Essay Planning and Essay Writing

Abstract

Undergraduate students are commonly advised to make plans of their essays before they begin writing, yet there is little empirical evidence on the nature, role or efficacy of essay planning. This paper examines findings from a recent study of coursework essay‐writing as an aspect of student learning in the social sciences. A total of 16 Psychology and 17 History students took part in the investigation, which mainly took the form of two sets of semi‐structured interviews. From an analysis of the interview transcripts, five planning strategies were identified. However, it was apparent that to gain a full understanding of the nature of planning, it was necessary to examine these strategies in the light of the main findings of the study—a qualitative analysis of differences in the students’ conceptions of what an essay was and what essay‐writing involved. In sum, what seemed important was less how a student planned than what planning was directed towards.

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Higher Education Research
and
Development Vol
3, No 1, 1984 13
Essay Planning and Essay Writing
Dai Hounsell
University of Lancaster
ABSTRACT
Undergraduate students are commonly advised to make plans of their essays before
they begin writing, yet there is little empirical evidence on the nature, role or
efficacy of essay planning. This paper examines findings from a recent study of
coursework essay-writing as an aspect of student learning in the social sciences.
A total of 16 Psychology and 17 History students took part in the investigation, which
mainly took the form of two sets of semi-structured interviews. From an analysis of the
interview transcripts, five planning strategies were identified. However, it was
apparent that to gain a full understanding of the nature of planning, it was necessary
to examine these strategies in the light of the main findings of the study — a
qualitative analysis of differences in the students' conceptions of what an essay was
and what essay-writing involved. In sum, what seemed important was less how a
student planned than what planning was directed towards.
Dai Hounsell is Senior Research Officer in the Institute for Research and
Development in Post-Compulsory Education, University of Lancaster. During the
academic year 1981-82 he was Swedish Institute Visiting Scholar at the Institute of
Education, University of Gothenburg, and in July/August 1983 he was a visiting
fellow at the Tertiary Education Institute, University of Queensland. He has published
widely on learning and teaching in higher education and on information problems in
education.
Address for correspondence: Dai Hounsell, Institute for Post-Compulsory Education,
University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YL, United Kingdom.
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Within the canons of advice-giving to students, the injunction to 'make a plan
before you write' occupies a position of prominence. It is a firmly established
part of what McNamara and Desforges (1978) have called the 'craft knowledge' of
teachers, and it is widely propounded in most study skills manuals, (Hartley,
1983),
where it can be seen as mirroring a more general advocacy of planning and
self-organisation as the most secure avenue to academic success.
Yet this ostensible consensus has not gone entirely unchallenged. One Schools
Council monograph (Britton et al. 1975) has questioned whether planning need be
an invariable concomitant of accomplished writing, while Gibbs
(1981),
in
outlining a rationale for a fresh approach to learning-to-learn activities, has
suggested that the plan can prove an unwelcome straitjacket which may hinder
rather than help students to write their essays. For Gibbs the nub of the
problem is the way in which students perceive planning, which in reality is
often informal and messy:
Clearly the lack of any planning at all can be disastrous, but very formal
planning can also be disruptive and unhelpful. When advice over-formalizes
what is normally an informal process it can become impossible to follow,
(p.66)
Most strikingly of all, in Writing without Teachers Elbow (1973) has argued for
a writing strategy which is founded upon extensive drafting and redrafting
rather than the advance plan. The aim is to begin in an as open and unfettered
way as possible, successively summarising and redrafting to coax forth an
incipient centre of gravity. For Elbow, meaning is 'not what you start with but
what you end up with'
(p.15).
Writing must therefore be treated as holistic
rather than as exclusively linear:
Not starting in at one end and writing till you get to the other; but
rather as successive sketches of the same picture - the first sketches
very rough and vague - each one getting clearer, more detailed, more
accurate, and better organised as well. (p.29)
These challenges to the hegemony of the plan can be viewed as a debate over
alternative means to the same end - that is, towards writing which coheres.
Where the means is planning, organisation precedes articulation; where it is
drafting - redrafting, these steps are reversed. But each approach is pre-
dicated upon a division of labour between what Galbraith (1980) identifies as a
major source of difficulty in writing: the reconciliation of the opposing
tensions between topic and goal, content and form, or expression and presen-
tation.
What the debate has lacked, however, is empirical evidence on the nature of
essay planning, its role within essay-writing, and its efficacy. Perhaps the
only exception is a series of studies, largely unpublished, of undergraduate
essay-writing at the University of Keele (Hartley,
1983).
These studies showed
that approximately two-thirds of the students surveyed claimed to plan their
essays in advance. As far as examination essays were concerned, however, there
were no striking differences between the performance of those who had planned
their answers and those who had not.
The aim of the present paper is to cast further empirical light on this dark
corner of studying in higher education. The findings discussed stem from an
investigation of coursework essay-writing as an aspect of student learning in
the social sciences.
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Higher Education Research and Development Vol 3, No 1, 1984 15
LEARNING
AND
ESSA
Y—WRITING
Since the mid-1970s, there has been a growing number of studies of learning in
higher education (see for example, Entwistle and Hounsell, 1975; Hounsell and
Entwistle, 1979; Marton, Hounsell and Entwistle, in
press).
Although these
studies have been concerned with learning activities, such as academic reading,
which had hitherto received little attention, this embryonic research domain is
distinguished as much by the methodology which underpins it as by the activities
upon which investigations have been focussed. Central to this methodology is,
firstly, an 'experiential' perspective. The overriding concern is with an
understanding of learning as it is experienced by students themselves. Students'
experiences must be explored and discovered in as open a way as possible,
avoiding a priori categorisations and predetermined conceptual frameworks.
