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Revising for Essay Exams

Across the university, many exams are now at least partially in essay format. Rather than being asked for a basic fact, such as “What year was the battle of Waterloo?” you’re likely to face a more complicated analytical question, such as “What factors contributed to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo?” These exam questions can sound very similar to the essays we write during term, but with one key difference: we have far less time to write them.

In an essay exam, we don’t have time to go down rabbit trails or to go off-topic. Instead, it’s essential to focus our revision on the key aspects of the module. In this blog post, we’ll cover three things markers look for in essay exams: understanding, specificity, and critical analysis.

Understanding vs. Knowledge

The most important element of essay-based exams is that they focus on understanding, rather than knowledge. It isn’t enough to simply memorise a few key facts. Instead, we need to demonstrate we understand the meaning and significance of all the knowledge we’ve learned.

Two revision techniques that can help improve your understanding:

  1. Teach a friend about the topic. This can be a coursemate or someone who knows nothing about your subject. Teaching someone else (especially someone who isn’t an expert) will force you to put the ideas into simple language and help you identify what you know and what you still need to revise.
  2. Summarise the big ideas. Take a chunk of the course (perhaps a lecture, or a key reading) and spend a few minutes writing out a summary. What are the main points? How do these points fit together? Why do these ideas matter?

Specific vs. General

Even though the focus in essay exams is on knowledge rather than understanding, it’s still important to back up our understanding with specific points. For example, you could say “In 2008, the Bank of England lowered interest rates” but it would be better if you could provide the specific interest rate: 0.5%. To make your answer even stronger, you could put this number in context by describing how the rates dropped from 5.75% to 0.5%, which was the lowest the rates had ever been in the 300 years since the Bank of England began! (Source: House of Commons Library)

As you revise, look out for key bits of information, particularly ones that could be useful in a variety of essay questions. These might include:

  • Facts and figures (dates, statistics, numbers)
  • Quotes from primary sources (literature or historical documents)
  • Evidence from secondary sources (books or journal articles)

When you include these facts, it’s important to show you understand them. You can do this by:

  • Providing contextual information (how does this fact relate to others?)
  • Explaining their significance (why is this information relevant?)

Essentially, good revision will involve some memorisation of facts, but you should always make sure to keep these facts in context and remember their significance.

Analysis vs. Description

One of the main things your markers look for in essay exams is critical analysis. They don’t simply want you to copy information from lectures; no, they want you to use that information to say something interesting.

A few revision strategies to help you improve your analysis:

  1. Compare and contrast topics across the module. Many exam questions will ask you to relate different parts of the course to each other, so it’s good to practice during revision. Choose two parts of the module and identify the similarities and differences, or pick one key theme and see how it applies in different segments of the module.
  2. Read and critique an article. Find an article (your module reading list a good place to start) and work out its main ideas. Do you agree or disagree? What evidence does the author use to back up their points? How does the article fit with (or contradict) what you learned in the module?
  3. What’s your opinion? Choose an area of the module you’re particularly passionate about, or maybe one where you disagree with your peers or the tutor. What’s your opinion of the topic? How does your opinion differ from other people’s opinions? Identify the reasons (and the evidence!) why you think the way you do.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we’ve discussed three things markers look for in an essay exam and identified revision strategies that will help you improve in these areas. Essay exams can be challenging, but if you focus on understanding, using specific information, and critical analysis, you’ll be most of the way there to a brilliant exam answer!

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Literature Reviews: Paragraph Structure

A good literature review must be critical. This means that it must present an overview of the literature on the topic, but it should also offer a particular view of the literature. A good literature review doesn’t just describe a selection of articles; it also helps the reader understand the state of research on the topic.

What does this look like on the paragraph level? As with any other essay, your literature review should follow the TEA format: Topic, Evidence, Analysis.

This means that, in your literature review, each paragraph should have:

  • A clear topic sentence which introduces the paragraph and makes a claim about the literature.
  • Plenty of evidence to back up this claim. The evidence should include a wide range of sources, which should typically be paraphrased (but may also be quoted, depending on your discipline). 
  • An analytical summary at the end that wraps up the paragraph and explains why it’s important.

