How to Write Better Essays

raised by the question and, consequently, we don’t really know what

we’re looking for.

No standard by which to judge the

author’s ideas

Equally important, because we haven’t declared what weknow and

think about the issues, we have no way of grafting onto our own under-

standing the ideas we’re about to read and consider. Not surprisingly,

then, they will always appear to be somebody else’s. And, because of

this, the most we’ll be able to recall are mere scraps of what we’ve

read without any consistent organisation to them. However, perhaps

the most serious consequence is that we’ll have nothing to judge

the author ’s ideas against. We’ll be in no position to criticise and

evaluate the arguments.

Having read the passage we’re likely to be so thoroughly convinced

by the author ’s arguments that we find little to criticise. Then, when

we go on to read another text by another author, who presents views

conflicting with the first, we’re likely to find we’re equally convinced by

these arguments. Lost between the two, we find it almost impossible

to discuss the merits of either. Having failed to establish where we

stand, we have nothing to argue with. Consequently, we’re left just to

imitate and reproduce uncritically what we read.

Poor concentration

This also goes a long way towards explaining why many of us find it

so difficult to concentrate on our work for all but relatively short

periods. Because we’re asking the mind to do relatively simple things,

just translating the words on the page and copying them into our notes,

it’s under-utilised, so it looks around for more interesting pursuits. It

looks forward to the party at the weekend or back at last summer ’s

holiday. It can do all this and still cope with the trivial tasks we set it.

The only problem is that when we get to the bottom of the page, or

after we’ve spent two hours taking notes, we struggle to recall a word

of it. We’ve read it, but we haven’t processed it beyond copying the

words.

There are, therefore, very good reasons why we should, at all

times, attempt to escape this tendency towards passive, surface-level

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