Secondly, the content of learning is not taken for granted, but considered as
crucial in itself. Research has thus been directed towards the sophisticated
and demanding subject-matter characteristic of undergraduate education.
Thirdly, and in pursuit of ecological validity, investigations are conducted
within the actual setting of a real-life course of study or, alternatively,
within a naturalistic setting, i.e. an experimental setting the features of
which in many respects mirror those of the natural setting. Fourthly, a
fundamental aim is not to measure or explain but rather to understand learning,
through the description of empirically derived qualitative differences. The
research approaches adopted have therefore typically (though not exclusively)
involved in-depth studies of relatively small groups of students.
The research described here was undertaken within that emerging experiential
tradition. It was an attempt to explore undergraduate essay-writing in the
social sciences as a learning activity. Two groups of second-year university
students were involved in the investigation: 16 Psychology and 17 History
students. Each group was studied in relation to a specific course-unit within
the subject concerned, which itself constituted the main or joint main subject
within the two groups of students' respective schemes of study. The students
took part in two sets of semi-structured interviews, separated by an interval
of approximately a term. Each set of interviews was timed so as to take place
immediately or shortly after the submission of an essay within the course unit
concerned. The students were invited to describe both the content of the essay
and how they went about preparing it, to draw comparisons and contrasts with
other essays written for the course unit concerned, and to discuss various
aspects of the activity of essay-writing and the course setting within which it
took place. The students were invited to bring to the interviews copies of
their essays and other associated notes and materials. The interviews were
then transcribed and subjected to intensive content analysis. The main
differences identified were in the students' conceptions of what an essay was
and what essay-writing involved, and these conceptions were further explored
in relation to a selection of the students' essays. The analysis, however,
also encompassed the two course contexts and the steps followed by the students -
including their planning strategies - in going about their essays. The
discussion which follows begins with an examination of planning strategies and
goes on to seek to show that these cannot be adequately understood in isolation
from the students' conceptions of essay-writing. The two course settings are
not described here except insofar as this is necessary to the discussion.
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16 Higher Education Research and Development Vol 3, No 1, 1984
FIVE PLANNING STRATEGIES
There were many respects in which the essay-writing practices of the History
and the Psychology students differed, over and above differences which arose
from the particular concerns of the respective disciplines. The History
students, for example, were experienced and prolific essay-writers, required
to submit as many as twenty essays of approximately
3,000
words during their
second year. The Psychology students, by contrast, were sometimes unaccustomed
to writing substantial essays, which formed only a part of their assignment
workload. Similarly, while the History students tended to be given quite
specific guidance about which books or articles they might use as the basis for
their essays, the Psychology students were often expected to go beyond
recommended texts and forage amongst library holdings in search of appropriate
sources.
Despite these and many other differences, however, the essay-writing procedures
of the two subject groups followed broadly similar patterns. The main initial
phase was reading and note-taking, followed by (for some of the students) the
preparation of an essay plan. The final phase was drafting and (again, only
for some of the students) redrafting. Across both groups of students, five
planning strategies were identified. These strategies can be termed No Plan;
The Inventory; The Basic Plan; The Extended Plan; and The Evolving Plan. They
represent the strategy that the student concerned usually adopted, although
some students, as is noted below, did not always follow the same planning
strategy. In the interests of anonymity, all the students have been given
fictitious names.
No
Plan
Two of the Psychology and two of the History students do not normally draw up
an essay plan. For one History student, Brenda, this seems less the product
of a conscious decision than an almost fatalistic attitude to essay-writing.
I never do plans for any of my essays. They just happen.
Although Brenda does not make a plan, she 'might jot down thoughts to return to
later as I'm writing' and she tries to start her essays 'with a quote that gets
right down to the middle of the question. Then you can focus your ideas around
that'. Brenda sometimes tries to write the essay in a single draft, but usually
writes a rough draft followed by what many students call a 'clean copy' (that is
a draft which is not replete with crossings-out and in which misspellings or
grammatical mistakes have been
corrected).
For another History student, Rick, his capacity to put pen to paper is fickle.
An essay 'either comes or it doesn't', and he does not feel he could stick to a
plan even if he were to make one. Before he begins writing, he tries to work
out in his head what he will say, but consults his notes only to check factual
details.
And having completed the first draft, he then redrafts 'about eight
times,
normally', since he finds it difficult to express what he wants to say
clearly and accurately.
Barry, a Psychology student, concedes that his planning is perhaps 'a bit weak',
but he does try to map out the essay in his head and sees note-taking as the
most difficult of the steps in writing an essay because 'it's then that you're
planning your structure, in a way'. Nonetheless he sees little point in a
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written plan since 'if you can't do it in your head, you can't make a plan
either'.
Wendy, another Psychology student who does not make a plan, seems to use the
rough draft as a device for honing and ordering the essay:
I usually make about 14 sides of notes, for an essay like this. Then I
go through my notes, crossing out all the bits which appeared to me
irrelevant, then I write the essay out in rough, and, uh, alter it,
asterisks everywhere, arrows and things, and then write it in neat.
She may sometimes make use of a plan, in which case it takes the form of an
'inventory' (see
below),
providing starting-points rather than the blueprint
for the essay:
Just write down a few ideas, and then sort of, as you get into the essay
you think, oh yeah, that can go in, that can go in as well.
