Writing Essays That Answer the Question, Not the Topic

Read a stack of average essays and a pattern appears immediately. They are informative, reasonably written, clearly the product of real work, and they do not answer the question.

They answer the topic. Those are not the same thing.

Topic answers versus question answers

Asked "To what extent did economic factors cause the fall of the Roman Republic?", a topic answer explains the fall of the Roman Republic. It covers economics, politics, military reform and personalities, in order, competently.

A question answer takes a position on how much of the cause was economic, defends it, and weighs it against the alternatives. Same knowledge, different structure, and often a two-grade difference.

Decode the question first

Spend three minutes before writing anything. Underline three things.

1. The command word. Explain, evaluate, compare, to what extent, discuss. Each demands a different structure and they are not interchangeable.
2. The scope. Dates, regions, named texts, specified conditions. Material outside the scope earns nothing however good it is.
3. The concept. The thing you are actually being asked about, which is frequently narrower than the topic it sits in.

A structure that travels

This works across history, literature, geography, politics and most social sciences.

• Introduction. State your answer in one sentence. Do not save it for the conclusion; examiners are reading fast and want to know where you are going.
• Body paragraphs. One argument each, strongest first. Each opens with a claim, supports it with specific evidence, explains how the evidence supports the claim, and links back to the question.
• Counter-argument. Give the opposing case its best form, then explain why you still hold your position. Weak straw men are visible from a distance.
• Conclusion. Answer the question again, now qualified by what you have shown. No new material.

The sentence that earns marks

Most students supply the evidence and skip the explanation. The evidence is the easy half.

Weak: "Grain prices rose sharply in the 40s BC."

Better: "Grain prices rose sharply in the 40s BC, which mattered because urban plebeian support was contingent on subsistence security, making economic distress directly convertible into political instability."

The second one shows reasoning. The first shows revision.

Planning under exam conditions

Five minutes of planning in a forty-minute essay is not lost time, it is the difference between a shaped argument and a drift.

Write your one-sentence answer. List three or four paragraph claims. Note one piece of specific evidence per claim. Number them by strength. Then write. Almost everyone who "runs out of time" started writing immediately and discovered their best point on the final page.

Editing when there is no time to edit

In the last two minutes, do only this: check that every paragraph's first sentence makes a claim rather than announcing a topic, and check that the final sentence of the essay actually answers the question that was asked. Those two passes recover more marks than proofreading for commas.