Planning exam essays

In an exam, you should:

• work out an argument in your head, using a quick analytical survey of all the relevant facts or information you have about a topic
• match that with your more general interpretations and beliefs

By doing this, you can work out your position and your outline structure.

The essay you produce in an exam will probably be deductively-structured, because you will not have enough time to revise or re-organise it.

Exam essays require you to move very quickly into deductive mode.

It is important that the examiner can see your position immediately and where it is leading.

Planning Term essays

Term essays and assignments are a more realistic test of your abilities.

The topic may be the same as in an exam essay, but you have time to do some research before writing.

• You might begin in a deductive mode, by analysing the question into its component parts.

But when you start to write, you will probably find new threads or shifts to your position that are not mentioned in your introduction.

This is part of the discovery process of writing.

• When you have finished checking your first draft, you should re-shape the essay to make the structure more accessible to the reader.

This does not mean that you have to state your position in the Introduction - it may be a problem- based essay which requires a scheme of analysis rather than a solution or argument.

But if the question clearly requires you to take a position, then you should revise your essay to provide it with a more reader-friendly and deductive opening structure.

See Writing/Revising: a Recursive process
or
Go to The Hourglass to see how inductive and deductive approaches can be combined.

More complex essay structures

The matrix is a two-dimensional version of an Outline.  Outlines are vertical and linear, e.g.:

The matrix, however, allows variables to be placed along two axes or dimensions - like a table. Matrices can be used to any purpose - there are no types of matrix suited more to one type of structure than another.  What we offer below are examples of how we can plan the structure of an argument by using a 2-dimensional matrix or table.

The Organisational matrix

Task:  Read through the sample Comparative Expository Essay
and see how it is constructed around a simple 2-by-2 matrix, as follows:

Buying Behaviour
Aspect:	Nature	Choice
Perspective:
Behaviourist	?	?
Cognitivist	?	?

A more common example is the kind we see in Computer magazines, where we get tables comparing several computers across a number of performance features.  The same principle can be applied to our writing.  Take the following structure: this is taken from a passage from an educational textbook:

Task:  Read through the expository text in Approaches to Learning :
Can you see how this matrix reflects the text's organisation

Using a Matrix to plan an essay

The planning function of the matrix is similar to that of the Outline.
It makes clear to the writer what the overall design of the text should be.
It also allows notes to be added within the boxes created by the matrix.

Any well-written expository text can be reduced to some kind of structural matrix or table, revealing the underlying planning or conceptual design behind the text.