How a scientific approach to essay writing will help your teen write A-grade essays
A clear and simple plan for structured, logical and persuasive essays
When you think essay writing, you probably think English, ideas, written pros, literature… nothing particularly, well, scientific.
You probably don’t think science, structure, precision. But I think we should.
It doesn’t matter what your teen’s essay is about, or what subject it’s for, every essay your teen writes at high school should be approached in a ‘scientific’ way.
By ‘scientific’ I really mean formulaic.
Every essay your teen writes needs to have structure (i.e. intro, paragraphs, conclusion), and every paragraph needs to have its own internal structure (for a deep dive on essay structure check out this master class).
Every paragraph needs to make its own point and make it clearly, and every point of each paragraph needs to be backed up by ‘evidence’ (facts, examples, statistics, etc).
It doesn’t matter if your teen’s essay is on a high level philosophical theory or Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion — both of those essays, and every one in between, needs to be approached in a systemic and structured fashion.
Why this is so important to the success of your essays
A good essay informs the reader about a particular subject or topic and does so in a persuasive manner that is logical and easy to read. (I have discussed this somewhat recently in this article.)
When you write an essay without thinking about its structure, it’s like you’re making a speech to a room full of people without any notes and without having done any preparation. The result is likely to be a bit of an awkward, confusing mess.
Like any good speech, when you’re writing an essay, you’re taking the reader on a journey, and you want that journey to be as smooth and obstacle-free as possible. One that feels like no work is required to get to the destination.
How to make sure an essay has bullet proof structure
There are TWO THINGS your teen needs to do to approach every essay they write with scientific precision:
They need to make Essay Plans
Every paragraph of every essay they write needs to follow the S.E.X.I. structure
Let’s start with Essay Plans.
Essay Plans are your teen’s solution for making sure that their essay reaches all of the goals described above.
Writing an essay straight off the cuff without any forethought is a hard ask, especially when you’re in the pressure cooker environment of an exam room.
Remember, your teen’s essays need to make clear points in a logical manner and be written in a way that makes it easy for the reader (i.e. examiner!) to read. This will be much, MUCH easier to do if they make a quick Essay Plan in advance of writing the actual essay.
What is an Essay Plan exactly?
Essentially, it’s a quick outline of the essay you’re about to write.
If you’re really short on time, it doesn’t need to consist of more than jotting down what the point of each paragraph is going to be about. This will prevent your teen from embarking on their essay, getting half way though (or even finishing it), only to realise that they gone off on rangdom tangients and failed to include important points.
And what is S.E.X.I.?
Making a ‘proper’ Essay Plan involves understanding S.E.X.I., so before we look at Essay Plans more closely, let’s go over what S.E.X.I. is.
It stands for:
Statement
Explanation
eXample
Importance
Let’s look at each element more closely.
Statement:
Every paragraph of your teen’s essays should start with a sentence that tells the reader what that paragraph is going to be about. It’s a set-up sentence for the rest of the paragraph, and sometimes referred to as a ‘topic sentence’.
For example, in a hypothetical History essay about communism causing global conflict in the 20th century, one of your paragraphs might start off with this Statement:
Global conflict caused by communism in the 20th century is further illustrated through the Soviet Union’s relationship with Germany after WWI.
This opening statement of the paragraph clearly lets the reader know, in one sentence, that that paragraph is going to be about the Soviet Union’s relationship with Germany after WWI, and how this relationship illustrates how communism caused global conflict.
Explanation:
This is bulk of the essay paragraph. In probably 3–5 sentences, you teen needs to explain the point that they have told the reader they are going to make in the Statement.
So in our hypothetical History essay, the Explanation part of the paragraph is explaining how and why the Soviet Union’s relationship with Germany after WWI contributed to causing global conflict.
Example:
In S.E.X.I, ‘example’ is meant very broadly. Every point made in an essay needs to be backed up with some kind of evidence. It doesn’t matter whether you’re writing a science essay or an essay for an ‘Arts’ subject — in the academic world — you cannot assert something without providing justification for it.
What type of ‘example’ (or evidence) is appropriate for each of your teen’s essay paragraphs will depend on the propositions (points) they are asserting. The most appropriate type of ‘example’ might be a fact, a statistic, an explanation of an event, something a person at the time said — basically anything that constitutes evidence of the point you are making.
Back to our hypothetical History essay, one example you might use to illustrate the point that the Soviet Union’s relationship with Germany after WWI contributed to causing global conflict, is the Treaty of Berlin (under which both countries agreed to remain neutral if the other were attacked).
Explaining what the Treaty of Berlin was, and how it (at least indirectly) contributed to causing global conflict, would be a great factual example of how the Soviet Union’s relationship with Germany after WWI contributed to causing global conflict.
Now, it does not matter if you have no clue what the Treaty of Berlin was or if your teen is not even studying History.
The important thing is that you help your teen see how you could use this historical document as an example to back up the proposition that the Soviet Union’s relationship with Germany after WWI contributed to causing global conflict.
Where exactly your teen puts their examples in each paragraph does not matter. It might make sense to sprinkle examples throughout the paragraph, or it might make sense to include a couple of justifying facts nearer the end of the paragraph.
Like in our hypothetical History essay, the ‘example’ might be inextricably linked to the entire paragraph, so that the explanation and the example are discussed at the same time.
The takeaway point is that your teen can’t make statements in an essay without any justification. If they do it sounds like you’re just making things up, and this isn’t going to be good enough to get a good grade for your essay.
Importance:
This is the cherry on top of each essay paragraph. A top grade essay will not only explain its points clearly and provide examples to back up every point, it will also inform the reader why the point being made in each paragraph is important or significant.
This is your teen’s chance to demonstrate to the reader that they have thought critically about the essay topic and really understand it.
They might do this by making an insightful comment at the end of a paragraph that informs the reader of the greater significance of the point, or how that point relates to the overall topic of the essay.
The takeaway point for ‘Importance’ is to understand that your teen will really impress the reader (i.e. examiner!) if they demonstrate that they have thought about the essay topic for themself, and that they have something unique, original, or insightful to say about the topic.
The link between Essay Plans and S.E.X.I.
Now you understand what S.E.X.I. is, we can wrap up what an awesome Essay Plan looks like.
Here’s my The Matrix Essay Plan again:
You can see that I have jotted down the main point of each paragraph, and the gist of each element of S.E.X.I. for each paragraph.
I cannot recommend making Essay Plans like this strongly enough.
To your teen it might sound like an extra hassle on top of writing the actual essay, but once they get used to making Essay Plans they should only take a few minutes to reel off, and they really are the best insurance policy you can create for yourself to write a solid essay every time.
The Essay Plan will give your teen, well, a plan for writing their essay. It takes away a lot of the ‘work’ of writing an essay, because to write the essay, they simply need to expand each bullet point of the Essay Plan.
Essay Plans give essays immediate structure, and they give every paragraph fantastic structure too. I really really love them and I hope your teen finds them as useful to their essay writing as I did.
The combination of an Essay Plan and S.E.X.I. will bring scientific-level precision to every essay your teen writes, which is going to make their essays clear, logical, persuasive, and easy to read. What more could you ask for?!
Thanks for reading and best of luck with the essay writing.
Clare