Essay Plans: Perfect essay structure every time
Essay Plans make the rest of the essay writing process easy.
If your teen doesn’t know where to start when they need to write an essay for school or for an exam then you have come to the right place.
The place to start any essay is writing an Essay Plan.
Essay Plans are like a full cover insurance policy taken out against your essay. They ensure three very important things:
The essay follows proper essay structure, including each element of S.E.X.I.
The paragraphs follow in a logical sequence
Important points to make in the essay are not forgotten under time pressure
These three things are just as important as the actual content of an essay. In fact, they make the content of an essay better because it will be easier to read. And because of these huge upsides Essay Plans save a tonne of stress.
So what actually is an Essay Plan?
An Essay Plan is the blueprint of an essay; it’s an outline of what each paragraph of the essay is going to be about. If you've read last week's Master Class on essay structure, an Essay Plan is an outline of Overall essay structure AND Paragraph structure.
Like essay structure, Essay Plans are incredibly important, but thankfully also very simple. Once your teen gets used to making them they will be able to whip one up in a few minutese, but boy do they save a LOT more time than that overall.
Example time.
This Essay Plan is recreated from a real essay that I wrote in high school (we studied The Matrix in English class, and no actually it didn’t make me hate it, quite the opposite!).
The first thing I wrote down is that there will be an Introduction followed by three paragraphs (each one dedicated to a single main point) and finally a conclusion. The next step was jotting down the S.E.X.I. for each paragraph.
Now the essay practically writes itself
A lack structure and therefore clarity is one of the most common reasons why students don’t get the essay grades they are truly capable of. In the high pressure environment of an exam it’s even harder to write a brilliant essay off the top of your head.
The brilliance of an Essay Plan is that it tells you what to write AND in what order, so what your teen is doing when they write the essay is essentially 'filling out' the Essay Plan. This is a million times for efficient and effective than writing an essay from the top of your head.
Don’t overthink it
Essay Plans don’t need to be beautiful. The example above demonstrates a very thorough Essay Plan. That level of completeness is not really realistic in an exam situation.
In fact, below is a picture of an real Essay Plan I wrote for an essay I wrote in an exam at high school many moon ago!
Clearly it is not as complete as the first example above, but taking into account the high pressure environment of an exam it’s a realistic example of the type of Essay Plan your teen might make in an exam.
The important thing about this real example is that I wrote down the main points I wanted to make and in what order as well as several examples to include. I got a top grade for this essay and I will always praise the Essay Plan for keeping my essay on point and on track.
The important takeaway from this post is that your teen should not pin their hopes on writing a wonderful essay off the top of your head. A solid essay takes planning. And a simple plan can transform the process of writing an essay from a dog’s breakfast to a structured and coherent piece of writing worthy of a good grade.
Thanks for reading and all the best to your teen with their essay writing. Any questions or thoughts — pop them into the comments below.
Clare