Help with Essay Writing: Understanding Your Essay Topic
Your essay topic
might seem very simple and straightforward when you first read it, but there
could be a lot of aspects that are being asked of you that you don’t see the
first time you look at the topic. You need to be sure that your essay answers
all of the different components of the question, and doesn’t provide any information
which is irrelevant to the topic
being discussed.
Let’s look at an
example. Imagine that this is the essay topic that you’re given:
In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella The Little Prince, the titular Prince feels torn between his
wanderlust and his love for the rose he cared for on his home planet. Write an
essay of 3000 words in which you discuss and compare the Prince’s relationships
with the rose and the fox he meets on Earth. Do you think that the Prince is
comforted by the fox?
There are many different elements being asked of you, and in
order to get a passing grade for your essay, you need to address all of them.
The first thing to look out for in an essay topic is the instruction words. These are words that
tell you what type of essay you should write, what types of actions you should
take and how your response should look. These are words like analyze, discuss, compare, consider,
and many more. You need to make sure that you know what each different
instruction word is asking you to do.
Instruction words will usually tell you what type of essay
you should write. If you are told to compare two or more things, you are
writing a comparative essay. If you
are told to discuss one topic in detail, you are writing a discursive essay. You can find more information about these
different types of essays on the Academic Coaching website, but for now, let’s
try and look at the instruction words in the topic above.
You could highlight the instruction words in your topic so
that they stand out. For example:
In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella The Little Prince, the titular Prince feels torn between his
wanderlust and his love for the rose he cared for on his home planet. Write an essay of 3000
words in which you discuss
and compare the
Prince’s relationships with the rose and the fox he meets on Earth. Do you think that the Prince
is comforted by the fox?
One of the instruction phrases that was a bit more vague was
the final one highlighted, namely “Do you think,” which is instructing you to give an opinion. You’ll need to read
your topic carefully to pick up on any subtle instructions like this.
Based on this, we can see that we are being required to
write an essay that does three things, namely discuss something, compare
something and give an opinion on
something.
To find out what we are discussing, comparing and opining
about, we have to look out for the second type of keywords in essay topics,
namely content words. These are
words that tell us what the content of our essays need to be. These words help
us to understand what the instruction words are asking us to do. It’s important
to remember that you need to include all
of the content words in your final essay. If you don’t, your essay will be incomplete.
Let’s underline the content words so that they stand out,
but look different from the instruction words.
In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella The Little Prince, the titular Prince feels torn between his
wanderlust and his love for the rose he cared for on his home planet. Write an essay of 3000
words in which you discuss
and compare the Prince’s
relationships with the rose and the fox he meets on Earth. Do you think that the Prince
is comforted by the fox?
The content words are any keywords that the instruction
words are asking you to look at. I’ve also included the phrase “3000 words”
since it lets us know how long our essay should be.
Once you’ve highlighted all of the instruction and content
words, read through the topic a few more times to see if there are any other
important things that you’re being asked to do in your essay. Then, make sure
that you understand each individual term or phrase on its own. Do you know what
it means to discuss or compare something? If not, consult some
of the resources on the Academic Coaching website which can give you more
information about this.
Once you understand exactly what’s expected of you, you can
move on to the second phase of planning your essay, which is brainstorming and creating
a mind-map of your ideas.
Review Your Learning:
·
Instruction words tell you how you should
construct your essay. They give word counts, essay styles and methods of
analysis
·
Content words tell you what needs to be included
in your essay. These are the keywords that you need to touch on, the points you
need to cover and the elements you need to consider.