Written by Peer Writing Advisor, Oliver Wilkin.
As a student in higher education, the pressure to enhance your writing and analytical skills can sometimes be overwhelming – a feeling which I still experience as a PhD student today. During the courses of my undergraduate and master’s degrees, I often struggled to meet the challenges of academic development, and became frustrated with my inability to reach top marks in assignments. In this post I will talk about how I overcame these difficulties, and some practices of criticality which I have found helpful.
Throughout my A-Levels, and undergraduate and master’s degrees, I was frequently given the same feedback about being overly descriptive and needing to be more critical. As a university student, it’s all too easy to compare your writing to those of your peers, and to the sophistication of the sources that you read. While you should always aim to get the best marks possible, you must also remember that you are at university to learn, and that writing skills take time to develop.
Saying Less, Arguing More
When writing assignments, particularly those that I was the most interested in, there were so many topics I wanted to discuss and knowledge I wanted to display that these became the main focus of my essays, rather than answering the question. It took a while for me to realise that it is better to talk about fewer concepts in more detail, than more concepts in less detail.
Particularly when I got to the stage where essay questions would ask me to “critically discuss” or “critically analyse”, I also found that I could use the structure of my assignments to set up my analysis. For example, indicating the argument you intend to present or conclusion you intend to reach in the introduction’s thesis statement is a great way to display critical thinking from the start of an essay. I could then refer back to this argument or expected conclusion in my main body paragraphs, and use my analysis to support it.
Structuring Paragraphs for Critical Analysis
Using the following structure for my main body paragraphs also helps me to ensure that my description is always followed by critical interpretation:
- Topic sentence – using your own words, overview the purpose of the specific paragraph and link it to the thesis statement or question, in order to show its relevance.
- Explanation – using your research, describe the key concepts to the paragraph; think about the what.
- Analysis – interpret the information you have just described by discussing its wider implications, comparing and contrasting, and making judgements about its significance, positives or negatives etc., in order to answer the question. Analysis should be framed around your argument, and all judgements must be supported with information from your explanation and scholarship that agrees with you. Think about what concepts or events suggest, show or are because of; the why and the how.
- Transition – introduce the next paragraph and show how this paragraph is linked with the next one, in order to ensure flow and display a train of thought that runs throughout the paragraphs.
Why Your First Draft Isn’t the Final Word
Overall, it’s important to bear in mind that your writing skills will develop during the process of your degree(s) and that you aren’t alone: leaning on the university’s resources can make a big difference. As well as this, the writing process is one of rewriting and editing; nobody’s first draft is perfect, and considering previous feedback will directly help to improve your work.
