ESSAY WRITING
The fundamentals of essay writing (part 1)
Three key words: identify, explain and analyse
This guide is part 1 of a 4-part series on the essay writing fundamentals. It explains three key words that will be used throughout these guides. Your teachers will also use these words in their feedback. It is important that you understand what these words mean in relation to essay writing, and how they differ from one another.
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1. Identify: Recognise that something is present (by referring to it in your writing)
This is our first key word, and it’s the simplest to do and to understand.
To identify something means to recognise that it is present in a text that you are writing about. You will do this by referring to it in your essay.
Being able to recognise that different things are present in a text (i.e. to identify them) is the first step to writing a good essay. There are lots of different things that you might need to identify when you are writing an essay, and as you work your way up from Year 7 to GCSE you will be expected to be able to identify more and more things. In the box below there are some examples to give you an idea of this.
Below are some things you might be expected to identify. Don’t worry if you don’t know what all these things are right now, especially if you’re in Year 7 — you should return to this guide later when you’ve been taught more.
Identify a piece of evidence — You will do this by including it in your essay as a quotation
Identify an aspect of meaning, like an inference — You will do this in your paragraph points and in the analysis part of your PEA paragraphs (e.g. The writer presents Scrooge as a cold and heartless person)
Identify a similarity or difference between things — You might do this in your analysis or in a comparison essay (e.g. This is very similar to the way Scrooge was presented at the start of the novel)
Identify a method that the writer has used — This is something you’ll do from Year 8 onwards, where you recognise that a writer has used a particular technique (e.g. The writer uses the metaphor "sea" to describe the faces)
Identify the effect of a method — This is also something you’ll do from Year 8 onwards when you’re describing the effect that techniques create (e.g. This suggests that there are a lot of faces)
Identify a big idea in a text — This is also something you’ll do from Year 8 onwards, where you recognise how a text relates to big ideas (e.g. This shows that power corrupts, especially when the power has not been earned)
In each of these examples something has been identified — and only identified. They all show that the person writing the essay has been able to recognise that these things are present in the text they are writing about. This is what it means to identify something.
Key things to understand
You will always identify first.
However, you need to avoid stopping there.
After you have identified something, you will almost always need to explain it, and sometimes you will also need to analyse it, which is where the next two key words come in.
2. Explain: Make something clear by describing it in more detail
TBC - having identified something you generally need to make it clear by explaining it
3. Analyse: Explain something methodically, generally by breaking it down into its component parts
TBC - zooming in