
When you first read an essay question on an exam (or begin
to think about an assigned topic for a term paper or take-home final), you
should ask yourself two sets of questions:
1. What does the essay question really say? What kinds of
issues is it asking me to address? What assumptions underlie the question
itself?
Professors ask essay questions for a reason. They use essays
as a way of getting you to go beyond the material presented in class and in the
required readings for the course. They intend for you to reflect critically on
the information you have read, assess its validity, think about its
implications, and use it creatively in order to answer the question that has
been posed. So, when you encounter an essay question, spend a few minutes
thinking about what the question really asks, and make sure that you have a
clear idea of the kinds of issues and concepts that the question is trying to
get you to address.
2. What are the most useful sources of information on which
I can draw in order to answer the question? What kinds of data will best
support my argument?
During any semester-long course, you will encounter a huge
amount of information, both factual and conceptual. Many students treat essay
questions as “dumping grounds” for the information that they acquired in the
days and weeks preceding the exam. They pile on fact after fact, concept after
concept, date after date, name after name, with little thought about whether
all this information helps them answer the question. “If I throw in enough stuff,”
a student may say, “at least the professor will know that I’ve been paying
attention.”
Wrong. The professor will know that you have managed to cram
a great deal of irrelevant information into your short-term memory. But whether
you have really thought about the issues at hand and used the knowledge you
have gained in order to reflect critically on an important question will remain
a mystery. So, after you feel that you understand the kind of response that the
essay question is trying to elicit, ask yourself about which bits of
information will be the most relevant to your response. Don’t try to throw
everything into the pot. Be selective. Use those facts and ideas that are most
helpful in supporting your overall argument. After doing the reading and attending
the lectures, you do have enough information to answer the question
effectively. What is crucial, though, is to organize the information and to
present it in a way that buttresses the main theme of your essay.
Organization Is Everything
Because they have not stopped to ask themselves the
questions above, many students plunge right into an essay without thinking
about how to organize their thoughts. “If I just get enough stuff down on
paper,” a student might argue, “then the professor will at least know that I’ve
tried to answer the question.” Wrong again. The professor will know that you
are a wind-bag – not that you have thought seriously about the question.
Once you are sure that you know what the question is asking
and have spent a few minutes reflecting on the kinds of information that you
want to use in attempting to answer it, spend a further few minutes sketching
out the form that your answer will take. Here are a few ideas on how to begin:
Make an Outline
Sketch out how you plan to structure the essay. You can even
use the exam booklet or the back of the exam in order to write a brief outline,
flow chart, diagram, or whatever form you find the most helpful in organizing
your thoughts. The important thing is to have a clear idea of what you want to
say and how you are going to say it – before you begin writing the essay
itself.
There is an additional advantage to writing an outline or
essay plan: It may turn out that you simply budgeted your time poorly and did
not have time to complete the entire essay as you had planned. But if the
professor sees that you had a clear idea of what you wanted to argue, you are
likely to receive at least some credit for what you have written. On the other
hand, if you have managed to fill up a dozen pages without making a coherent
argument, chances are that the professor will remain relatively unimpressed.
Keep It Simple
Think back to eighth grade composition class. Remember the
“three-point enumeration” essays you probably had to write? They consisted of
an opening paragraph, three further substantive paragraphs and a conclusion.
The opening paragraph set out the general ideas you were going to explore, the
three following paragraphs expanded on each of those ideas, and the final
paragraph wrapped up what you had said.
The same format – with perhaps some modifications – can be
used to write responses to essay questions.
Opening sentence and first paragraph: State clearly the main
point that you wish to make in the essay. In other words, someone should be
able to read the first sentence and know exactly how you plan to answer the
question. Don’t try to be too cute, but a catchy opening sentence which states
simply and clearly the line of argument you intend to take is always desirable.
Other sentences in the first paragraph should then support the first sentence
and sketch out the ways in which subsequent paragraphs will expand on the theme
of the essay itself.
Body of the Essay: For normal essay questions on exams (say,
those in which you have an hour to complete two essays), you should have no
more than three or four paragraphs in the body of the essay. Each paragraph should
make a clear and discrete point, and that point should support your overall
argument. If it doesn’t, don’t write it. Your thoughts in the body of the essay
should follow on logically from the points you set out in the opening
paragraph. And each paragraph should begin just like the opening paragraph,
with a clear statement of the topic that the paragraph will address.
Concluding Paragraph: Sum up what you have said in the essay
in a final paragraph. Remind the reader of your main point, but avoid repeating
it in exactly the same words. End the essay with a sentence that wraps up your
thoughts and leaves the reader with a sense of closure.
Your Opinion Is More Than “Just Your Opinion”
Essay questions are not extended short-answer questions, and
they are not exercises in penmanship. A professor puts essay questions on exams
not in order to see if you can repeat verbatim what he/she said in class, but
in order to solicit your informed views on a particular subject that you should
have mastered in the course. In this sense, essay questions do ask for your
“opinion,” but it is an opinion that should be intelligent, informed and
well-structured. No conceptual questions in political science have
“once-and-for-all” answers. Essay questions ask you to address important issues
by using your brain – constructing a coherent, logical and informed view on a
given topic. After sitting in a course of lectures and doing the required
reading, you are more than capable of completing such a task. Your “opinions”
should have evolved and become more sophisticated, and you should have
developed a reasonable level of expertise in the main issues addressed during
the course itself. Your “opinions” matter, for they were what your professor
was trying to get you to develop all along.
Again, essays are not simply receptacles for regurgitated
factual information. Your knowledge of facts can be assessed using
multiple-choice questions, true/false, identify, define, short-answer and a
range of other examination formats, most of which you probably experienced in
grade school. At the college level, however, you are expected to think. And
thinking requires creatively using the knowledge you have acquired to take a
clear position on a contentious issue.
How do you do all that? Here a few guidelines:
Make An Argument. Take a stance. Stake out a position. Argue
for a particular point of view. Simply reeling off dates and names – or even
using political science jargon – will not do the trick.
Support Your Argument. Use relevant facts, concepts and
other information to buttress the points you wish to make. Throwing in
irrelevant information will impress no one. It will simply cloud your argument
and convince the professor that you really don’t know what you’re talking
about.
Be Creative. How creatively you make your argument is always
important. Style matters. Some professors may even prefer essays that are
well-structured and well-written but not particularly brilliant, to those that
contain a truly original insight cloaked in language that would make Webster
and Fowler turn in their graves. But be careful: Don’t get cute. Writing a
sonnet or a short one-act play is probably not a good idea. You should,
however, bring all your skills as a writer to bear on the essay topic. After
all, that’s why the question is an essay question, rather than a true/false or
short-answer.
Answer the Question. Let me repeat: Answer the question. If
you write page after page of text, but never really address the issue at hand,
few professors are likely to give you much credit. Always keep your overall
point in mind, and make sure that everything you write relates back to your
central argument. And that argument, in turn, should squarely address the
question posed on the exam.
Posted By HAMDAN MOHD SALLEH
September 20 2014
