Essay writing

Writing skills are particularly important for management students. Once statements are made in writing, they are much more difficult to retract or change so the meanings of sentences need to be concise and clear. It is therefore vitally important to develop your skills in this more formalised and rigorous form of communication. The following suggestions should help in preparing your essay:

Planning:

Before you start writing it is important that you know enough about the topic to form an argument in response to the question set. Make sure you have read enough – not just textbooks or lecture notes. Planning your essay is very important. Another key step before you put pen to paper, or finger the keyboard, is to work out a structure for your essay.

Making the structure explicit will help you be clear about your overall line of argument. Equally, being clear about your line of argument will help shape your sense of structure. For these reasons IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO DECIDE THE THEME AND ARGUMENT OF YOUR ESSAY BEFORE YOU START TO WRITE. However many of you will also find it useful to try writing parts of the essay in order to work out your structure and plan your argument.

Writing a structure plan does NOT mean writing a list of everything you want to include in the essay – the ‘shopping list’ approach. Rather you need to think through the logical steps of the argument. What information or points do you need to make before you can argue a certain line? Have you considered the range of debates in the literature? How do YOU assess the arguments put forward in the readings? Are they convincing? Are they based upon adequate evidence? Apply this same critical approach to your own argument: have YOU used enough evidence (and in the appropriate places)? Have you used your material in a logical order?

As important as convincing an examiner of