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:
- 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.
- 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- Quotes from primary sources (literature or historical documents)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:
- 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.
- 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?
- 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!