Answering The Flaming Question!

So you've heard it all before right? Your teacher has told you one million-trillion times that in order to write an effective essay that's going to get you the A grade, you've got to ATFQ (Answer The Flaming Question). So you go away, you get all your facts together and you write a nice eloquent essay that covers all the bases, mentions every single thing your teacher told you was important, and is thousands of pages long. And yet still at the end of your essay on the very last page you see your teacher's red pen scrawling... 'very informative and well researched but you didn't actually answer the question!'.

'Ugh!' you sigh, 'Didn't you read it? I spent hours on this thing!' and you promptly throw the essay to the other side of the classroom in a fit of rage. The problem is that he/she probably did read it and that he/she is probably right. Many students get daunted by the task of actually writing an essay on something they've been studying for weeks and they end up churning out long and descriptive introductions with all the most clever-sounding words they can think of followed by long and descriptive paragraphs of what happened when to which person on what date. But none of this is real analysis, none of it tells me what you think of said event/theme/individual, and none of it really answers the flaming question.

So what are the golden rules to make sure you've answered the question?

1. Answer the question within the first sentence of your essay. Literally.

I'm not joking. The best way to let your teacher/examiner know that they're in for a good essay is to get to the point. Straight away. This means that if the question is, for example, 'What was the most important factor in Hitler's rise to power in 1933?' your first sentence is going to read 'The most important factor in Hitler's rise to power in 1933 was....'. It might sound simple and childish but I guarantee that your examiner is going to sit up and listen and say 'Thank the Good Lord above, I've finally got a student who is actually going to give me and answer!' And if you convince them of that within the first paragraph, they're much more likely to forgive you if you wander off in the middle somewhere.

2. Address the question directly within the first sentence of every following paragraph.

Ok so we all know that in History, or Politics, or English, or practically any subject under the sun for which you're going to have to write an essay, there is going to be more than one possible answer and more than one opinion on the subject on which your are writing. This is ok. You can still form a strong opinion whilst acknowledging that interpretations exist. This is very good essay writing. Allowing all other points of view to have their say and then telling the reader why your answer to the question is the most appropriate really shows that you've got a handle on the subject.

However, don't get caught in the trap of waffling. At the beginning of each paragraph try to go back to the original question and say something along the lines of  'It could be argued that Y is the most important factor in Hitler's rise to power because of....' but then finish the paragraph by saying something like 'however X is still the most important factor because of ….' What would be even more clever is if you can show how X and Y are linked. That would be really cool.

3. Remember that not everything is relevant.

Ok so I realise that it's hard (particularly for us gals who love attention to detail and make sure we've covered every angle possible) not to include every single bit of information that we've read, been told by our teacher, or heard our friend mention in that late-night study session. Because it's all important, right? Wrong! A well argued essay that ATFQ does not need to mention the fact that if only Hitler had worse luck in the First World War and got himself killed, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Make a decision about what you think is important or what you find interesting about the question and LEAVE THE STORY-TELLING TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDENTS. An examiner doesn't want a novel, they want an answer. Obviously you're going to run a bit of a risk of loosing some marks if you decide that a major factor that everyone bangs on about, such as the Great Depression, isn't worth mentioning, but when it comes to the smaller and less significant factors, LESS IS MORE (of course, part of the challenge is to decide which are the less and more significant factors and that's open to interpretation!)

4. Facts aren't useful just because they're facts.

Ok so telling me that X million people lost their jobs in the Depression or that the Hitler Youth had Y- many members by 1933 is all very interesting but only if you make it RELEVANT to the question. Again, it might seem obvious to you why it's relevant, but you have to spell it out and say something like 'due to the fact that X-million people had lost their jobs during the Depression, there was a great deal of frustration with the Weimar government and many people looked to more extremist parties to give them hope'. Don't just tell me how many people lost their jobs and expect me to draw my own conclusion. YOU tell me why it's important. And that goes for everything. 'Hitler was a strong leader, capable of connecting to the masses.' That's great, but tell me why it's important.

5. Form you OWN OPINION.

So, this is the most important part and, in fact, should come before all of the other points. If you've formed your own opinion about the subject that you're writing on, it's going to be so much easier to make sure you've covered points 1-4. If you form an opinion, your answer is hopefully going to sound a little more original and make your essay stand out.

Also it will help you out in an exam so that you can answer the question set (not the question you were hoping for) with something interesting and that's going to make me believe that you've actually thought about this stuff and analysed it in an intelligent way. So, however long you spend reading, making notes, and forming a plan for your essay, make sure you've spent at least half of this time again actually thinking about what you believe to be most interesting about the topic. Hopefully, if you have an actual opinion about a particular topic you'll be more likely to actively engage with the question and not regurgitate notes or repeat in an exam the answer that you wrote in class (which is one sure way of letting the examiner know that you haven't answered the question at all, but just answered the question that you were hoping you were going to get).

Plus, forming your own opinion is much more likely to make you interested in the subject and the more interested in the subject you are, the more likely you are to write a good answer. But remember: never, ever, ever, ever, even if someone puts a knife to your throat in the middle of the exam hall write 'I think that...' or 'In my opinion...' or 'it is my belief that...' We know it's your thoughts, your opinion and your beliefs because you are writing the essay. This is an academic exercise, not an entry into your diary.