1- The plan: Indispensable!
For your essays, presentations, oral exams and, in the future, reports on your training periods, … you must put the foundations in place before attacking the details. Of course, you have the impression that doing that curbs your creativity, your force of conviction. And above all that it is … difficult. But there are techniques. A demonstration …
2- A recipe for a plan as solid as concrete:
Find ideas … and defend a point of view.
Make rough notes of everything that comes into your mind, associations of ideas, references, and quotations. It is a good idea to step back occasionally and check that you are not going off in the wrong direction. And express yourself. Because we have the habit of writing essays using the anonymous “you” or “one” and so on, we have the impression that we must not take sides or express an opinion. What a mistake. If your argumentation is detailed and convincing, even if it goes beyond the ideas of your teacher and of your lessons, it’s a good thing, appreciated by teachers!
Then, a bit of order!
Classify the ideas by themes or by adopting a pyramid structure which goes from the more general to the specific (relevant for a presentation too, but above all for a report on a training period).
Ideas that don’t seem to enter into any of the main sections, forget them!
Then we build up the suspense and lay out the plan.
Link the ideas together, think about the logic of what you have to say and leave the last section for the expression of your opinion and the response to the problem posed (don’t waste your ammunition …). Then set out your plan: the main sections, the subsections. This work may seem a drag to you and a waste of time, above all during a supervised test. But it is the guarantee of success! Once the foundations are laid, the “walls” will build themselves, or almost.
Purists will tell you:
- Divide the whole thing into three main (or two, but in that case super solid) well-balanced sections and then split each part into small paragraphs.
- Write your introduction and conclusion before attacking the main body (even if you have to change a little later). Why? That fixes your mind on a beginning and an end … and straight- away, that helps you. Knowing where your brain and your pen must get to is a precious guide for a fluid dissertation.
3- Golden rules for the introduction and the conclusion:
1- The introduction:
A serious start: place the subject in its context, the importance of the essence of the problem posed, avoiding wide-ranging generalities (“since the beginning of time, man has asked himself …”, “from the beginning …”).
Re-introduce the subject, state the problem as posed and follow your plan. “Firstly”, “then”, “to finish” … are not very original expressions, but … at least they are super efficient. Keep them in mind!
2- The conclusion:
Here, again, repeat the essence of the problem posed (yes, it is a bit fastidious, but once again …it works) and the response that you want to make.
Lead into the second episode! What other problems can be posed on this theme, and why?
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