As this brief sketch demonstrates, the reasons for not drawing up a written
plan are not homogeneous and may reflect, on the one hand, a view of essay-
writing as not entirely within the control of the individual, or on the other,
a perception of the written plan as otiose, an unnecessary refinement. More-
over, the absence of a written plan is not necessarily indicative of a lack of
attention to planning or organisation. The mental plan and substantive redraf-
ting may be alternative pathways.
The Inventory
The term inventory describes a strategy in which the likely content of the
essay is in some way catalogued, but the catalogue does not aspire towards
completeness or does not set out the sequence to be followed. This strategy is
followed by three Psychology and four History students.
Sue,
a History student, likes to write up her essays in a day, working free
from interruption at home. She says that she does not make a plan, but works
from two lists: one contains all the points, ideas and thoughts she thinks may
be important; the other is a list of the most important facts. The essay is
then written from these in a single draft, although the introduction may be
revised, and Sue comments that:
That doesn't mean that everything's going to go well, or that in midstream
I'm suddenly not going to come up with some new direction or something
very important that I missed.
Another of the History students, Joanne takes as many as 30 sides of notes,
'depending on how carried away I get'. The notes are then torn up and sorted
into piles, as a basis for the rough draft of the essay. Joanne only very
rarely makes an essay plan, but has 'an idea in my head of how it's going to go'.
Rosemary, a Psychology student, opts for brief notes. Once she has completed
the preparatory reading, she draws up a list of headings and consults the
reading sources whenever more detailed coverage of the material seems called
for.
Though she may sometimes attempt to arrange the headings in sequence,
conclusions are unplanned and she may begin work on the introduction as a means
of finding her way into the essay:
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I wrote down what I was going to write about in the essay, in the intro-
duction, in the sort of order that I was going to write about it. And,
uh ... hopefully it was going to make - it was a sort of plan for my
essay. But I don't think I followed it ... very exactly.
For Gail, also a Psychology student, the 'inventory' is itself a way of getting
started. Typically it includes only notes for an introduction and headings
which will form the basis for the first two or three paragraphs which follow it.
She finds it very difficult to stick rigidly to a plan because 'it never works
... it never turns out like that', and she writes some of her essays without
any kind of plan.
These four examples illustrate the different patterns which inventories may
follow. But as they also indicate, the inventory is a partial plan which
leaves some decisions about coverage and sequence to be resolved in the process
of drafting.
The Basic Plan
The strategy of the basic plan is followed by four Psychology and four History
students.
For Ellie, a Psychology student, a crucial preliminary to writing is to 'have
an actual think' and then prepare a plan 'with the compulsory coffee stain'.
She describes the plan, which helps to lessen her anxiety, as
Almost a spatial plan, because I start to say to myself, you know, first
of all at the top of the essay, and then I see the bottom, and it's a
case of filling in the middle.
Actually writing the essay, which she aims to complete in a single draft, is a
chore:
I'd like to (laughs) plan the essays, not to have to write them.
Nick, on the other hand, who is also a Psychology student, regards planning as
unpleasant but necessary:
It's worth doing, 'cos it makes the essay a hell of a lot easier to do.
This is a painful part of it, but it's better than your essay going here
and there - the tail wagging the dog or something.
His plans may include diagrams, which help him to visualise links between
points.
For one of the History students, Martin, a plan consists of the main points of
the essay accompanied by one or two supporting examples. Planning involves
deciding on the most important aspects of the topic, categorising these, and
indicating examples beneath them. He may redraft an essay up to three times
since he feels his command of English is 'awful', but redrafting may also
entail reordering.
Kate,
another of the History students, writes her essays in a single draft,
though she consciously delays adding a conclusion, to leave time for further
reflection. She works from a plan which comprises the points she wishes to
make in sequence. Generally, however, her plans are not detailed ones:
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I know that you really need to introduce it, and argue it out, and then
conclude it, but I don't go in for detailed essay plans. I used to, but
I usually just jot down the points I want to make, on a piece of paper,
from what I've ... assimilated.
The distinguishing features of the basic plan, therefore, are that it is
intended to cover all the main points or headings to be explored in the finished
essay, and that the order in which these will be dealt has been determined,
provisionally if not definitively. Introductions and conclusions may or may
not form part of the basic plan.
The Extended Plan
The extended plan may be considered as a variant of the basic plan rather than
a markedly different strategy, since it differs in one principal respect
only. Having drawn up what is in effect a basic plan, students take this a
stage further. The headings or sub-headings in the plan are given some kind of
numerical or alphabetical code, and the students then systematically
rescrutinise their notes, marking each item with the appropriate code for ease
of subsequent consultation. As Pattie, a History student, explains:
I draw up a plan, and go through my notes, numbering each different point
on the notes, and then try and put it all together. It's like a jigsaw
puzzle, I think.
The extended plan is a strategy followed by four of the Psychology and five of
the History students. There is a relatively high degree of uniformity amongst
them, all but one of the students in each subject group aiming, not surprisingly,
to write the essay in a single draft. However, one History student schematises
his notes only for sections of his essay which are particularly difficult,
while one of the Psychology students, having coded her notes in terms of the
points she will raise, then re-writes her notes, and may then make further
decisions about how the material is to be grouped.
