Why Essays Matter, and How to Write Your Own Question

Students in taught programmes – whether undergrad or postgrad – are very familiar with essays. It is one of the main ways that we assess. But something I repeatedly find is students who don’t really understand the purpose of essays and teachers who assume that students know what we’re doing and so don’t actually explain the purpose. This often only really comes to a head when students are given the opportunity to write their own essay questions, and they get it wrong because they don’t understand the purpose of the essay.

Why Essays Matter
Essays are a crucial assessment tool in university education, allowing us – as academics – to evaluate your – students – critical thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, writing, 
and argumentation skills in ways other assessment methods don’t. So here are some of the key things that essays allow us to see about you and your academic development:
1. Assessing Higher-Order Thinking: Essays give us a window into your cognitive process and allow us to see how you interpret and synthesise information, evaluate evidence, and construct logical arguments. 
2. Evaluating Reasoning: In crafting a well-structured essay, you can demonstrate your reasoning skills – how you move from premises to conclusions, anticipate counterarguments, and justify your position. The process of writing itself often reveals flaws or gaps in thinking that can then be addressed. The way you demonstrate the movement from introduction to conclusion can be more important than what you actually conclude – it often doesn’t matter to me whether I agree with the premise or not, as long as I can see how the premise has been reached, and appropriate evidence and scholarship has been used.
3. Providing Authentic Experiences: Essays can simulate real-world problem-solving much more closely than exams. In your career and life, you will frequently face open-ended challenges requiring you to take in complex information, think critically about it, and present your analysis or solution persuasively. Essays build the exact skills needed for this.
4. Promoting Original Insight: Because essays are composed rather than selected responses, they provide room for you to offer original ideas or novel connections – even ones that we have not considered! Having space for creative and independent thought is vital.

However, it’s important to recognise that essays don’t automatically serve these lofty goals just by virtue of being essays. Poorly designed prompts or underdeveloped responses can fail to meaningfully assess higher-order skills. This is why it’s so crucial that you as a student understand what we’re looking for and – if you’re in the position where you’re writing your own essay prompts you craft a question that allows you to demonstrate these skills (and even if you’re not, understanding how essay questions are written can help you unpack the questions you are given).

How to Write an Essay Question
As essays should be approached as research tasks, rather than just the regurgitation of information, it’s essential that you craft a question that will help you focus your research and write – in the end – a compelling essay. 

Step 1: Understand Common Task Words
Before you begin crafting your essay question, familiarise yourself with common task words and what they require you to do – some examples:

• Account for: Give reasons for, explain why something occurs
• Analyse: Break material into its constituent parts and determine how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose.
• Argue: Take a position and, using appropriate ancient and scholarly evidence, make the case for it
• Compare: Identify and describe points of similarity
• Contrast: Bring out the points of difference
• Evaluate: Make a strong analysis, and argue for a position based on that analysis, ensuring that you have explored the topic from multiple perspectives
• Describe: Give an account that is complete and accurate, with appropriate sources, and highlighting the most important elements
• Discuss: Analyse and present multiple perspectives, giving a critical account of your research

Step 2: Brainstorm Content and Scope
1. Write down the first three things that come to mind related to the course. These can be places, people, spheres (e.g., politics, religion, warfare), specific objects, or texts.
2. For each topic, jot down a few notes or keywords, including what specifically interests you about that topic.
3. Consider how you would focus each topic by determining its scope. Scope may include places, time periods, people, objects, or spheres.
4. Turn each topic, explanation, and scope consideration into a question without worrying too much about the wording.

Step 3: Refine Your Essay Question
1. Choose one of the questions from step 2 to form the basis of your essay question.
2. Write the question out in two further ways: one less focused and one more focused than the original question.

Step 4: Finalise Your Essay Question
Review the questions you’ve written in steps 2 and 3. By now, you should have a clear idea of the topic and scope of your essay, including how you might limit it down. The questions you’ve written will become the foundation of the essay question that you’ll refine with the help of your lecturer or seminar leader.
Essays give you an opportunity to showcase your critical thinking, reasoning, and communication skills. By understanding the purpose behind essay assignments and learning how to craft effective questions, you can unlock your full potential as a scholar and thinker.

But remember: essays are not about regurgitating information but about engaging in a meaningful research process that pushes you to explore complex ideas, evaluate evidence, and articulate your own insights. Embrace the challenge and view each essay as an opportunity for growth and discovery.

As you tackle your next essay, take the time to carefully deconstruct the question, considering the task, content, and scope. If you have the chance to develop your own question, use these steps and the worksheet included below to help. Get feedback from your lecturer, seminar leader, and peers to ensure your question is clear, focused, and appropriately challenging.

​The skills you develop through essay writing — critical analysis, logical reasoning, persuasive argumentation — are not just useful during your academic journey, however long that lasts. But they’re also useful in whatever future career you go into – those ‘soft skills’ that admissions are always banging on about! Embrace the essay! Approach it with curiosity and creativity.

Happy writing.
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