Psych Essays - Creating Essay Structure - The answer is in the question

A common point of anxiety around essay writing comes in finding the correct structure.
Every year we are flooded with requests to give a clear outline of the structure.
However every year that outline has already been provided.

Where and how is this information provided you ask?
Typically any specific structural requirements can be found in the question itself or the marking guide.

By unpacking these and using them to plan your essay before you start writing you should be able to create a well structured essay that answer the whole question.

However, before we get into that, there are some key structural elements that are often missed. Importantley these key structural elements are always the same:

• You will need an introduction
• You will need body paragraphs
• You will need a conclusion

The structure of your answer to the question will be reflected in each of these elements.

Example using a specific question:

The easiest way to explain how the structure for an answer to an essay question can be extracted from the question is to use an example. We will use the following example:

"Discuss the relationship between the concepts of space and time in the human mind."

Unpacking:

In the question above the key words that provide structure are:

"Discuss the relationship between the concepts of space and time in the human mind."

• "Discuss" provides an instruction for your overall approach to the essay. It suggests that you should consider all sides of any argument that the question is interested in. This can include evidence for and against the topic of interest as well as strength or weaknesses of either side.
• "...relationship between" points to the fact that the relationship that does or does not exist between two or more ideas that follow will be important. This provides a point of focus.
• "...the concepts of space and time in the human mind." are the topics of interest for this essay. Each of these refine the focus of the essay. Specifically you need to focus on the concepts of:
• space - Your first concept
• and time - Your second concept
• in the human mind - This places a restriction on these concepts. Importantly we are focussing on space and time in the human mind rather than space and time as understood in physics or by real world clocks. This is an important point to pick up on. If you were to discuss space and time outside the human mind there would be no marks available for that content.

Remembering that you want to move from broad ideas to specific ideas while defining important terms for your reader your structure would probably look like this:

1.  Define space in the context of the essay - you may like to use references here
2.  Define time in the context of the essay - you may like to use references here
**These definitions could be done in the same paragraph if you keep them brief or could be done in separate paragraphs if you wanted to go into more detail on each concept***
3. Discuss how these 2 ideas relate, preferably by using research evidence.

• a) Consider how they do relate
• b) Consider how they don't relate
• c) Consider which side of the relationship argument (if either) is more convincing - Why? Are there any limitations? etc.

These points provide the general structure for every section of the essay (intro, body, conclusion)

If you do not feel that your question or marking guide can be used to provide structure you might like to read about what to do when your question doesn't provide structure.

Planning:

As we have seen from unpacking the question the simplest approach to structuring our question goes:

Intro
Definition paragraph(s)

• - Cover space
• - Then cover time to stay consistent with the question

Paragraph(s) in favour of a Relationship

• - One idea per point. We will call this point A.
• - Plan your points out then then use them to write your intro and body paragraphs. We will call this point B.

Paragraph(s) against a relationship

• - One idea per point. We will call this point C.
• - Plan your points out then then use them to write your intro and body paragraphs. We will call this point D.

Evaluation paragraph(s)

• - One idea per point. We will call this point E.
• - Plan your points out then then use them to write your intro and body paragraphs. We will call this point F.

Writing:

At this point you use your plan to write each section. As you use the same plan for the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion you should end up producing consistent structure throughout. The use of consistent structure gives your reader a clear idea of where your essay will be going and is a core component in the creation of flow in an essay.

Your essay will probably end up looking like this, but without the blue section headings:
Introduction:
Research (a reference could be used here to strengthen this claim) has suggested that there may be a relationship between the concepts of space and time in the human mind (or the reference could go here). Key to these claims of a relationship are points A and B. However evidence against this idea of a relationship comes from points C and D. In order to decide which case is more likely it is necessary to consider both sides and evaluate the strength of their arguments using E and F.

Body:
Definition Paragraph(s)

• - Space first (as it it mentioned first in the intro)
• - Then time

Paragraph(s) presenting evidence in favour of a relationship

• - Point A first (as it it mentioned first in the intro)
• - Then Point B

*If any of these paragraphs address space or time separately ideally space will be considered first to match the intro

Paragraph(s) presenting evidence against a relationship

• - Point C first (as it it mentioned first in the intro)
• - Then Point D

*If any of these paragraphs address space or time separately ideally space will be considered first to match the intro

Paragraph(s) presenting an evaluation of the evidence for and against a relationship

• - Point E first (as it it mentioned first in the intro)
• - Then Point F

* If any of these paragraphs address space or time separately ideally space will be considered first to match the intro
** If any of the paragraphs only evaluate one side of the argument ideally paragraphs evaluating evidence in favour of the relationship should precede those evaluating evidence against the relationship as that would match the order already provided in the essay.
*** This section should build towards the conclusion. If you have decided that one side 'wins' be sure to convey this to the reader during the evaluation.

Conclusion:
Clearly there are arguments for and against a relationship between the concepts of space and time in the human mind. While each argument has its strengths and weaknesses overall it seems that... whatever you decide upon by the end of the body paragraphs.