How do I plan my answer to an essay question?

There's no clear cut way to structure an English essay, so it's important that you take a little time when approaching a new question to draw up a short plan before attempting to answer it. The important thing is to make sure you're hitting all of the assessment objectives in every stage of your essay, so if you run out of time, you can still get into those high grade boundaries. The key is to make sure every single one of your points is directly tailored to the question. Take a minute to read the question closely, circle the key words and establish exactly what it is asking of you. Every paragraph you write should use evidence directly related to the question, and needs to be cohesive – have a direction and stick to it. Don’t overload yourself – pick three or four main arguments and stick to them. The first AO specifically targets your ability to respond to the question, so don’t give the examiner any difficulty in following your argument. It’s generally a good idea to work chronologically through the text, so try and pick out points from various points in the text and move fluently through them – this will help you, as your conclusion will have a good synergy with the conclusion of the novel. AO2 is all about your analysis, so make sure you’re getting in that terminology and give your comments the analytic breadth and depth you need. A general rule is to frame your essay with points about structure and form and give really focalised, close reading in the centre. Your marks for comparison come in with AO3. Make sure you are keeping these brief and relevant – your wider reading should be used to support your key text, and not the other way around. A good way to do this is to treat your wider reading texts as “orbital” – build your main essay first and the wider reading points should weave around this, only being drawn on to consolidate your argument so you don’t knock your AO1 marks. AO4 is about context. Make sure you have context points to back up all the major themes you can be asked about before you go in, but don’t spend huge amounts of time retelling history – keep your context points directly relevant to your analysis. Don’t treat the AOs as compartments of your essay – your contexts comments should still be cohesive and support your ability to construct a great argument. Most importantly, make sure EVERY SINGLE POINT you make is directly relevant to the question, and, in the final line of the paragraph, ensure it ANSWERS that question.