Writing an essay

10 steps to a strong essay

1. Scrutinise the question

When your lecturer sits down to mark your essay, the very first thing s/he will look at is whether or
not you have answered the question directly andcomprehensively. It does not matter how dazzling
your ideas are or how sharp your writing is; your lecturer has asked you a specific question for a
reason, and if you have not answered it, you are likely to be marked down considerably. This means
that the first stage in writing any essay should always be to scrutinise the question and dissect it
carefully so you can work out exactly what it is you are being asked to do.
Any essay question will contain at least two crucial ingredients:

1.

Information about the content that you are supposed to cover

For example, Vygotsky's theories on child development, or systems of governance in

o
Europe

2.

One or more verbs, or direction words, that tell you what to do with that content

For example, analyse it, explain it, discuss it or describe it.

Lets work with the following essay question as an example of just how much information an essay
question contains:

Workplace diversity is now recognised as an important feature in organisations, especially in multicultural

nations like Australia. What communication problems might arise in a culturally diverse workplace, and how
can managers best deal with them?

Very broadly, this is a question about communication. More specifically, though, it is a question about
communication problems, and particularly those that arise in a culturally diverse workplace.