The Evolving Plan
A common feature of the inventory, the basic and the extended plan is that
although in some instances reading and note-taking may be preceded by reflection
about the problems posed by the essay question or the kinds of issues which
might be dealt with in the finished essay, planning is at base an activity which
follows reading and note-taking. What distinguishes the evolving plan as a
strategy, however, is that advance reflection about the nature of the end-product
becomes an integral part of the preparation of the essay. Planning, therefore,
however tentative or provisional it may be, is an activity which is initiated
from the outset, rather than largely postponed until reading and note-taking
have been completed. The initial plan then gradually undergoes modification as
work on the essay proceeds.
Laura, one of two History students following an evolving plan, describes it as
follows:
I think I always start off with trying to have some ideas about what I
think the essay should be saying, try to make a plan, to have some idea
of where I think it should be going. And then I read, make notes and ...
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Her next step is to make a more detailed plan in the form of paragraph headings,
and the first draft of the essay may be revised and further developed in two or
three further drafts.
Will,
the second of the two History students, begins work on the essay with
'a rough idea of the arguments' from his lecture notes. He likes to do some
general reading, without taking any notes, before making an initial plan of
'the points to consider' rather than 'the actual argument you're going to use'.
Next,
he embarks on more extensive reading and note-taking, and then draws up a
new and more detailed plan, having decided 'what argument you are going to use,
and how to attack the others'. Harry says that he always feels that 'you should
spend more time on a plan really than you should do actually writing'.
Anne is one of three Psychology students whose strategy is that of an evolving
plan.
She explains why she thinks working from an initial plan is useful:
I think it makes it a lot easier to do the reading. Otherwise you read
lots of things, and then you come round to writing the essay and you find
you've read, uh, everything that's not important. (Laughs) And you've
not got anything on what you're writing about.
For one of the essays she describes the initial planning was quite extensive,
perhaps reflecting in this particular instance an unusual level of prior
knowledge of the topic (knowledge which nonetheless had subsequently to be
supplemented by further
reading):
One of my social psychology essays was about what sorts of principles I
would derive from the course so far that would be useful in helping a
group like a committee to work more effectively. I made several plans
there actually. I thought I'd start off with a definition of a committee.
And then I decided not actually a definition but more a, an example that
I could then use throughout the essay. So I started off giving ... just
an example of a committee and, um, explaining what sorts of problems
that committee would come up with ... as it went along. And, with each
problem, I'd say what a social psychologist could tell them, how to
overcome that problem.
As the examples we have given suggest, there are variations in students' essay-
writing practices over and above differences in their planning strategies.
Although, for example, the approximate median time spent on an essay was
between 13 and 15 hours for both subject groups, this figure conceals
considerable disparities. The lowest estimate given by a History student was
5.6 hours and the highest nearly 30 hours. The corresponding figures for
Psychology were 9-10 hours in the case of one student and 30 hours in the
case of another. Similarly, estimates of notes taken varied from 2 to 40 sides
in History and from 0 to 30 in Psychology. And while such self-reported
estimates are inevitably impressionistic and should be viewed with caution, it
seems unlikely that such wide divergencies can be wholly accounted for by
subjective errors.
The ways in which students wrote up their essays showed less variation, the
combination of 'rough draft' and 'clean copy' being the most typical approach.
Few students engaged in substantive redrafting, and for two of those who did so
the impetus seemed to be as much their difficulties with style and grammar as
the desire to reorder what they had written.
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A more general observation is that when differences in time spent, notes taken
and approaches to writing up are examined in relation to the five planning
strategies, no striking pattern of interconnections emerges. This, of course,
may simply be a function of the small samples of students involved. Nonetheless,
the main findings of this study suggest that more fruitful interconnections are
to be found elsewhere: in the relationships between planning strategies and
students' conceptions of essay-writing.
CONCEPTIONS
OF
ESSAY-WRITING
In the analysis of the interview data, it became apparent that, within each
subject group, there were differences between students which were not confined
to a single essay task but appeared to be applicable across the various essay
tasks recounted in the two interviews. Moreover, such differences seemed to be
mirrored in students' more general observations about the nature of essays and
essay-writing in the course unit and discipline concerned. In other words,
within each subject group, students seemed to hold distinctively different
conceptions of what an essay was and what essay-writing involved (1).
The most fundamental aspect of each of the conceptions identified is a global
definition of an essay. And each global definition can be dissected into three
sub-components, each of which embodies a specific stance towards what can be
regarded as three core elements of essay-writing. These three core elements
were not determined a priori but emerged from the analyses. They are: data,
the subject-matter which forms the raw material or bedrock of an essay;
organisation, the structuring of the essay into a particular sequence or order;
interpretation, the meaning(s) given to the essay material by a student.
In the case of the History students, three conceptions of essay-writing could
be identified: 'Arrangement'; 'Viewpoint'; 'Argument'. For the purposes of
the present paper, the discussion will concern itself only with the 'Arrangement'
and 'Argument' conceptions (2). We begin with the latter.
Where the students conceive of essay-writing as argument, an essay is defined as
the ordered presentation of a distinctive position or point of view well-
supported by evidence (see Table 1). As Harry puts it:
In an essay you really have to think about something, just keep thinking
about it as regards all the reading and evidence you're going to use.
You have to follow a coherent argument, basically. And that's the only
time you have to - like in a lecture you don't and in a seminar you just
usually state your point of view on a certain point. You don't form an
actual coherent argument ... along a broad theme, really.
