Essay Writing and Academic Writing

What the page covers

This unit sits in the Writing strand of Spanish language as a school subject. Most of the material is mind maps, with notes, flashcard decks, a flowchart and a slide set alongside them. Together they follow an essay from the question to the final paragraph.

Where to begin

Start with planning. The note It's all in the planning! explains why a plan is time well spent, and the note How to anser English questions asks you to find and underline the key words of a question, then define them. The quiz Attacking the Prompt lets you test that habit.

1. Read the notes on planning and the question.
2. Open the mind maps Essay Plan and Thesis Statements.
3. Move on to paragraph building.
4. Finish with the types of essay.

Building paragraphs and arguments

The note Extended Response Structure uses a hamburger model: the topic sentence is the top bun, followed by the body. The mind map How to write a PEE paragraph covers the same idea in a different form. The maps on the main elements of argumentative and comparative essays show that each paragraph holds a topic sentence, evidence and a concluding sentence.

Essay types and worked examples

The mind map The Nine Essay Types covers description and other forms. Other maps are worked plans, such as Juvenile delinquency cause and effect, and several on friendship. The note on whether people who fall ill only have themselves to blame shows how to define key words in a statement. Use these to see how a plan turns into an essay.

Using maps and quizzes together

Read a map first, then take the quiz without looking at it. Check what you missed against the map. The flashcard decks Parts of an Essay and steps when doing essays help with quick recall.

Choose one map today, then make your own plan for a question you have been set.