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Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage |
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| Composition
English 1101 |
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Understanding Essay Topics
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When you are given a essay topic or a writing prompt, there usually are clues within the assignment to tell you how you should approach writing your essay. The idea here is to look for clues that can guide you as you prepare and write your essay.
What are the key terms stated in the topic or the essay question? Look for words that suggest the kind of reasoning you should be using in the essay, such as why, how, analyze, compare, evaluate, argue, etc.
- Why suggests that you should discuss the causes, to be able to recognize relationships such as cause and effect, even if they are unstated in the source materials.
- How implies the need to find the origins and history behind your subject or topic.
- Analyze requires you to read and discuss your source material critically, to see the relationship of parts to whole. Look for underlying assumptions and question their validity. Evaluate the kinds of evidence the authors use to support their thesis.
- Compare asks you to find differences as well as similarities. You should make a list of the similarities and differences that you can discuss in detail. Use that list to help you organize your response by using the list as subheading.
- Evaluate asks you to present opinion and to apply your judgement in response to the topic. This kind of writing topic is often associated with the reading materials of a course. Evaluation asks for your opinion based on a clear thesis that expresses your point of view supported by clearly stated evidence. Phrases such as to what extent or in what way also asks for an evaluation.
- Argue (meaning to agree or disagree) also asks you to state your opinion based on your analysis of the evidence. The major difference here is that you will need to consider other possible viewpoints (counter-argument), and defend your own position in comparison to those other viewpoints (rebuttal).
What method of development does the topic ask you to use? Are you to argue a point with others, or are you to compare ideas? Does the topic ask you to categorize (i.e., classify) ideas? Or does it suggest that you evaluate an idea by applying it to an new example? Does the topic ask you to describe, or to tell a story about how the material you read is relevant to something in your own life (narrative)?
Once you find the key terms and discover the method of development inherent in the assignment, you can then start to generate ideas for your essay by asking yourself questions about the specific topic in terms of the concepts or methods that seem applicable. Another rich souce of ideas for you is to look for any controversies in the materials. A bit more background reading on your topic may be helpful too in order that you have a better sense of the whole subject before approaching your essay.
The next step is to write a tentative thesis to help you organize your own writing. You do not have to stick to this statement, but it will help focus your work. (See the page on Thesis Statements for advice on developing a strong thesis for your papers. See also the page on Taking Notes from Reading.)
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