Within this global definition, interpretation is uppermost. The essential
character of an essay lies in the distinctive point of view or position which
is conveyed. If the essay is to constitute an argument in its fullest sense,
nonetheless, the point of view or position conveyed must be coherently presented
and backed up by evidence. Yet these latter two sub-components of organisation
and data, though crucial, are subordinate to the interpretive stance, serving
as the vehicles upon which it is conveyed. To put it another way, decisions
about organisation and data selection are made in the light of the interpretive
position or point of view which is to be advanced.
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22Higher Education Research and Development Vol 3, No 1, 1984
Table
1:
Conceptions
of
Essay-Writing (History Students):
Global definitions
and
sub-components
Level
I
Conception
"ARRANGEMENT"Level
III
Conception
"ARGUMENT"
Global
Definitiondefine an essay as an ordered
presentation embracing facts
and ideas
define an essay as the
ordered presentation of an
argument well-supported by
evidence
Sub-Components
a. interpretation
b.
organisation
c. data
an acknowledgement that
it
ik
u&e.£ut
on.
impontant
to
e.xpn.ej>i>
any idzai on. opinion* you may
have.
a concann with onganUation at,
•such, but without
nzfyuuince.
to
the. aptnu>&
o^
ongani&ing
pnA.nu.pleJ,
a concern with
data.,
but
quantitatively, with
no
explicJLt OvLtoiia
oh
&eZe.ction
a concznn
to
toko,
up a
di&tinctive. position on.
point
o£
view
on a
pnoblem
on.
idhuz
a conc&nn with
an
eJ>i>ay
at,
an
intzgnaZ whole.
a conc&nn with data.
a&
ev-tdence, Aub-btantiatinQ
on.
n.z^uting
a
paAticiitan.
position
OK
vivtipoimt
The particular character of this conception may become clearer by contrast with
the second of the two History conceptions discussed here, where essay-writing
is seen as arrangement. In this latter conception, as Table 1 shows, an essay
is defined as an ordered presentation embracing facts and ideas. A comment by
Donna illustrates this:
I don't think we get a lot of our own ideas into it. (...) It just seems
to me as though you're reading about a period, and trying to fit your
reading into an essay. It just seems like a lot of facts more than
anything else.
An examination of the sub-components of the definition is again instructive.
Here interpretation, for example, is seen as a question of including in the
essay whatever ideas or opinions you may have, whereas in the Argument
conception, ideas and thoughts are refined and moulded into a unified position
or point of view. And whereas in the Argument conception decisions about
organisation and data pivot upon this interpretive stance, in the Arrangement
conception the three sub-components are not hierarchically interrelated. It is
as though each sub-component is viewed in a self-contained way. Thus data is
simply amassed rather than marshalled in support of a position or point of
view. Similarly, the organisation of the essay is a matter of convenience or
aesthetics, rather than a means of giving coherence to the presentation of a
point of view or position.
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Higher Education Research and Development Vol 3, No 1, 1984 23
Table 2: Conceptions of Essay-Writing (Psychology
Students):
Global definitions and sub-components
Level I Conception
"RELEVANCE"Level II Conception
"COGENCY"
Global
Definitiondefine an essay as an ordered
discussion of relevant material
on a topic or problem
define an essay as a well-
integrated and firmly
grounded discussion of a
topic or problem
Sub-Components
a. interpretation
b.
organisation
c. data
an acknowledgement that
eJ>iayi>
entail the. e.xpteA&ion a$ any
ideal,, thought* and opinion*
you may have.
a concexn with oKganiMation in
the. izmz o£ tinhXng paxti to
one. anothex fiathex than itsuic-
tuxing a whole.
a concexn with coverage. o£
Ktlzvant matexial, whexe. nzle.-
vancz
te>
viewed
a&
i£ it wens,
an inhexznt chaxactexi&tic 0(J
the. psychological titexatuxe.
a concexn to pn.ue.nt a
aoniolXdatzd view o£ a
topic
OK
problem within
which youA own
ide.a&
and
thoughti have, bezn
inttgKatud
a concexn with an tiiay
a&
an
JuntzQKatzd
whole.
a concexn to build an
eAAay upon a faxm
empixicoJL foundation
Amongst the Psychology students, two conceptions of essay-writing were identi-
fied (see Table 2). In the first of these, 'Relevance', an essay is defined as
an ordered discussion of relevant material on a topic or problem, as illustrated
in a comment by Yvonne:
It's really hard to describe it. (...) You've got tons of information,
and somehow you've got to sort it out to the relevant points, which is
quite difficult to do. And then, um, write about it, and put in your own
ideas as well.
As Table 2 shows, it is the sub-component of data which chiefly differentiates
this conception from the History conception of Arrangement. Yet in an essential
respect, the two conceptions are strikingly similar, for in the Relevance
conception too, the sub-components are viewed as though self-contained.
Decisions about organisation and data are not married to a superordinate inter-
pretive stance.
In the second of the two Psychology conceptions, 'Cogency', an essay is defined
as a well-integrated and firmly grounded discussion of a topic or problem. As
Vicky puts it:
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The most important thing is the way it's set out, that the point you're
making or whatever you're trying to write about should follow logically,
and clearly, that you shouldn't jump about from one theme to the other.
When compared to the History conception of Argument, it is the sub-components
of interpretation and data which are viewed distinctively. In respect to data,
there is a concern to root the discussion firmly within the confines of the
psychological literature rather than seeing the latter merely as a useful
resource upon which to draw. Interpretation also reflects this grounding in
the literature. As Barry puts it:
They want you to have your own views, but you need to sort of know every-
body else's first.
