GEOGRAPHY TUTORIALS
 
3. Essay-writing 101: Answer the Question.

Writing essays is a really important skill, but there are too many things about essays to cover effectively in one tutorial without overwhelming the students so this session starts with just one point: answer the question. Works well as a very early tutorial before they even submit their first essay. Works well as the first in a series of tutorials about essay planning and structure, and can also be used very effectively as an exam-preparation exercise.

Gets students to focus on the key point, to cut out the clutter (in their brains and in ther writing), and to get their essays well organised from the very start.

 

If I ask "what time is it?", and you reply "they make nice clocks in Switzerland", you might be broadly in the right topic area, but you are not answering my question, so what mark do you think you would get? If you elaborate on the cuckoo-clock industry for 1500 words, including detailed evidence and illustrations of different clockwork mechanisms, with references in the Harvard style, what mark will you get? You won't get a pass mark for sure, because you haven't answered the question. If you are asked "what time is it?" you must answer "the time is..." If you are asked "what time is it?" you must answer "the time is..." if you want to get into the area where you can start scoring marks. Once you've answered the question you can start scoring marks for detail, evidence, examples, etc., but if you haven't answered the question those extras will count for nothing.

This is a really simple activity, and one that can be adapted easily to suit the tutor's particular style. Give the students a handout with a list of essay titles (for example you could use last year's exam, this year's coursework titles or just a bunch of titles relevant to your course) and underneath each title there's a box about 1cm deep running across the width of the page. Students have to answer the essay questions (one, or a selection, or all depending on your way of running it) but they have to write within the box (or you could specify a one-sentence answer). This forces them to see past the detail of their fact-filled memories and to see directly to the heart of what really matters in the questions.

Why does the Earth have so many different types of landscape?

 

 

 
What are the primary controls on the morphology of tors?

 

 

 
etc...

You can have the discussion (before or after they do the exercise, or between attempts) about the way a "Why?" question must produce a "Because" answer, a "What are...?" requires a "These are...", that any question can give a "It depends on..." answer, etc. You might get answers a bit like this, and that can be the starting point for the whole "How do you turn that one sentence into a whole essay?" discussion, which leads you neatly into the tutorial on essay planning!

Why does the Earth have so many different types of landscape?

The Earth has so many types of landscape because landscapes vary both with environment and with process, and because landscapes retain the signatures of past environments and processes in the manner of a palimpsest.

 
What are the primary controls on the morphology of tors?

The primary controls on the morphology of tors are lithological (primarily joint distribution) and environmental (essentially linked to weathering processes), although "stage" may also be important because tors evolve over time.

 
etc...

Any essay can be answered: "it depends..." After you've done this rather basic exercise you can add a bit of sophistication by considering the "it depends" strategy. My undergraduate tutor pointed out that virtually EVERY essay title can be answered with "it depends..." followed by a clear explanation of exactly what it depends on. For example: what time is it? "it depends where you are: it's 2 o'clock in Japan".

 

What are the primary controls on the morphology of tors?

The primary controls vary with time, so it depends what timescale we consider: initially lithological factors such as joint spacing dominate, but in the later stages of tor formation environmental change may play a critical role.

 
etc...

This starts getting us into more advanced territory, so might not be appropriate for a nice, simple first tutorial. More 102 than 101.


 

I wrote to a bunch of former students one year asking what one piece of advice they remembered from their time studying Physical Geography at Keele or what one piece of advice they would give to new students. Paul Johnson, who had graduated more than a decade previously, wrote back "answer the question".


 

Additional Reading for Students to do

Knight, P.G. and Parsons, T. (2003) How to do your essays, exams and coursework in Geography and related disciplines (Routledge) pp.75-77 "Should I answer the question right at the start of the essay?"