In this the latest extract from the textbook that I wrote to help students like you, 'The Secret Guide To Academic Writing & Study' seeks to consider the significance of the essay title and the question you have been set for the purposes of writing your essay. This is because it is vital before you write your essay for the sake of developing excellent essay technique to look to decide what the question you have been set means and how you should go about answering it.
Therefore, you need to be aware that there are many different kinds of questions you can be set as your essay title for the purposes of your assessments in whatever subject you are studying and so some of the most typical questions for any essay title include –
(a)“Compare and contrast” - this kind of essay title requires you to take two or more parts of a particular area of a subject you have studied and place these differing parts up against each other to identify the similarities and differences between these respective parts within the body of your work, before concluding on how similar these parts are.
(b)“How” – questions phrased around this word in an essay title generally require you to illustrate the way in which a concept, idea or character succeeds or fails to do something and usually involves looking to prove the affirmative or the negative. However, conversely, it is also occasionally possible to bring in elements proving the negative and vice versa if you feel able to offer such an argument. This is because you will then be ‘challenging the question’ itself to potentially earn a much higher mark.
(c)“Evaluate”, “Explain”, “Discuss” or “Assess” – questions that are set of this type for an essay title usually involve your looking to determine the success and/or failings of a particular concept, idea, group or individual in achieving something specified and could be similar to questions involving “how”.
(d)“What” or “Why” – usually requires you to state the factors or concepts (occasionally also the chronology leading) to an event, but it is not enough to simply state these things in a list. Therefore, you must ‘evaluate’ ‘how’ these factors have led to the event in question that may also involve an element of ‘compare and contrast’.
Of course this article is only seeking to offer you just a taste of the kinds of questions you may be set by way of an essay title for your assessment in any given subject area so that there is going to be a need for you to undertake further research yourself.
Therefore, if you would like a great deal more information and support in both this and other areas then you can find it in the form of 'The Secret Guide To Academic Writing & Study' through my website at www.academicfx.co.uk and also via e-mail at postmaster@academicfx.co.uk for further information and to answer any questions you may have.
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