Despite these differences, nevertheless, the conceptions of Argument and of
Cogency, though they stem from different disciplines, share the common
characteristic of subordinating the sub-components of data and organisation to
that of interpretation. Whether interpretation takes the form of a consolidated
view, in Psychology, or of a distinctive position or p"oint of view, in History,
it is central and predominant. Data and organisation are servants to its
master.
PLANNING
STRATEGIES
AND CONCEPTIONS
In outlining the four conceptions, we have shown that structurally they can be
paired across the two subject groups. In neither the History conception of
Arrangement nor in the Psychology conception of Relevance is interpretation
superordinate, and the sub-components of the global definition are viewed as
if each were self-contained. In the Argument conception of History and the
Cogency conception of Psychology, by contrast, the three sub-components are
interrelated, with data and organisation subordinated to interpretation.
Retaining these two pairings, we can look again at students' accounts of their
essay-writing procedures, focussing upon each of the five planning strategies
in turn.
The numbers of students following the 'no plan' strategy is small, but two
Psychology students provide a useful focus since they do not share the same
conception of essay-writing. Though the first of these, Barry, does not make
a plan, the interpretive emphasis of the Cogency conception is apparent:
I try and get it to stick together, so that it isn't just like a lot of
little extracts from books, it's like a coherent argument.
In the case of Wendy, however, who holds the Relevance conception, the unifying
force of an interpretive stance is lacking:
I think the format of (the essay) is alright, but I got a bit carried
away on, sort of, how children learn language rather than the capacities,
sort of the stages in it. /Interviewer: Does that happen often?/ Yes, I
think so. You tend to forget the question. With essays of this length,
you think, 'oh, I'll leave it in, it'll fill it out a bit'.
In the case of the inventory strategy, a comparison with the paired conceptions
becomes possible. The first two extracts are from accounts by Rosemary
(Relevance conception, History) and Sue (Arrangement conception,
History).
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The third and contrasting extract is by Graham (Argument conception,
History):
I didn't spend very much time on planning it all. I was so confused as
to what to put in it, I thought, 'oh, let's bung this in, let's bung this
in.
(...) The hardest thing was actually deciding in the first place
what to put in it, which I didn't spend enough time doing. Elaborating
on certain points, that's quite easy, 'cos you can just look at your
notes.
Or references in books, just putting things in it which are
relevant. That's usually how I see it in every essay.
If I haven't formulated a very definite plan, and if I'm not quite sure
how my essay's going to go, then I'll probably take a main theme in a
book and work through that way. In History you might have a problem
about whether to deal with ideas, sort of, a chronology, you know, which
approach to use. And if I have got a problem like that, then I'll use
the authority, you know, the book, and work through their way.
As I'm going through (a book) a second time I pick out the points I want
to say, and think of the reference to the question. ... And then after
that I seem to know where I want to start. (...) Then I read (the essay)
again, and find any points I've missed and tie it all in to the conclusion.
In the first two extracts, planning seems to mirror the lack of prominence given
to interpretation in the two conceptions concerned. In the first extract,
decisions about what to include are not anchored to a clear perspective on the
question. In the second extract, the relation between the structuring of the
material and what the essay is to convey is sidestepped rather than confronted,
through a reliance on an external authority. In the third extract, on the
other hand, the authority or point of reference is the student himself and the
interpretive stance he has chosen to take up.
The accounts of students who follow the basic plan again reveal the interpre-
tation of planning and conception. For example, in an account by Ellie
(Relevance conception,
Psychology),
the organising principle of the plan is
uninformed by a personally distructive view of the problem set. It is the
nature of the data, the source material, which determines the framework
adopted:
If I've got ten authors, it's their angles that I'll decide to use, and
where to use. And that's what my plan looks like. Usually it's just a
list of authors' names ... written down the pages I want to bring them
in,
but sometimes obviously afterwards I realise, oh no, he's not going
there,
he's going there. And that's how I do it really, rather than the
subject - which probably isn't a very good idea. But I hate seeing an
empty page, 'cos I get panicky, if I'm trying to plan an essay.
This essay may be contrasted to two others by Nick and by Chris, representing
respectively the two paired conceptions of Cogency and Argument. In Nick's
basic plan, the nature of the source material has itself to be considered, but
in alliance with the problem of how to best get across his consolidated view:
You think, well, 'What have I got here?' Um, 'how can I arrange it?'
Should I for example give a load of factors that might be involved -
before I discuss the actual principles that might be useful in helping
groups? And I thought, well (the factors will) form a basis for actual
discussion, 'cos if (the tutor) doesn't know what I'm talking about, he
can't know what the principles mean. So I thought, well, use these
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factors,
that'll be the first part of the essay. And the rest of the
essay is the actual principles, and then the conclusion.
And in a parallel way, for Chris, a History student, his plan is a stratagem
for giving expression to his conception of what an essay is:
My plan here is, like, the key, because I get everything in a logical
order where everything's building up, you know, and point 1, boom, boom,
boom, boom, like that. And so I try to aim that, come the end of the
essay, that no matter what they thought before that, the logic of the
argument and the evidence produced is such that, even if, you know,
they don't agree with my interpretation, they've got to say, um ... it's
reasonably argued.
