Focus on Essays
How to write an IB essay
Let’s first rely on our prior
knowledge
* It is an insult to begin
as if you are new to
essays as you have done
this before and it would
be best to go from what
you know.
* You have written
essays in Year 9 for
Inspector Calls and the
Giver and in Year 10 for
Romeo and Juliet in
Semester 1 and perhaps
for practice for The
Catcher in the Rye.
Let’s begin by comparing the
differences between essays and
commentaries, as we all agree this is
something we are ESSAYS
confident in.
COMMENTARIES
Introductions: text, writer, thesis
Introductions: text, writer, thesis,
Commentary layout: Intro, body,
transition, body ....conclusion
Essay layout: Intro, body, transition, body
Organization, B: Obey our thesis embedded quotations, transitional
sentences
....conclusion
•
Organisation, B: Obey the thesis embedded quotations, transitional
sentences
•
Paragraph structure: PEERL
Focus of commentaries: Dissecting and
stylistic devices analysis from a brief
passage.
•
What do you have to do in a
commentary for A? stylistic devices and
evidence
Focus of Essays: Critical analysis with
knowledge of text as a whole. How and
why is still relevance.
•
What do you have to do in an essay for a
A? Critical analysis
What do you have to do for C? Spelling ,
register, vocabulary
•
What do you have to do for C?
Paragraph structure: PEERL or
PEEDEA
The Process
For essay writing: “It wont happen over night but it will
happen.”
What is the best way to
improve in future essays
Write up the feedback from your prior assignments
and find ways to improve on prior errors. For
example, if you have articles or tense circled as
errors then look this up in your Pocket Style Manual.
If you are having issues with register, check the
guide and if still confused ask your teacher.
When writing your new assignment have the written
up notes of what you did wrong last time to aim to
improve in the next essay.
Class approach
In the past I have provided generalised feedback on common errors
we are doing so that we can aim to avoid these in the future, but it can
be easy to become too complacent and read over these and think, oh
I’m not doing that, but in fact - unfortunately - many of us are.
We are now going to look at some specific examples of work from the
class and look at how we can improve specific paragraphs.
The purpose of doing so is to see what we are doing as a whole and
how this can be improved. Please remember we are all doing this not
only the one student whose work is being showed. We must view the
work that will appear in the following slides with respect and appreciate
that this is a helpful learning opportunity and as soon as it becomes an
opportunity for disrespect we can no longer continue with the activity.