    Let’s look at a series of examples to see how this works in practice. Beneath each example you’ll see a few notes on what the author has done well, but also what they could improve.

    (Note, the information and sources referenced in these examples are invented for the sake of this resource and do not present an accurate picture of the literature on this topic.)

    Example 1

    Onerin (2022) says that “personal branding was formerly defined by physical media such as business cards and posters, or by static websites and blogs, but it now almost entirely takes place on social media.” Most people think now that social media is the best place for personal branding. Moulin (2022) writes about how TikTok can be used effectively for personal branding, like by posting videos regularly with your face and also by using popular audio and finding new followers that way. I agree this would be the best way of finding customers, as most people nowadays are on social media and don’t look at posters or look for websites.

    Good:

    • The author has read several sources and provides quotes (Onerin) and paraphrases (Moulin) to outline the ideas from their sources.
    • The author has provided their own view at the end of the paragraph.

    Needs Work:

    • The author has only provided two sources, which isn’t enough to cover such a big topic.
    • The language in this paragraph is quite informal. For example, “like by posting videos regularly with your face” and “I agree” are too informal.
    • The author makes some very broad statements without backing them up (such as “most people nowadays are on social media and don’t look at posters or look for websites.”)
    • The paragraph has no topic sentence. The paragraph should begin with a statement outlining the author’s point, rather than jumping right in to a quote from a source.

    Example 2

    Researchers have also written about branding and social media. Onerin (2022) talks about how branding used to be focussed on physical objects (like posters or business cards) or on static websites or blogs, but now branding is all about social media. Branding on social media can take place on several websites, like TikTok (Moulin, 2022). Some people still think that physical objects are a good way to try personal branding and they recommend that all small business put up posters and try to print business cards (Acree, 2023). Most people disagree, though, and they say that the best thing is to use social media instead (Onerin, 2022).

    Good:

    • The author has included a topic sentence to explain the main idea of the paragraph.
    • The author has referenced several more sources and has paraphrased their main ideas.
    • The author has provided sources which offer an opposite view (Acree’s idea that small businesses should use posters and business cards).

    Needs Work:

    • The topic sentence is very vague. Ideally, a topic sentence should make a claim that someone could disagree with. This sentence simply says “Researchers have also written about branding and social media,” which is a basic fact, rather than a claim.
    • The writing is very choppy and it’s not always clear how the different ideas are connected. The writing can also be slightly informal (such as, “Onerin talks about” and “most people disagree.”)
    • There is no analysis or summary at the end of the paragraph.

    Example 3

    Since the coronavirus pandemic, the literature on personal branding has shifted to focus more on social media, rather than on physical objects or static websites. Onerin (2022) outlines this shift, while other critics have chosen to focus on the impact of a single platform, such as Facebook (Gainsborough, 2021), Instagram, (Livingstone 2022) and TikTok (Moulin, 2022). Although several branding experts still recommend using physical posters or business cards for highly localised businesses (Acree, 2023; Brown, 2021), social media is seen as far more effective for any business that primarily trades online (Davis, 2022). Similarly, while static websites and blogs were once seen as a necessity for personal branding (White, 2015), researchers have noted a sharp decline in engagement with these sites since the pandemic (Merida, 2021). Thus, for the majority of business owners, researchers are agreed that social media will be the most relevant platform for personal branding.

    Good:

    • The paragraph begins with a clear topic sentence that makes a claim.
    • The author has included a wide range of sources and paraphrased their ideas.
    • The writing flows smoothly and the connections between the sources are clearly explored.
    • The summary sentence at the end clearly wraps up the paragraph.

    Needs Work:

    • The paragraph doesn’t always answer the “why” question (for example, why have people stopped looking at blogs since the pandemic?).
    • The final summary sentence doesn’t fully connect to the topic sentence (the idea of the post-covid shift has been forgotten.)

    We hope these examples have helped you understand what a good paragraph in your literature should look like!