In relation to this particular discussion, the extended plan is indistinguish-
able from the basic plan, since it essentially entails taking the latter a
step further by coding one's notes. And indeed, the students' accounts have
the same features as those exemplified in the basic plan. For example,
Edward (Argument conception,
History),
refers to his plan headings as 'giving
you your little centres of argument', while, equally characteristically, an
account by Donna (Arrangement conception, History) is flat and mechanical,
lacking the criterion that an explicit interpretive stance would provide:
I read through my notes, and try to split it up into sections, so that I
can get an essay plan. (...) It might not necessarily be in the right
order, but then I'll mark it through and decide what order it's in. And
it'll just be 1, 2, 3 ... but it's hard sometimes because various topics
merge into each other and you never know how to separate it. Sometimes
there's no distinct line, and you get, put bits in the wrong bits, and
things like that.
An examination of the fifth planning strategy, the evolving plan, offers the
possibility of comparisons but not of contrasts. The four Psychology students
who follow this strategy were ascribed to the Cogency conception and the two
History students concerned to the Argument conception. One of the latter,
Will,
illustrates how planning the construction of the finished essay is
directed towards making clear his interpretive stance:
I try to make my essays well-ordered, so that whoever marks it knows
where I am going and what I'm going to argue before actually - well,
before they actually get into it.
But what distinguishes the evolving plan, as we saw earlier, is that planning
is initiated from the outset rather than following the steps of reading and
notetaking. Some questions, however, may lend themselves more readily to this
than others. Hike, a Psychology student who likes to review what notes he has
before making an initial plan, provides examples of two possible options:
Lecture notes are always a generalisation and a simplification, so it's
a nice way of building up and getting into things. So, these are the
concepts, where do I go from here, where are these concepts taken from,
how do they apply?
I tried to sit down and think from the actual (course notes) what would
be involved. And the lecture and seminars were quite sort of comprehen-
sive on the topic of properception but I found it easier myself to sit
down and think it out and then go and look up references to the various
bits.
I thought, what would a person do then, what would a person do
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next? And then I'd look up the relevant perceptual action, when I could
find it, and then I'd review it, and if there were any gaps, I'd look at
them.
In the first instance, the knowledge he starts with is limited, and so the
initial plan has the function of sharpening an interpretive focus. The con-
solidated view he is working towards is still in embryo, but he can nevertheless
try to build from as firm a base as possible. In the second instance, the
knowledge he can bring to bear on the essay concerned is greater and the inter-
pretive focus correspondingly sharper, so that, as he subsequently comments, he
was able to adopt the framework he had initially formulated in the finished
essay, since he was 'actually thinking it out in the order in which it should
go on the page'.
One further observation is necessary with respect to the evolving plan. It can
be seen as a systematisation of a procedure which other students follow in a
less formal way. Indeed, amongst students with the paired conceptions of
Argument or Cogency, there were frequent instances where reading and notetaking
were given purpose and direction by dint of reflection about what the finished
essay would comprise. Chris, (Argument conception,
History),
discussing what
sorts of notes he takes in his preparatory reading for an essay, provides one
of many such examples:
I try to find the author's own particular view, his argument, and plunder
it for facts. Whether, you know, the facts that he gives, whether I
agree with his argument or not, I think that the main thing in an
historical essay is that you make a case and you've got to back it up
with actual facts of what happened, and evidence.
Finally, it is fruitful to look at the distributions of the students when
conceptions are related to planning strategies. Here the conceptions remain
paired, and for the purposes of comparison the planning strategies can be
paired too. The first of the latter groups combines the strategies 'no plan'
and 'inventory' (on the grounds that the latter can be considered as a partial
or incomplete plan) and the second combines the 'basic', 'extended' and
'evolving' plans. Moreover, a total of six students are excluded from the
analysis since their ascription to a particular conception was in some way
qualified - normally because they had taken part only in the first and main
interview or because the criteria of ascription were not satisfactorily met.
The analysis yields the interesting result shown in Table 3. Looking first at
combinations A and C, it is apparent that amongst students ascribed to the
History conception of 'Arrangement' or the Psychology conception of 'Relevance',
both groups of planning strategies are almost evenly represented. By contrast,
as combinations E and D show, students ascribed to the conceptions Argument
(History) or Cogency (Psychology) almost overwhelmingly adopt the strategies of
the basic, extended or evolving plan.
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Table 3: Distribution of students in relation to combinations of planning
strategies and conceptions (N=22)
CONCEPTIONS
'Arrangement' (History) or 'Argument' (History) or
'Relevance' (Psychology) 'Cogency' (Psychology)
PLANNING STRATEGY
(i) No plan or Combination A Combination B
inventory6 1
(ii) Basic, extended Combination C Combination V
or evolving plan5 10
The four combinations shown in Table 3 can be retained in an examination of
the students' performance. Two measures of the latter were available. The
first is aggregate coursework marks, based on two essays in the Psychology
course unit and four essays - the last of which, a more substantial assignment,
was double-weighted - in the History course unit. The second is final degree
results.
Of the 22 students, two were awarded third-class, ten lower second
class and ten upper-second class honours degrees. The criterion adopted here
is therefore the percentages gaining an upper-second class degree.
Table A: Academic performance related to combinations of planning strategies
and conceptions
mean coursework % gaining upper- n
mark second class degree
Combination
A
(No plan or inventory) + 56 17 6
(Arrangement or Relevance conception)
Combination
B
(No plan or inventory) + (Argument 52 - 1
or Cogency conception)
Combination
C
(Basic, extended
or
evolving plan)
+58
40 5
(Arrangement
or
Relevance conception)
Combination
V
Basic, extended or evolving plan) + 62 70 10
(Argument or Cogency conception)
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As Table 4 shows, there is an observable association between the four combi-
nations and coursework marks or class of degree. (A similar association is
apparent when the analysis differentiates solely between the two groups of
planning strategies, regardless of conception, or between the two pairs of
conceptions, regardless of planning strategy.) Given the limitations of the
sample, however, these findings should be viewed with caution.
