Preparing for essay tests

Now that we’re getting into the school year, it’s exam time. Many classes will include essay questions in their exams.

The goal of an essay question is to show your instructor you know the material. To demonstrate your knowledge, first off, you don’t want to leave any information out just because your instructor is your reader. Essay responses should be written in a way that someone unfamiliar with the topic can understand it.

There are four main types of essay questions: definition, analysis, compare and contrast, and discussion.

1. Definition. State the term you are defining, the details that distinguish it from other things like it, and what it is not. Giving an example is also helpful to show you know what the term means.

2. Analysis. Explain what the concept or or thing is, and its purpose or what it affects. If there are multiple effects, be sure to explain as many as you can.

3. Compare and contrast. Explain the ways the concepts or things are alike, and how similar they are. Do the same for the differences and how different they are. Also try to explain why the differences matter.

4. Discussion. Address the who, what, where, when, why and how of the concept or thing. Then focus on the significance of it.

Knowing the who, what, where, when, why and how and the significance of all the important concepts and terms of the information covered on the test is a good way to study for multiple choice and essay tests. Also be sure to know why each thing is significant.

Consistent Verb Tense

One common mistake that’s easy to make, but also easy to skip over, is consistent verb tenses in a paper. When you’re writing, you don’t want to start a paragraph in past tense but shift to present tense halfway through – it makes it hard for the reader to follow you.

Today a student came in and we worked some structural issues for a descriptive paper she was writing. At the end I asked her if there was anything else she wanted help with and she mentioned she sometimes has problems with her verb tenses. I didn’t even think about it until she mentioned it. When students are worried about word choice and correct information in a paper, sometimes verb tense gets tossed to the side in favor of other, seemingly more important issues. After this reminder today, though, I’ll try to keep verb tense in the back of my mind in future sessions.

The general rules are simple:

• Keep events that happened in the past in past tense (and the present with present tense, and the future with future tense).

• Habitual actions and facts are in present tense since they always happen or are always true.

• It’s OK to change tense when describing things that happen at different times, or if you are describing a past event and put in a habitual action.

Take a look at my second paragraph, the one that starts with “Today.” I change tense in that paragraph, but it works. I start out describing what happened at one tutoring session earlier today in past tense(the first three sentences). Then I describe a habitual action of students, which I believe is always the same, so it’s in present tense. Then I described a future action I plan to do in future tense. If I were to leave it in all present tense, it wouldn’t be very clear.

To catch potential inconsistent verb tenses:

• Go through your paper and circle all your verbs as you read them, and make sure they’re the same tense (unless it fits the last two rules). This is especially important when describing an event, because inconsistent verb tenses can throw off a reader and make it hard to understand what’s going on.

Tenses in common types of academic papers:

• When writing a paper that analyses a theory, such as for psychology, sociology, biology, etc., writing is usually in present tense. For example: The theory of diffusion of responsibility explains why people don’t always call 911 or help during emergencies. I would go on to talk about how people do not feel as responsible when other people are present. However, if past examples are used instead of just habitual actions or general factual statements, such as Kitty Genovese’s death in 1964, use past tense: When Kitty Genovese was stabbed in New York, many people were in their homes and heard her screams, but most thought neighbors probably called the police.

• For historical analysis papers, usually in English Lit. classes, use past tense. For example: Ernest Hemingway’s military experience in Europe during World War I influenced themes, characters and plot lines in his writing…Hemingway served as an ambulance driver in World War I, and after being injured, he fell in love with his nurse… (but I will switch to present tense when describing what happens in the book), which also describes the character of Frederic Henry and his experience in A Farewell To Arms.

• Lab reports use past tense (and usually in passive form) – the experiment was conducted at a past date: Ten isopods were placed in each container. The isopods were observed and their movements were recorded at each five-minute interval.

• Argumentative papers tend to be mixed because they mix factual statements and specific examples that usually occur in the past.

The Purdue OWL has a good, thorough explanation of how to be consistent with your verb tenses.

Generating or developing a topic

Part 1: Brainstorming Strategies

Different brainstorming methods work for different people. Here are some other methods that might help you get started on a paper:

1. Freewriting. If you don’t have a specific topic given to you, but you have to write an persuasive paper, just start writing everything that comes to mind as far as what subjects about which you’d like to persuade someone to one side or another. If you already have a topic like “local business” write everything you know about local businesses.

Choose an amount of time to write – five to 10 minutes is enough to get started.

The point of this is to not think about how you’re writing, but just to write out everything that comes to mind, and what else you think you would have to research. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, you just want to let your thoughts flow and record them.

Don’t stop writing for the whole period of time.

2. Listing. Listing is similar to freewriting, but instead of writing a big paragraph write each idea on a separate line. It’s easier to keep track of different ideas with a list.

List ideas as they come to you. Don’t worry if they’re good or bad ideas, write them down anyway. What seems like a bad idea might end up developing into something better as you brainstorm.

