Deciding what to write

about, and getting started

Yola Anggraini
Dewi Yuliani
Andrivaroqi Latunil Asraf
1.1 The Purpose of Writing Essays
• Essays literary studies generally require you to carry out two related tasks;

1.) invite you to show

that you are familiar 2. ) Arguing a case -
and manipulate with is important.
the basic,
• Arguing a case involves the following four stages:

Identifying a problem or issue on given

area.;

Establishing competing points of view

associated with the issue identified;

Presenting evidence in support of and against

various positions which might be taken up with
regard to the issue;

Reaching a conclusion consistent with the

evidence and arguments you have
presented.
• It is the fundamental skills of problem-identification, analysis and debate which
are usually perceived by examiners and potential employer as the main
achievement of literary studies.

• The pesuasive and analytic skills you develop are applied during your course to
literary works and issues;

• It directs you not only towards a wide range of examples of writing but also
towards a greater awareness of moral and social questions underlying the
techniques through which analysis and persuasion are achieved.
1.2 What Sorts of Topics You Might Choose

• In deciding wquestion involves, you need first to identify where it fits into the
range of ESSAY GENRES (or 'essay idioms')

• A literature essay always has a focus for its subject matter (e.g. on the novels
Angela Carter, the role of fool characters in drama, or origis of free verse),

• and it also uses a particular mode of argument (e.g. stylistic analysis, contrast and
comparison, or historical contextualisation)
 Kinds of Focus

4. Historical
5.Theoritical
3. Generic issues relating
issues relating
1. Authors 2. Texts grouping of to selected
to literary
texts text or group
study.
of texts.
 Kinds of Argument

a.) Revalue a reputation ( or assess relative achievement) ;

b.) Analyse style: comment on aspects of the language of a

text.
c.) Relate a text to the historical circumstances which
produce it, or in which it is read.
d.) Place a text in literary or aesthetic context (e.g. in a tradition, in
the emergence of a new form or style.

e.) Describe or interprete (or interprete) a text.

f.) Take sides in an ongoing critical argument between

differing viewpoints.

g.) Exemlify theories, terms or approaches, or use a

classificatory system to describe a text
1.3 Responding to Set Questions
Type of Question Words to look for/ What to do
1.) Comparison compare, contrast

2.) debate comment on, write on, discuss (often following a

quotation, either attributed to an author - usually a
critic or made up by the examiners)

illustrate, give examples

3.) exemplification
outline, sketch, summarise
4.) description
explain, consider the implications of, analyse, do you
5.) analysis agree with the assertion that ... i what ways does ...

differentiate, classify, describe thr types of

.) classification

7.).) evaluation assess, justify, to what extent?

 Categories of Exam Questions

e.) Complex
b.) Questions which c.) Other question
a.) explicitly invite types of d.) General ex; 1.) a quote
Questions debate, and and the
question invitations- captures a
on given weighing of the
genersl
evidence ( these my ex;In what but to
passages perception, 2.)
be called 'to what ways can what?
ex; How you are asked
extent' or 'discuss' Elizabets ex; Write on about some of
appropriate questions. Barrett Jonson's use her writer, 3.)
is the form/ ex; ' Bakhtin's
Browning's of location you are asked
style of the dialogic reading of
to discuss this
defuse scepticism poetry be in any three
following second writer
about the possibility regarded as a of his works.
passage? in the light of
of meaning.' Discuss. subversive? the quote.