Essay Planning

Access to HE Diploma

Study skills - Week 8 - Session 7

Essay Planning Handout

Activity

What kind of planner are you?

• I don’t plan, ever.

You prefer to ‘get stuck in’ and can never be bothered to write a plan as you feel it is just duplicating and a waste of time. You think that the structure and organisation ‘falls into place’ as you are writing, so why would you need to write a plan?

If this is you, you may find that your work never really goes anywhere. Your tutor feedback may indicate that your work lacks ‘cohesion’ and ‘structure’. Remember – failing to plan is planning to fail!

• I plan a lot. I just don’t actually start the work.

You constantly start plans, update them and change them. You display your plans on your wall, on your fridge; anywhere you will see them frequently. Your plans are probably brightly coloured and full of pretty pictures. You feel that you are a good student because you are working so hard!

The trouble with this is that you are not actually producing anything your tutor can assess. The point of planning is that it is moving you one step close to the finished product. If you are not moving in this direction, you are merely procrastinating and convincing yourself you are doing more work than you really are.

• I plan but I don’t stick to it.

You know how to plan an essay and you make good essay plans. However, when you come to write the essay you have new and better ideas and your essay never resembles the essay plan by the time it is finished. Sometimes you think of things you want to include  within your essay to show that you know them, even if they are not really related to the question.  

It is good for your essay plan to be adaptable. You may write your plan and then do further research which you want to include. Make sure that anything you add is to the benefit of your essay and still answers the question which has been set.

• I can’t plan because I change my mind all the time.

You may find it hard to know where to start or even what you need to write in the essay in the first place. You don’t really know how you are going to divide up your word count because you don’t really know what you’re going to include. You could probably do the essay plan after the essay just to keep your tutor happy; you’ll know what you wrote about then!

This may be the result of a lack of confidence, either in the topic or in your abilities in essay writing. Try dividing the essay up either by the word count or assessment criteria. The plan is there to help you, not to impress your tutor. If in doubt, write down everything you can think of to do with the topic (which is relevant to the title!) and see which points link to others in a coherent way.