Essay Writing: Top Tips
You should:
1. Underline important words in the
question and its instructions.
2. Use different kinds of support
(reasons, examples, personal experience, other people’s experiences, things
read or heard, logical arguments, generalisations, facts, etc) for each of
their arguments
3. Make sure that the things that they
add to each opinion do actually support your arguments
4. Avoid repeating words (including in
the final summary/ conclusion)
5. Make sure that the essay is neat
enough to be understood without needing to be read again
6. Start writing as soon as you can
think of one reasonably suitable third subtopic (rather than wasting time
brainstorming better options)
7. Be ambitious with the language that
you use, showing the examiner that you have a high language level and making up
for any weaknesses in other areas such as accuracy
8. Also add more ambitious language at
the editing stage
9. Choose to express and support
whatever opinion seems easier to write about, rather than automatically deciding
to write your real opinion
10. Use as high a level of formality as
you can, including things like avoiding contractions (“I am” rather than “I’m”
etc), because more formal language will also be higher level language/ more
ambitious language
11. Use longer versions of basic
phrases, e.g. using “I strongly believe” rather than “I believe”
12. Give some background to the question
by describing how it is important, interesting and/ or topical in the
introduction (making sure that what you say is believable, not just a recycled
phrase from a model answer)
You can:
1. Use rhetorical questions
2. Make up your own personal
experiences etc to support your arguments (as long as they are believable)
3. Write the opposite of your real
opinion (if that is easier to support)
4. Do Writing Part Two first if they
have a mental block with the Writing Part One essay, coming back to the first
task later
5. Use some slightly more informal but
high level language such as phrasal verbs
6. Use Latin abbreviations such as
“e.g.” and “etc”
7. Cross things off and use little
arrows to insert missing words (rather than overusing their eraser, if you have
an erasable pen)
8. Add whole missing sentences to the
middle of the text, by putting the sentence in a box at the top or bottom of
the page and drawing a long arrow to show where it should go
You shouldn’t:
1. Try to look at both sides of each of
the three subtopics
2. Waste time brainstorming lots of
ideas for the best third sub-topic
3. Make up things to support your
arguments that are outside your own experience such as imaginary statistics,
quotations or page numbers of books
4. Start paragraphs with multipurpose
phrases like “Secondly” and “On the other hand” (rather than “The second
argument for… is…” and “Turning to the arguments against…”)
5. Leave editing Part One until you
have written Part Two too (as you will almost certainly run out of time first)
6. Assume knowledge that the examiner
might not have (such as detailed knowledge of your hometown)
7. Waste time counting every word
8. Include other arguments in their
summary/ conclusion which you didn’t mention in the body of their essay
9. Stick to basic language in an
attempt to make sure that you don’t make mistakes (ambitious language being at
least as important)
10. Waste time editing the essay down if
you go over 190 words
11. Use exactly the same words in your
summary/ conclusion as in the body of the essay
12. Use paragraph headings
You don’t need to:
1. Bother thinking of a title
2. Deal with the subtopics in the same
order they are given in the quetion sheet
3. Worry too much about British and
American English
4. Worry about how clever your ideas
are
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