3. Webbing. This has a lot of different names, but it’s basically a diagram of how ideas relate to each other and to the main topic.

This works best if you have a topic provided for you, but this could also be another way to organize your thoughts after you throw out the ideas you don’t want from other brainstorming methods.

When webbing you break the topic down into subcategories that relate to the topic. Start with the main topic word in the middle of your page. Draw lines coming off the main topic to subtopics. From there break each subcategory down into more subcategories.

This is also a good way to organize ideas into paragraphs because each subcategory cluster could work as a paragraph.

4. Talking with others. If you’re not much of a brainstormer, one thing that doesn’t require a lot of extra preliminary writing is to just talk it over with a friend.

Tell your friend you’re writing a paper about X/have to write a certain type of paper and what you know about that topic/ideas you have for that type of paper.

They’ll probably help contribute some ideas or just the act of getting your thoughts into words can help you collect and organize your thoughts about a particular writing assignment.

By talking with a friend you get another person’s insight, which might also help you think of arguments you might not have come up with on your own and possible rebuttals to your argument, or just things about a certain topic you might not have thought of.

Part 2: Learning Style Related to Brainstorming

The type of brainstorming you do might also depend on the type of learner you are. There are three types of learners: Visual, Kinesthetic and Auditory. Here are the three types and how the four brainstorming strategies fit with the type of learner you are:

Visual learners are usually good at learning from reading the textbook. Writing down your ideas so you can read them and underline or highlight the good ones will help visual learners. Freewriting, listing and webbing are probably the best for visual learners.

Kinesthetic learners learn best by doing. Drawing pictures, diagrams and the act of underlining, highlighting or circling help these learners remember information and learn concepts. Webbing is probably the best of these strategies for kinesthetic learners. Drawing out a diagram of your ideas will help you interact with and organize them and see how the ideas relate to each other.

Auditory learners learn by listening. They usually learn more from listening to the lecture of a class and less from the textbook. Talking with others might be auditory learners’ best strategy because they’ll hear your ideas and the other person’s ideas and be able to collect the information more easily.

Grammar Girl has some tips on where to find ideas and how to overcome writer’s block that I think are very helpful.

Proofreading and minor editing

First off, clarification: proofreading is looking for and fixing typos, missing or extra words and other small errors; editing is fixing grammar and punctuation and some content.

One of the most frequent requests I get is to check for little mistakes on a final draft of a paper. Because I get this request, students must know they often miss little things, but they are often surprised when I find they have misspelled a word, used the wrong verb tense or forgot a word completely.

Students should know that they’re not alone in making these mistakes. For my writing center training, I’m reading a book about tutoring at writing centers and they wrote the word “propositions” instead of “prepositions,” leading to a confusing sentence that told me not to make propositions before commas or periods. It happens even to the experts, I guess. I’ve also seen plenty of typos in popular novels and newspapers.

It’s easy to make fun when these mistakes are made in public documents, but proofreading can be tough.

I’d like to think I’m pretty accurate at proofreading, but I will sometimes let stupid mistakes slip, and notice them right before I turn in a paper.

• I have often heard that reading you paper backward is a good way to catch mistakes such as typos, missing words, extra words, awkward phrases and incomplete sentences. For awhile this method was never really explained to me, and I thought it meant reading each word individually from the last word to the first. That seemed excessive and I didn’t use it (though it would be an extra-thorough way to find individual typos if you really need a paper to be perfect). Now that I know it means reading whole sentences, it makes more sense, though I admit I still don’t do this, but it sounds very helpful.

• Though it is easy to write a paper on the computer, it is much harder to proofread and edit on a computer than on paper, so print your papers and read them. Keep in mind that spell check doesn’t catch everything. Homonyms don’t get caught, it doesn’t always catch missing words, and typos can result in actual words. You might end up with a sentence like “The Americans wont he Revolutionary War,” instead of “The Americans won the Revolutionary War.” Also, “cant” and “wont” are words, so be aware of apostrophe placement in contractions and possessives such as “student’s” and “students’.” For one reason or another, it’s also harder to catch mistakes on a computer screen. At a recent copyediting internship at a local newspaper, when we edited the paper, we would read stories on our online database and correct mistakes, but read them again printed out, where we would catch new mistakes almost every time. If possible, print out all your papers and read them before turning them in. Reading out loud can also help this along.

• One of the best ways to catch typos and little mistakes is to have someone else read it. Just like having someone else read a paper for clarity, if you have a reader who is observant and wants to help, he or she will find mistakes you miss. Once you’ve read your paper so many times, you know what you’re trying to say and it becomes nearly impossible to catch mistakes.

Grammar Girl also discussed proofreading on a previous entry entitled Proofreading Tips, which I thought was well written.

I think I proofread this entry well enough, but I might need someone to help me through the third point and let me know of any mistakes. I’ve read this too much to be able to edit thoroughly on my own.