How to PLAN your essays?

[rife168]

There are lots of resources about how to write and convey ideas for our 3 different text types, but I was wondering how to go about that first 5-10 minutes of the essays and/or language analysis where you analyse the prompt/article and decide what you will write about.

Things like: How you decide what to write about, how long planning should take, how should it be set out, how detailed.. etc.

Share how you did/do it and how effective you think it is/was.

Thanks

[dilks]

With respect to language analysis I think most students find it copasetic, immediately after writing time has commenced to go through with a pen, maybe even a highlighter, and mark the important sentences you are going to analyse, and what they are examples of.

Similarly with Text Response and the Context, it helps to annotate the prompt, by looking at what aspects you might be expected to address in it.

Remember to consider the fact that you can use your thesis statement in your introductory paragraph to restate the prompt to make it clear what your interpretation of the prompt is or to even put your own slant on it.
Some exam prompts, are kind of like traps, such as the following:
"Richard is totally evil, but the other characters in Richard III are not much better."
This is a trap because it is easy to simply start talking about how evil is a matter of degree, or to say that Richard is the only evil character in the play, which is egregious and outright erroneous. Better is to rephrase the prompt, like this:
"Evil permeates Richard the Third, and is epitomised in the character of Richard, who is embodies disordinate evil, however Shakespeare juxtaposes the deviant amorality of the actions of his characters, with the themes of conscience and guilt."

Some prompts have quotations in them. You must make sure to address what said quotation is saying about the prompt, but don't feel obliged to make it central to your overall thesis, especially if it really doesn't fit. Some prompts have two parts, where you must address both parts, not just one; such as:
'A memory is equal parts fact and self-deception' where it is important to address the 'fact' aspect of memory, not just self-deception. An easy mistake to make. Although it may depend to some extent, once again, on how you choose to restate the prompt in your thesis statement.

Outside of that it may also help to plan out what you are going to analyse in each of your body paragraphs.

[zombiesatemybrain]

Would you always recommend planning out essays? And in how much detail do you plan out your essays?

[dilks]

Would you always recommend planning out essays? And in how much detail do you plan out your essays?

It really does depend on what you personally feel comfortable with. Personally when I did them I just jotted down ideas so I had a general idea what my main points would be, and what different aspects of the topic to cover, and got straight into it, but not everyone can do that. Also if you have some quotations you aren't confident you remember, then write them down immediately once writing time starts, I did this for both of my text responses and it worked like a charm, although it can be time consuming I think you will find that you will have time left over and that ensuring you don't forget the quotes you want to use will make it worth it.

One reason planning can be important is if you pick what you think is going to be an easy prompt and then find half way through the SAC that you have completely run out of ideas. If you do planning beforehand you might anticipate this and pick a different prompt which you now realise is better even if it is harder, because it has more things to discuss. But I wouldn't go overboard, the purpose of planning is simply to determine how you are going to approach the topic, what your thesis is going to be, and what the main points of your essay are going to be.