1
Understanding Society Essay plan work sheet
This work sheet is intended to help you draft your essay plan and more generally
prepare you for the essay. The idea behind the essay plan is that it is an opportunity
for you to get some feedback on your understanding of the ideas of the unit and your
academic writing skills from your tutor before you write your essay. Having said that,
it is also a marked assessment which means higher quality essay plans will get
higher marks.
Before you start on your essay plan you will need to pick which of the four essay
questions you want to answer. They are on page 11 of your Learning Guide. Once
you have done that you should check the provided readings for the essay which will
e available on vUWS under the reading list link.
Review the Marking Criteria
You will find the marking criteria for the essay plan on the vUWS site. It has six
sections
• Breaking Down the Question
• Defining the sociological concepts
• Key Points and examples
• Conclusion
• Organising the ideas and structuring the essay plan.
• Referencing
You need to cover all of these criteria in your essay plan. Review the Marking
Criteria as you are working on your essay plan and before you submit it to make sure
you have covered all the sections. This work sheet will use these sections to guide
you through the essay plan.
1. Breaking down the Question (The introduction)
At this stage you may or may not have checked or read the readings for the essay on
the reading list on vUWS. Some students like to
eak down all four questions to
help them decide which question to pick. It is up to you if you want to do this.
Breaking down the question is really about working out what sociological ideas and
concepts the question is about and what it is asking you to do with them. Having a
clear understanding of the essay question is an important step to answering it.
The following information should be in this section of your essay plan:
i. What is the key sociological concept or idea the question is using? This is one
of the most important parts of the question. You need to know what specific
idea or concept from the unit the question wants you to use.
2
How should you present this information in the essay plan?
There are two good ways
• You could present it like a short answer question. For example: ‘the
sociological concept the question uses is Social Inequality. Social
Inequality is defined as ….’
• Or you could use the information to create a paragraph that covers all the
points (when it comes time to write your essay you will have to do this. It is
up to you if you do it now).
Do not use dot points. We need to see that you can write sentences and
paragraphs
ii. The questions all ask you to explain the relevant sociological concepts and
theories and apply them to a particular social issue (e.g. unemployment).
iii. Next you need to understand how the question asks you to apply the
sociological concept or use them on the subjects. It might ask you to
compare, contrast, explore, explain or give ways.
iv. When you apply a sociological concept to a subject you can also use a
sociological theory to help explain or explore or compare. Try to identify a
sociological theory that fits the question and explain why it works (this can be
hard, but if you do it well you will be rewarded with marks).
When you write the full essay, the information in this section will form part of the
Introduction to your essay. At this stage your introduction is more a
ief paragraph,
maybe only 100 words.
Once you start to understand the question you will also start to interpret the question.
If the subject is Australian Society, what parts of Australian society will you write
about? Likewise what aspects of the sociological concept will you use? How will
theory fit with this? It is good to think about this before you move on to the rest of
your plan
3
2. Defining the sociological concepts
You should provide a definition or explanation of the sociological concepts the
question uses to show you know what it is and can explain it. Make sure you provide
a citation for the resource where you got this definition from (probably your text
ook). You could use a direct quote for a definition, but a better idea is to explain it in
your own words (with a citation of course). This is called paraphrasing. It shows
strong understanding of the concept. If you can explain it in your own words, then the
marker is sure that you understand it.
You have some flexibility about where to put these definitions in your plan and
essay, some students like to put it in the introduction while others might start their
key points with these definitions. The point here is to make it clear to the marker that
you are providing a definition. Maybe start that sentence with words like, ‘X is a
sociological concept that is defined as…’ or something like that.
Remember, there might be more than one concept, so you might end up providing a
few different definitions.
The better your definitions of sociological concepts and ideas, the better you will do
in this criteria.
3. Key Points and examples
An essay is a large answer to an essay question. Part of the reason it is large is that
you not only have to present an argument or a position as the answer, but also you
have to defend that position with evidence. As I mentioned in the lecture some
students will read the essay question and know straight away what they want their
answer to be. Others will need to read all the readings before they know what
position they want to take. Both approaches are fine, but once you get to this stage
you will have to read the readings to get your key points. The key points are
justifications for your position or argument, but they must be defended with evidence
from academic research.
Some points about key points:
Students often ask how many key points they should have in their essay. At
university you are more likely to be rewarded if you can get into depth on your key
points. This reduces the number that you can use. If you use too many key points,
then instead of getting into depth you will start to summarise the topic. Instead of
showing your knowledge and understanding, you will just be skimming the surface of
the concept and the subjects. For this essay three or four key points would be a
good number.
4
How should you present this information in the essay plan?
Again, avoid dot points here. Instead use a few sentences to explain each key
point. You only have 500 words for the plan in total so try to keep it tight. You
can expand on the details in the essay. Don’t forget to add the citations for each
key point.
How should you present this information in the essay plan?
Again, avoid dot points. Try to summarise your key points in a sentence or two.
Explain how they support your argument/position. End the conclusion with a
sentence or two that answers the essay question or finishes the answer you
have developed.
Your key points need to flow from the
eakdown of the question, they need to use
the sociological concept, the subject and topic of the essay and what you have been
asked to do with them. This year’s assessment is really about explaining the
sociological concepts/ideas and applying them to a topic. This means you will be
able to provide examples that help show the marker that you understand the
sociological concepts.
As they are part of a position or argument, the key points all need to relate to each
other in a logical way. Remember, the key points are meant to support the position
or argument.
Within the key points it would be a good idea to have a sentence or two that explains
how you are going to use the sociological theory you have picked in the essay.
And lastly you need to include a least one citation for each key point. Make sure you
acknowledge what resource the idea or the evidence has come from.
4. Conclusion
Both your essay plan and your essay need a conclusion, but the one for your essay
plan will be much shorter. The conclusion for your essay will review your essay as a
whole; you will mention your key points to remind the marker of how great they were.
You will also explain how these points come together to defend your answer to the
essay question.
In the plan you need to provide an outline of that summary. How will these points
work together and importantly, what is the ultimate concluding answer to the essay
question?
5
5. Organising the ideas and structuring the essay plan
We have included this in the criteria so we can reward student for giving their essays
a clear structure and writing clear paragraphs. Obviously you have the introduction,
ody and conclusion as structures for the essay, but you also want to make sure that
you have clear paragraphs within those sections. For example, a different paragraph
for each key point.
A paragraph should really be united around one central idea or point. That should be
made clear in the topic sentence, which is like an introduction for the paragraph. It
tells the reader what the paragraph will be about. Following the topic sentence is the
ody of the paragraph, the supporting statements that provide detail and discuss the
central idea of the paragraph. It is worth spending some time on getting the order of
these supporting sentences co
ect so they build meaning and show