How to Write Better Essays

Just watch your friends’ or your parents’ faces when, in the middle

of a discussion, you reproduce a structure of ideas you’ve created. Not

only will you show that you can analyse the most difficult argument or

concept, but you will demonstrate that you can remember a range of

material from different sources, all of it relevant to a thoughtful, well

constructed argument. And it will happen, almost without you realis-

ing, as a result of knowing just two things: how to create structures,

and the need to create them.

To illustrate the point, take the following simple task.

Planning for the Exam 163

Practice exercise 13

Remembering through structures

Here is a list of ten items you’ve got to purchase at the local super-

market. Look at them for about thirty seconds, committing them to

memory. Then cover them and try to recall them.

carrots

yoghurt

tomatoes

beans

wine

butter

milk

gin

cheese

potatoes

Most students are able to recall six to eight items, but only those

used to the most active form of processing get all ten. What most of

these do is to process the list into a structure, something like the

following:

1 Vegetables:

(a) carrots

(b) tomatoes

(c) beans

(d) potatoes

HTW21 7/27/01 8:24 AM Page 163