How to Write Better Essays

making connections and analysing your arguments and concepts in

ways that you just hadn’t suspected when you set out to think about

the issues. As a result, when you next come to look at your ideas, you’ll

be surprised by just how far they have developed.

And each time you work on them you set the mind a new set of prob-

lems to go away and solve, which develops your ideas still further. Con-

sequently, by the time you’ve finished your interpretation, research and

planning, and you begin to write the first draft, you have come a very

long way indeed. Your ideas are more developed, subtler and far better

supported by evidence, than they were when you first started out.

Flexibility 55

Assignment 2

Brainstorming a question

Take the question you worked on in the first assignment. You’ve already

underlined the key words and concepts in the question and you’ve

analysed what you think are its main implications. Now brainstorm the

question, getting all your ideas down as quickly as possible in pattern-

note form.

Give yourself a time limit, say 30 minutes, to get it all down. Then put

it aside. After a day or so, come back to it and add any ideas you’ve come

up with since. Some ideas may push themselves into your conscious

mind before that, so note them, don’t lose them.

Now that you’ve brainstormed the question you’ve not only tapped

into ideas that are genuinely your own, but by clarifying what you know

and what questions you want your books and articles to answer, you

are less likely to waste time taking mounds of irrelevant, unusable

notes. But the success of this depends upon using the appropriate skills

for the job, rather than tying yourself inflexibly to a way of working

that prevents you from using your mind’s potential to process your

ideas imaginatively.

In the next chapter

Nevertheless, there is still one last thing you need to be sure about

before you launch into your research. You must be clear about the

range of abilities the examiner wants to see you use.

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