Intro

The two types of skills that we all need to be successful in our

courses – study skills (reading, note-taking, writing,
organisation, and revision) and thinking skills (analysis,
synthesis, discussion, argument, and use of evidence) – can
be taught.
If you understand the value of doing something, you normally
find you’re more confident and positive about tackling it. So,
what are the reasons for writing essays?
-It compels you to organize your thinking and draw out ideas
about a certain issues. Writing is a crucial step for learning a
new subject.
-it provides you opportunity to get feedback from your tutor.
- When you plan an essay, you’ll find that planning is the most
important revision material.

The five stages

For any essay to achieve high marks it’s essential to go
through five distinct stages:
1 Interpretation of the question
2 Research
3 Planning
4 Writing
5 Revision

Stage 1
Intro
Oftentimes, you give a little amount of analyzing the question
because of panicking. As a result, you waste your time for
capturing ideas that are futile for the essay you’re working
on.
But, an hour or two allotted for interpreting the question will
help us to get a clear idea of what the question is getting at
and what the examiner is looking for in our work.
So, what should you be looking for when you interpret a
question? All essay questions tell you two things: the
structure your essay should adopt for you to deal relevantly
with all the issues it raises; and the range of abilities the
examiner is expecting to see you use in answering the
question.
Structure- this will give you an overview for the issue that the
question implies

1. Revealing the Structure

a. Analyze the key concepts
-With these warnings in mind it’s essential to pin down two
things: how many parts there are to the question and what
weight you will need to give to each part.
- A first class script should show: analytical and argumentative
power, a good command of facts, evidence or arguments
relevant to the questions, and an ability to organise the
answer with clarity, insight and sensitivity.
b. Questions
- The analysis of important concepts is the main focus when
we come to interpret questions. Many of the challenges we
face are questions about concepts. Thereby, it is imperative
that you master the specific meaning of the word that the
concept implies to correctly answer the issue in the question.
c. Qualifying for the highest marks on offer
- Analysing concepts does not only provide your essay a
relevant structure but also give you a high marks that you
deserve. If you fail to do this step, it will indicate that you did
not reflectively question some of the important assumptions.
It will be likely to tell your examiner that there is nothing with
the concept or there is no reason why these concepts should
raise any particular problem.

2 A Practical Example
a. Open and Closed Concepts
-Closed concepts- Unchanging or unambiguous meaning
-Open concepts- which meaning is different from one culture,
individual, and organization to another.
b. Start with the way we use them
-If there is any doubt about we use them, we should analyse
them and start with how we use this certain word.

3 Learning to Analyse
- Of all the thinking skills, analysis is probably the most useful in opening up rich sources of ideas
for you to use in an essay;
- The most innocent word in the question may be the most deceiving one, and although we often
use this word, we are unable to extract its meaning.
-
1. Blinded by preconceptions
-In fact, the more awkward and deliberate this process feels the better the results are likely to be.

- We comprehend things differently from what they truly

are because of the forethoughts we have in mind. As a
result, we are blinded from the real implications a certain
concept conveys. This could be the reason that our
preconceptions prepare our minds to see what they want
to see.
2. Progress through analysis
- It should come as no surprise, then, that analysing those concepts and explanations that we’ve
become accustomed to accept almost without thinking, has been the source of the most remarkable
breakthroughs in almost all areas of thought. Indeed, the ruling paradigms that structure our
thinking in many areas do so even when it’s clear they’re no longer effective in explaining what we
see.
4. The Three-Step Technique- Step 1 and 2

In Step 1 we gather the evidence: the examples of the concept we want to analyse. The examples
should be diversified in order to differentiate their characteristics and reveal more clearly their
essential similarities.

Then, in Step 2, we analyse these examples to extract a common pattern of characteristics. By doing
so,