TOK Essay Writing

Like any other essay, TOK essays are all about presenting and discussing your thoughts on a specific topic.

This is something that you have been doing the past few weeks in our class discussions as well as in your
written responses on google classroom and managebac during online learning.

We would now like to formalise some of this and get you to respond to an essay question.

The focus of this essay is ultimately a convincing and persuasive line of argument. In order to start working on
this we are going to follow a traditional essay structure - introduction, three body paragraphs and a conclusion.
You are able to use the first person but we would like you to make use of the more technical / TOKish terms
that you have started to accumulate (For example - deductive vs inductive reasoning, empirical knowledge etc
- wherever relevant)

Choose ​one​ of the following questions:

1. "The questions we can ask depend more on what we already know than on what we do not know."
Discuss this claim
2. “It is only knowledge produced with difficulty that we truly value.” To what extent do you agree with this
statement?
3. 'Given access to the same set of facts, how is it possible that there can be disagreement between
experts in the same discipline?' Discuss this claim.

Step One: Brainstorm

- Do you understand the question? The terms used within the question - perhaps get definitions of the
question. Do you agree or disagree with the statement? (Will form the basis of your line of argument…
what stance you want to take). Think of different perspectives/ points in relation to the question and
evidence to justify those points.

Step Two: ​Constructing the Essay.

Introduction​ - describe what you understand the question to mean. You might want to look at how certain
terms in the question might be defined. Establish whether you disagree or agree with the statement, or only
partly agree, and given an indication of how you are going to explore it.

Body Paragraphs - ​In each body paragraph establish your point/ ​perspective ​and support it with evidence.
This evidence should not just be something vague that your Auntie Maud told you about Tokoloshes but be
something quite specific. Need to clearly show how this example exemplifies your point. It is great if at least
one of your examples can come from something you have studied/ noted in one of your classes.

Conclusion
What is your conclusion? Do you still agree / disagree with the statement? And what does this conclusion
mean for the world? The SO WHAT element