Hello, everybody. In the following presentation, I will be showing you a method for writing a
literature essay. The purpose of a literature essay is to carefully examine certain aspects
of a work of literature. These aspects may include character, the relationships between characters,
themes, or symbols in a given work of literature. Over the years of teaching English,
I have realised that this task is one my students have found exceptionally daunting. However, I hope
that with the following method you will feel a lot more comfortable writing a literature essay.
The following is a five-step method or formula to writing a literature essay. The first step,
before any writing can occur, is to decipher the question. This would mean to figure out
exactly what the question is asking of you and which aspects of the piece of literature you
would need to analyse. The first question you need to ask is, what is the question
asking you to prove? It is advisable for you to highlight the key terms in the question. This
is so that you can focus your mind solely on the requirements of the essay topic at hand.
As with any successful writing, the writing process needs to be followed. That is planning,
writing and editing a rough draft and lastly, producing a final copy. Step 2 in this process
is to break the question or essay topic into main ideas. At the stage you are completing
an essay plan - whether it be a mind map or a list with headings and keywords. In your
planning what I would like you to do is to divide or break the essay question down into
three main ideas. What I mean by this is that you need to think of three instances,
occurrences or happenings in the text or piece of literature that you have studied that you could
discuss in support of the essay topic. You may be asking yourself, why only three main ideas?
A discussion of three main ideas in a literature essay is a comfortable amount of information to
ensure you meet the word-count at a high school level. You will see in a moment how these three
main ideas will contribute to the piecing together of your literature essay. For each main idea,
jot down some details about how you will explain the instance or occurrence from
the text in relation to the essay topic. I will explain this in more detail in the next slide.
The details for each main idea in your planning will include the following:
the main idea in general to which you are referring; the corresponding example or the
evidence you will use to elaborate on or prove your point; and how this main idea and its
corresponding example answer the essay question. Each main idea will become a paragraph in the body
of your essay. In other words, the body of your essay will consist of three paragraphs,
but we will take a look at this in more detail in a moment. Now that your planning is complete,
you are ready to start writing your essay. The third step is to write your introduction.
Some people prefer to work on the body of their essays first and then work on their introductions
and conclusions last, but the order in which you piece your essay is up to you, as long as
your final copy is in the order of introduction, body and conclusion. In any case, let us assume
you are going to work on your introduction first. Your introduction needs to include
the following sentences. The first sentence is a brief description of the text. In other words,
what is this piece of literature about? You need to be exceptionally brief because this will need
to be in one sentence only. The second sentence in your introduction is where you need to introduce
the essay topic to your reader by making an opening statement about the essay topic at hand.
The third sentence in the introduction of your essay is to mention your standing. Sometimes you
are asked to argue a point or whether you agree or disagree with a statement about the text,
a character, or a theme. It is here you will inform your reader of your argument. However,
only include the sentence if you have been asked to argue a point. Some essay questions merely ask
you to discuss a particular topic without having to actually argue a point. If this is the case,
leave this sentence out. The fourth sentence in the introduction of your essay is to inform
your reader of what you will be discussing or referencing in your essay. This sentence will
include a brief list of the three main ideas you will be referencing in order to answer the
essay question. The fourth step in writing a literature essay is to write the body of your
essay. This is where you will use your planning where you have your three main ideas to construct
your paragraphs of your essay. Use the following acronym to structure each paragraph in your essay
P.E.E.L. or PEEL. Each letter in this acronym stands for the sentence or the information you
need to include in each paragraph of the body of your essay. In this acronym, P stands for Point;
E stands for Example; the second E stands for Explain; and L stands for Link.
Let us have a more detailed look at what each letter in the PEEL acronym stands
for. Point - this means that you will start each paragraph with a general sentence to introduce
the main idea. Example - here you mention an example from the text to support the main idea.
Explain - this means you will need to elaborate and give some detail about the main idea and its
corresponding example. Link - the last sentence in your paragraph is where you need to link your
discussion or argument back to the essay topic at hand. In other words, how your main idea and the
example answer the essay question. You will complete this acronym three times over when
writing the body of your essay for each of your three main ideas. Step 5 - the last step in the
literature essay writing process is writing your conclusion. The conclusion is meant to tie up all
the loose ends of your essay and is essentially a summary. It is a summary of how all your examples
prove the point you were arguing or it is to connect all the points you were discussing.
Always make sure that your conclusion sums up your answer to the essay question. Briefly mention
again the three main ideas you discussed and the examples you use to substantiate your arguments
or discussion. Remember that no new information is to be added into your conclusion. Your conclusion,
in essence, is similar to your introduction. However, instead of informing the reader about
what information will follow, it sums up what information has been covered in the essay. The
following slide will illustrate the literature essay writing formula as a whole. I liken this
essay writing formula to a formula one would use in Mathematics. In Mathematics, when a formula is
provided, one merely has to place numbers into the formula to calculate the answer. However,
in this case, instead of placing numbers into the formula, one would simply place words into the
formula to achieve the literature essay. I always tell my English learners to memorise this formula,
especially for a literature exam. All they would need to do then is apply the content,
based on whatever the essay question is. Let's briefly look at the formula as a
whole. Notice the four sentences that make up the introductory paragraph. Then it is
the three paragraphs in the body of the essay - each paragraph for each of the main ideas,
with each paragraph following the PEEL acronym. Lastly, the conclusion paragraph,
summing up the essay. By applying this literature is a formula, you can ensure
logical and effective argumentative writing in response to a literature essay question.
Thank you for watching this presentation. I hope that this will make writing literature essays a
little bit less daunting. Please ensure that you subscribe to my channel for other English content
for both English Home Language and English First Additional Language for Grades 8 to 12.