Understanding Essay Questions
Starting an essay
Introduction
Writing essays is an important part of all academic study. To get good marks in your essays you need to show the tutor that you understand the subject. This means that you need to understand the question. An essential part of this process is recognising the hidden formulae of essay titles.
Objectives
These activities will:
• help you to understand how questions are structured
• give you practice in recognising key components of essay questions
Activity 1: What information is in an essay title?
Interpreting the essay title is essential for answering any essay question. Although essay titles are all different, they all contain three elements.
Instruction
Decide if the following statements about essay titles are true or false:
1. An essay question always has a clear topic.
2. The scope of all essay questions is defined by a specific focus.
3. Essay questions will contain a comment word like "discuss" or "evaluate".
Activity 2: Recognising key components (1)
The key components of essay questions are the topic, focus and question word. Being able to identify these will make writing the essay far easier.
Instruction
Examine the following essay question and identify the different components.
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The number of international students at British universities has increased by 20% in the last 5 years. Experts suggest that this is changing the nature of education. Discuss.
1. What is the topic?
2. What is the focus?
3. What is the comment word?
4. What does this mean you have to do?
Activity 3: Recognising key components (2)
Some questions come in several parts which will make it harder to identify the key components, but the questions will always contain the same components.
Instruction
Identify the three parts to the following essay question:
According to a recent White Paper (HMSO, 2007), there has been a significant upward trend in the construction of interactive conservatories. With reference to the literature, discuss the long-term environmental impacts of this trend.
Identify the topic from the following list:
Identify the focus from the following drop down list:
Identify the organisational comment word in the following list:
Would you like to review the main points?
© David Donnarumma, Brunel University, 2007.