attempt to let readers know where they are being taken, which turn-
ings they will be taking along the way, and why.
Without the plan and its clear development in the body of the
essay, you will most certainly lose the examiners reading your
work, and if they are lost they cannot give you marks, no matter
how well argued your point is, or how skilfully it is supported by
evidence. If they cannot see why a passage is relevant, they must
ignore it. They are not expected to make great efforts on your behalf
to try to make sense of your work, to fill in the gaps that you’ve left.
They must accept it on face value, otherwise they could find them-
selves spending more time on your essay – making more allowances
for what they thought you meant to say – than on the work of other
students.
Examiners regularly report that students fail examinations, or just
do badly, not because they don’t know the subject, not because they
haven’t got the abilities, nor even because they lack the knowledge,
but because they lose the reader, who is unable to discover why their
work is relevant to the question. Almost always this comes down to
the lack of planning.
The comments of one professor at Harvard are not untypical:One common problem is the meandering paper, one that wanders from
one thinker to another, from summaries of concepts to counterarguments
to restatements of the paper topic, without a clear plan or logical pro-
gression.^1Planning strengthens weaker points
In fact the benefits of this go even further. By providing your readers
with a sequence of obvious logical steps, so they can follow your train
of thought, you give yourself an invaluable safety net. In many cases a
weak or poorly defined point will gain strength and precision from
being a step in a clear logical argument.
We all experience this when we come across an unfamiliar word: in
most cases we can deduce its meaning from the context in which it’s
used. Examiners are no different. When they read your essay and come
across a set of phrases or explanations that seem unclear, if they are
part of a set of arguments and points thoughtfully planned in a logical
sequence, your meaning will probably be all too obvious. Your argu-
ments will gain strength and clarity from the clear, well planned context
in which they are developed.144 PlanningHTW19 7/27/01 8:20 AM Page 144