The Skills of Essay Writing Writing can help you to

Good morning and welcome to this writing course. My name is Kevin Mayhew. This morning I’d like to talk about the skills of essay writing.
   As a student, you may often use writing as a way of expressing your thoughts and feelings. Our writing reflects our thinking. If you are having trouble writing, it may be that you haven’t got your thoughts together. So if you want to write clearly, your thinking must be clear. Again your purposes for writing are important. You can use writing as a way of getting your thoughts clearer. That’s fine and can be very productive. But if you are using writing to tell someone something, for example in an essay or examination answer, then you will probably need to have many of your thoughts clear before you write the actual answer.
   Writing can help you to get your thoughts clear, to explore some of your ideas and to remind yourself of important points. When you are writing an essay, a project or an exam answer, you are usually expected to write in a certain way. It helps to learn as much as you can about what is expected.
   You have to learn, for example, what the person who marks or assesses your work wants. What does he or she give marks for? How long should your work be? Can you find any examples of what the work should look like? Should there be any comments like "I think" in what you produce? Are notes acceptable at times? Do you need to show you have researched other things? You can find the answer to such questions by asking and by looking at clues available in work you have already finished and had marked.
   If you can, ask whoever assesses or marks your work. They may not be able to give you a simple answer and they may say it has a lot to do with the way you arrange what you have to say. This brings us on to a second point about writing.
   One of the more difficult things to do when you are writing as part of your studying is to make your work hang together. You should choose an order for your ideas when you write. There usually has to be some order in the way you put your thoughts together when you write as a student. Your writing should usually follow some pattern, although you can vary that pattern quite a lot.
   When writing essays you should have a selection of information and the subject or topic that holds the information together. You should have ways of making statements or creating an impression by changing slightly the words you use and the ways you use them.
   Keep one eye on the order you have chosen and the other on how you fasten things together. There are always different ways in which your ideas can be arranged, but once you have chosen an order, keep to it, Choose the order according to your purpose and your knowledge of what your reader expects.
   Make sure your order:
   1. Fits in with your purpose, so that you are fairly clear what you want to do;
   2. Fits in with what you have been asked to do;
   3. Makes sense to your reader;
   4. Fits around all of what you want to include.
   Essay-writing is central to success in your studies. The essay should demonstrate not simply knowledge about a particular issue but a capacity to think critically and to argue in an objective, rational and informed way. To write a good essay, it is first necessary to choose with great care the question. Be sure that you are sufficiently informed on the topic you select, and then, you should read the questions carefully, Many mistakes are made at this stage. You will he marked according to how well you address the issues raised in the question. Read and reread the question and be absolutely sure of what it is dealing with. Do not assume anything. Underline the main words and phrases in the question to ensure that your answer will be relevant to what is asked. Then, plan your answer. Many students launch themselves into essays without planning. This usually results in generalized nonsense. You should list all the points you feel are related to the answer you wish to give. Go through this list and pick three or four points you think are important to your position and about which you can write in an informed way.