So you have been given an essay title: now what? Many writers move straight from reading the assignment prompt to paddling around in a swimming pool of bewildered dread. If that's you, please hop out of the dread-pool and inhale. It's going to be okay!
Getting to grips with the expectations for an assignment can take a lot of back-and-forth: read the prompt or title; jot down some ideas; take a walk; revisit the prompt to highlight key phrases; read a couple journal articles; and so on. Please don't expect to read the essay title and immediately sit down to write a focused rough draft. That's not how writing works.
That said, there are organised approaches you can deploy when you don't get what you're supposed to do. Stick with this guide to discover quick activities that will help you lay a productive foundation.
The tabs of this guide will support you in unpicking assignment prompts and learning what to do with them. The sections are organised as follows:
Highlighting key words in the essay title or assignment brief is a great first step in understanding the assignment. Among those words, make sure you pay close attention to the verb – that is, the action word that indicates what you are expected to do. Consider this example:
"Critically evaluate whether the Magna Carta is still relevant today."
To evaluate, you reach a conclusion about a topic by considering evidence that supports different positions on, or perspectives about, that topic. The adverb critically emphasizes the need not only to explore a range of evidence, but to assess it in an argumentative (rather than simply descriptive) manner.
What if we slightly amend the verb? Consider this change:
"Critically discuss whether the Magna Carta is still relevant today."
Does changing the verb from evaluate to discuss meaningfully change your goal? To be honest, most instructors use these verbs interchangeably in essay briefs. For some, though, discuss would suggest greater emphasis on forging a dialogue between sources, demonstrating where perspectives align and where they diverge.
Importantly, the expectation to be critical exists with essay verbs like discuss, evaluate, analyse, examine, etc. even if the adverb critically isn’t used. Unless you are specifically asked to summarise or describe something in an objective way, criticality is key.
Instructors describe assignment aims in any number of ways, but there tends to be shared language when it comes to the key verbs. Below, you will find a sampling of the most common "actions" to conduct as a writer, with explanations and tips to help you out.
Advise, suggest, recommend, propose
Analyse, examine
Assess, appraise, evaluate
Compare, contrast
Defend, argue, make an argument
Discuss, explore
Outline, delineate
Reflect, write a critical reflection/account
Synthesize, "use a range of literature to..."
With any essay title you receive, you'll notice that some tension or uncertainty exists at the heart of it. It would be rare (and pointless!) for an instructor to assign an essay title that has one clear answer. Consider this invented essay question:
"How many people own houseplants in the UK now compared to pre-COVID?"
This is a terrible essay title because it is flat. There is nothing to explore or think through critically: just the expectation to provide the pre-pandemic number, find the post-pandemic number, and...then what? There is no tension.
Now, consider this essay question:
“Analyse the rising popularity of houseplants that began in the UK during the pandemic.”
This is a better essay prompt because it leaves room for the writer to discover and develop an angle. The question itself begets more questions. For example, what factors (social, personal, economic, etc.) influenced this change? Did popularity shift across all demographics or just some (and which, and why)? In other words, this question reveals layers of uncertainty that you can dig into as a writer.
Let’s return to examine the tension in an earlier essay prompt:
“Critically evaluate whether the Magna Carta is still relevant today.”
The word still suggests potential change over time, and there we discover a tension between the past and present. The writer will need to closely consider if/how the Magna Carta (i.e., a legal document of the past) translates or applies to contemporary society (i.e., the present).
If you are still struggling to identify the tension in an essay title, turning it into a question can help. We'll explore that trick in the next tab of this guide.
Instructors often use statements as essay titles. Keep the required title when you submit, of course, but as you plan your approach to the essay, it often helps to reformat the statement as a question for yourself. Returning to our now familiar example…
“Critically evaluate whether the Magna Carta is still relevant today.”
This could be posed in question form as the following:
“Is the Magna Carta still relevant today?”
This slight change gives you something more tangible to focus on since, by nature, questions spark the mind to begin contemplating answers. You can also play with more specific variations of the questions you form to get your ideas flowing:
“Is the Magna Carta still relevant today, and if so, how?”
"Which tenets of the Magna Carta are still relevant today? How can the relevance of those tenets be proven?”
"What factors or qualities make the Magna Carta less relevant today?”
As you can see, framing and reframing such questions in new ways lays the groundwork for you to truly dig in and analyse the situation as a writer.
– Check out our Developing Research Questions guide for further guidance on developing effective questions.
If the assignment prompt is already in question form, you can still build it out with relevant questions to help you think through your writing strategy and potential content. For example, let's say this is the essay question:
"How do a nurse's communication practices influence trust when treating gender-diverse patients?"
Try putting this central question at the centre of a mind map, then adding branches for questions that help you dig in. You can also use a bulleted list to try this out, as so:
"How do a nurse's communication practices influence trust when treating gender-diverse patients?"
Note that each grouping of questions expands on keywords from the original question. By interrogating the question itself with further questions, you can really get the ball rolling! This will help you develop an initial sense of the research you need to conduct and points that might be relevant to make.
By design, most assignment titles give you a great deal of breadth or scope. The seeming bigness of an assignment can be daunting: you might panic and ask yourself, “How in the world am I supposed to discuss ALL OF THIS in just 2,000 words?!”
The short answer? You likely aren’t supposed to discuss all of it, so take a deep breath! When the essay title is broad, instructors generally expect you to narrow the scope of your response. This means you limit your evaluation in some manner, finding one “angle” of exploration amongst the many options that exist. Let's return to our old title friend:
“Critically evaluate whether the Magna Carta is still relevant today.”
Okay, the Magna Carta is a very long, significant document. So if you're responding to this title, your essay will lack depth and feel rushed if you try to evaluate whether EVERY aspect of the Magna Carta is relevant in EVERY way in EVERY place, today. Instead, you can narrow the scope by doing things like…
The way you choose to narrow the scope will vary according to the essay and field. Analysing a situation through one theoretical lens might sufficiently limit the scope: for example, analysing a poem using ecocritical theory rather than analysing the poem "in general." In other cases, the narrowing might relate to the evidence bank you choose to use, the demographic/population discussed, a tool or model used, etc.
Once you have found your angle, remember to use your introduction to clearly communicate your focus and argument (see our Crafting the Introduction guide for tips on thesis statements, aim statements, and essay maps).