How to Write Better Essays

edge, so we aim to produce evidence in our writing that we know a

great deal, that we have good recall, the simplest cognitive domain.

Whereas we should be exercising the more complex abilities to ana-

lyse, to criticise, to synthesise ideas and evidence, and to evaluate

arguments.

All too often, even though the question might ask us to discuss,

analyse or criticise, we assume the examiner merely wants evidence

that we can understand the subject. With this in mind, as we set about

researching the essay, we begin to take vast quantities of irrelevant,

unstructured notes from texts, arguing that we cannot possibly leave

any material out, because these are the facts and we are required to

show evidence that we can recall them all. As a result, we lose sight of

the implications of the question and our need to address them rele-

vantly, preferring instead to put everything into our essays as long as

they are facts. We assume the more facts we put in, relevant or not, the

more marks we will earn.

Similarly, although we’re told to put arguments in our own words,

it’s difficult to shake off the belief that, as the texts we use are the

source of right answers, of indisputable facts, we can do nothing else

but copy them with complete accuracy and without alteration, because

to change anything would be to make it less than right. So we copy

into our notes large chunks of them that we have neither structured

nor processed in any way. As a result our notes assume the structure

the author gives us, which might be quite inappropriate for our pur-

poses in preparing to write this particular essay.

Passive surface-level processing

In other words we become passive ‘surface-level processors’: we

neither exercise any judgement as to the relevance of the material, nor

to the credibility of what is being said. We’ve ignored the instructions

to operate in the higher cognitive domains, to evaluate the ideas criti-

cally, and instead we’ve settled for the simpler task of copying, repro-

ducing and imitating what we’ve allowed ourselves to assume is the

unquestioned authority, the source of right answers. Not surprisingly,

then, in our writing we’re inclined to plagiarise large sections, believ-

ing that to alter anything would be to make what is otherwise a right

answer, less than right.

However, in universities the examinations we prepare ourselves for

are not concerned with demonstrating recall or with reproducing faith-

fully what our authorities say. They’re aimed at assessing the higher

cognitive domains, where we synthesise ideas and analyse arguments

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