PART-1
ESSAY-WRITING THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE

In a subject like Communications Studies, much of your university work will be assessed by essay – whether that’s an essay you prepare in your own time over a period of days or weeks, or one you concoct in an examination hall in the space of an hour. It therefore follows that if you learn how to prepare, organise and present essays, you will do much better in your degree overall. So this document might also be called:

HOW TO GET BETTER MARKS WITHOUT (NECESSARILY) DOING MORE WORK

We’ll assume that you’ve read widely about the particular subject of your essay, and have a good understanding of the broader area within which that topic is located. Broad and deep research is the essential basis of an essay. You will have lots of notes on the subject – see the ICS Study Skills Guide to Note-Making for tips on how to do this.
So now it’s time to write the essay. You sit down in front of the keyboard and start typing: you put the title, you try to group some similar bits of information or argument together, and then you put a conclusion on the end saying that there are many interesting points of view on this subject, right?
No, of course you don’t. You’ve got to start off with an essay plan. By designing this you’ll come up with the structure. A well thought-out structure is at the heart of every good essay.

What is a good structure?
It isn’t enough to make sure that you have an
introduction at the start, a conclusion at the end, and
the other stuff in between. So what do you need?

1. You do need a solid introduction. It will probably
contain something about how you have interpreted the
question, and it is often a good idea to state a thesis
(an argument) which you are going to illustrate or
explore in the body of the essay – although you may
prefer to save the ‘findings’ of your exploration to the
end, in which case you have to introduce the question
carefully at the start.

2. And you need a tight, powerful conclusion which is
the logical consequence of everything that has gone before.
The good essay has developed a number of related
strands which the conclusion ties together. It may also
contain an extra, surprising thing which you saved to
throw in at the end with a flourish.

3. So what happens in between? Well…
Six really awful ways to begin the essay ‘Why have baked beans become so popular in twentieth century Britain?’:
“The question of why baked beans have become so popular in twentieth century Britain is an interesting…”
“The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘baked beans’ as…”
“In this essay I will explore the question of why baked beans have become so popular in twentieth…”
“The Penguin English Dictionary defines ‘popular’ as…”
“The twentieth century has been going for quite a while now and…”
“The Collins English Dictionary defines ‘twentieth century’ as…”
! Why are these awful? Because they are so predictable, uninspiring and limp. What should you do instead? Something else.

*Note[Reference would be revealed later]