Key learning points

1. When writing an essay, you have to think carefully about the order in which you present your ideas.
2. When writing, lay the foundational knowledge, then include primary/secondary evidence, then give a personal response.
3. It can be difficult to bring any new interpretations to commonly-used quotations, so try to pick some lesser-used ones.
4. Giving a personal response to the text shows your reader your enthusiasm for the text and the subject.
5. Using paragraph outlines to plan your response can be useful when considering the structure of your argument.

Keywords

• Holistic - when something is holistic, all the separate parts are connected and work together as a whole.

• Explorative - to be explorative about a topic means to approach it in a spirit of investigation and curiosity.

• Primary evidence - primary evidence refers to the commonly-used quotations from a text.

• Secondary evidence - secondary evidence refers to less well known quotations that can build your argument.

• Reductionist - being reductionist means analysing something complicated into its simplest form.

Common misconception