PLANNING IN PERSPECTIVE
This paper began by noting recent challenges to the preeminent position which
the plan has long enjoyed in advice on essay-writing. In the findings of the
empirical study that has subsequently been examined, however, the hegemony of
the essay plan seems undisturbed. There were no examples of the drafting-
redrafting strategy which Elbow (1973) has vigorously advocated an an
alternative. A keen sense of caution is nonetheless important. First, these
findings stem from a small-scale intensive study involving two groups of
students in a single institution. The question whether planning holds sway
generally, in other institutions or across the disciplines, remains an open
one.
Second, if the advice to plan is a received orthodoxy in educational
institutions, then these two groups of students, it may be presumed, were
unlikely to have remained immune from its influence. What the consequences
would be were drafting-redrafting to be widely canvassed an an alternative
are therefore also unknown.
The analyses of the findings do however clearly indicate that the essay plan
is not a unitary phenomenon. Where the students did make some kind of essay
plan, four distinct planning strategies - the inventory, the basic plan, the
extended plan and the evolving plan - could be identified. But though the
distinctions between these are clearly interesting in themselves, the main
findings of the study pointed to the necessity of an understanding of planning
strategies in relation to students' conceptions of essay-writing. Put another
way, it is not just how a student plans that seems to be important, but also
what it is that the plan seems directed towards.
Two contrasting conceptions were described for the Psychology students: of
essay-writing as Relevance, and of essay-writing as Cogency. Two of the
conceptions identified as being held by the History students were also
examined: of essay-writing as Arrangement or as Argument. And while these two
sets of conceptions reflect in their respective concerns the disciplines from
which they stem, it is nonetheless possible, as we saw, to view the conceptions
as two cross-disciplinary pairs. One pair, the conceptions of Argument and
Cogency, pivot upon the fulcrum of an interpretive stance which critically
determines questions of organisation and data. The other pair, the conceptions
of Arrangement and Cogency, are matched in the lack of prominence each accords
to interpretation and in the almost hermetic status of interpretation,
organisation and data within the conception. Not surprisingly, these
fundamental qualitative differences between the two pairs of conceptions were
also evident in the students' accounts of essay-writing. To understand the
nature of essay planning, it was necessary to examine the close interpenetration
of planning strategy and conception. The outward characteristics of a planning
strategy were in themselves an insufficient indicator of the quality of essay-
writing as a learning activity.
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These findings can also be briefly considered against the wider background of
research on student learning. As Svensson (in press) has shown in a wide-
ranging discussion of research in the area, organisational aspects of learning
cannot be considered in isolation from referential meaning. The skilled
learner does not structure subject-matter in a mechanical or gratuitous way,
but finds an organising principle which takes account of the content of what
is to be learned. Learning thus grows from a way of organising the learning
material in the light of what it is taken to mean. Similarly, what the present
study suggests is that the mainspring of accomplished essay planning is not
organisation alone, but the alliance of organisation to the interpretive view
or position which is to be conveyed.
But what, finally, do these findings imply for advice to students on essay-
writing? The most obvious and important implication would be that in guidance
on planning, the discussion of means should be subordinated to the discussion
of ends. Advice on planning is likely to be of limited usefulness if it fails
to confront an inappropriate grasp of what is meant by an essay. The recent
guide by Clanchy and Ballard
(1981),
which starts from an analysis of tutors'
expectations, seems to. offer a promising way forward.
NOTES
(1) For a discussion of the term 'conception', see Säljo
(1982).
(2) The three History conceptions are examined in Hounsell (in
press).
REFERENCES
Britton, J., Burgess, T., Martin, N., McLeod, A. and Rosen, H.
(1975).
The
Development of Writing Abilities
(11-18).
London, Macmillan/Schools Council.
Clanchy, J. and Ballard, B.
(1981).
Essay Writing for Students. Melbourne,
Longman Cheshire. (Republished 1983 as How to Write Essays.)
Elbow, P.
(1973).
Writing without Teachers. New York, Oxford Univ. Press.
Entwistle, N. and Hounsell, D. eds
(1975).
How Students Learn. Lancaster, IPCE.
Galbraith, D.
(1980).
The effect of conflicting goals on writing: a case study,
Visible Language, 14.4, 364-375.
Gibbs,
G.
(1981).
Teaching Students to Learn. Milton Keynes, Open Univ. Press.
Hartley, J.
(1983).
How can tutors help students to write essays? Paper
presented at the Educational Technology International Conference, University
of Exeter, March 1983. To appear in Aspects of Educational Technology
(London, Kogan
Page),
vol. 17.
Hounsell, D. (in
press).
Learning and essay writing. To appear in Marton,
Hounsell and Entwistle (see
below).
Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N. eds
(1979).
Student Learning. Special issue of
the international journal Higher Education, 8.4.
McNamara, D. and Desforges, C.
(1978).
The social sciences, teacher education
and the objectification of craft knowledge, British Journal Of Teacher
Education, 4.1, 17-36.
Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N. eds (in
press).
The Experience of
Learning. Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press.
Svensson, L. (in
press).
Skill in learning. To appear in Marton, Hounsell and
Entwistle (see
above).
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Säljö,
R. (1982). Learning and Understanding; A Study of Differences in
Constructing Meaning from a Text. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis
Gothoburgensis.
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