Assess where you need to go beyond your notes and study materials provided by the teacher or lecturer to research new information, new facts. Simply regurgitating the well-digested stuff will not do. An essay is intended to stretch your mind. It is a framework on which you can take the topic and pull it in all directions until you get a much rounder and more satisfying picture of the issues involved. Boring and passive reruns of old facts and tired clichés just won’t do.

If you are going for top marks, something much more exciting and rewarding is needed – and the only way you will achieve this is through thorough and careful research. The material you need could come from books, journal articles, media reports (wherein facts may be at a premium), conversations with enlightened people, tape recordings or interviews, oral history… whatever. Tell the examiner/marker something he or she didn’t know…

Consider the principles of marking
Put yourself in the position of essay marker, marking your own contribution. How are you going to assess the standard? You can pick out facts and place a tick in the margin for representation of every essential point. Or you can read the whole piece and assess whether the writer has presented a convincing argument. Or you can give marks for comprehension, scope, logical exposition, relevance or any other criteria that seem to fit the task. But at the end of the day any assessment will nave a measure of subjectivity, whatever standards and rules are imposed on the assessors.

This is why exam papers and essays are often marked by more than one person. The average of the marks may give a fairer picture of the student’s performance where this is done. It also lessens the possibility of personalities and even vendettas intruding on the process of marking. If marking always has a subjective element, that is that each individual marker will see things differently, then you can gain marks by winning over the marker with the goodwill that flows from (and to) a good essay, well presented, without fluff and nonsense.

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