Essay+Writing+Advice+and+Skills

The following handouts and sheets will help you in organizing and writing all your literary essays.



Before you start your essay, you need to your essay, to understand how you are going to proceed with your essay. Some students like to use spider diagrams, others just like to draw mind maps of list ideas.

An important problem students have is that they sometimes only narrate the plot, and do not do any literary analyses. handout by Peter Barry explain the four levels of essay writing, with clear examples and guidance.

Another obstacle where students struggle, is to incorporate quotations with suitable analyses in their essays. Have you forgotten the PEE structure? (Point, Example and Evidence) There are various ways to do it, and and handout reminds you again how to do it well.

One way to show your structure and make it clear, is to use linking words: and.

It is sometimes difficult for students to picture what an excellent essay looks like, so is an essay in the old style of the previous IB syllabus which received full marks. Even if you do not know the books, look at some of the language and the ways quotes are incorporated in the text.

And finally, even though you can many styles of reference, MLA is the preferred style to use when you write literary essays. You will find an excellent resourde here at The Online Writing Lab of Purdue. And finally, your bibliography should be in the correct format, you can use[| citation machine] to help you format your bibliography in the correct way.

Here is the powerpoint presentation I have used in class to introduce you to some do's and don'ts in essay writing.