Hey guys. I've been doing a load of essay topic breakdowns for you guys, and we've been looking
at plans for them, so I thought I would actually show you how I actually do a real life plan,
one that I would do on paper if I was preparing for a SAC or an exam, as opposed to the ones that
I do on YouTube because the ones that I do on YouTube are slightly different. I definitely go
into more detail than I normally would. But at the same time I still do use the same concepts as I
would when I do read the steps on YouTube. So I'm going to go and show you that today. And before I
actually do that, I just want to preface this and tell you guys why doing a plan is so important.
So I know that a plan is something that one, a lot of people just don't do,
or two, they tend to sacrifice it if they feel like they don't have enough time, or three,
they do a plan in their head, but they don't actually write it down on paper. Now,
all of these things are pretty detrimental for you, especially because when you write a plan,
it actually helps to secure you and ensure that one, you're not going to mind blank throughout
your essay or let me rephrase that, if you do mind blank throughout your essay, you will still have a
piece of paper in front of you telling you, "This is what you were thinking Lisa, just go and follow
this method or what you've written down here." So that way you don't just get stuck in the middle
of your essay and start having a freak out because you've forgotten what you were supposed to write.
Second thing is that it ensures that you don't go off topic. This is something that happens quite
frequently. If you don't have a plan, then you have this idea of, "Oh, I'll write this and this",
and then somehow halfway through an essay, halfway through a paragraph, you realize, "Holy crap,
I have completely veered off the topic or this has gone completely in the other direction from
what I intended. This is not what I wanted." So in order to prevent that from happening,
just do a plan, please! You will find that it ends up saving you so much time and it just gives you
that reassurance that you need in situations where there are so many unpredictable factors,
like what prompts you're actually going to get. And your focus and attention should
be more about developing those ideas, rather than having a mind blank in the
middle of your essay and then having a little bit of a freakout as a result.
So I'm going to base this video on a previous essay topic breakdown in the past,
and that is on Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant. I was going to say Lieutenant, because I always
accidentally say that, but no, it is Lieutenant. Now, if you are not doing as text as always,
don't stress about it because what I want you to take away from this video is how you actually do
plans, the thinking that goes behind it and the formatting around it. So let's just get started.
The essay topic that we're doing today is, "But a man could not travel along two different paths."
How does Grenville explore Rooke's conflict of conscience in The Lieutenant. So as always,
my first step is I will highlight the keywords that I see inside the prompt.
Keywords are different for everyone, but these are the ones that I think are most important.
Firstly, the actual quote itself, how Grenville, conflict of conscience. Pretty much in this case
I could probably just highlight the entire thing, but for the sake of just defining some keywords,
this is what I would do. So the next step is to define key words. I think the only big key
word that I need to define here is conflict of conscience. And so to me, the conflict
of conscience suggests internal conflict, which implies that we'll need to consider
morality and the concepts of right and wrong, especially when a difficult decision must be
made and sides need to be taken. So as you can see, I've written these words down next
to the keyword and that will just help me ensure that I stay on topic or I stay in tune with what
the keyword is about and I don't suddenly change my mind halfway through the essay.
Then what I'll do is, I will analyze the quote itself. So this is unique because this particular
essay prompt has a quote inside it, but I'll have to think about, okay, where did I see this quote?
Who might've said it and what might it mean? And I'll draw it down a few notes for that. Then I'll
pretty much just go straight into my plan. Now, my plans I've written within five minutes, most
of the thinking is actually done during reading time. So personally, I've always found that just
writing dot points is completely fine. I don't need to go more beyond that. And I'll show you
a few examples now of real life year essay plans that I did during that time. And as you can see,
they are pretty much just scribbles and if anybody else was to look at my essay plans, they would
have no idea what I'm talking about. But you know what, for me it makes complete sense and that's
all that matters. You're not graded on your plan, so just go ahead and do it your way. You do you.
So what I'll do is I'll quickly dot down one, two, three, and these represent my
body paragraphs. Then I'll just write down very quickly what the topic sentences will be. I don't
actually write the full topic sentence itself, but I guess the essence of it, so the key things
that I will mention in the topic sentence. By writing down the three topic sentences,
this allows me to take a step back and look at the essay holistically and ensure that I
am answering it the way that I want to. Then what I'll do is I'll move into each individual
body paragraph and write down some things that I think are important for me to remember when
I go ahead and write it. So I might write down a couple of ideas that I think are important. I will
write down quotes that I think are essential to my discussion. And then what I'll do is I
will throw in at least one literary device or a metalanguage that I think is important to discuss.
So in this case, in this first body paragraph, it's limited omniscient third person perspective.
By throwing this in, I will ensure that I can show my examiner or show my teacher that I can go on
that deeper level. I'll repeat this method with both paragraph two and three. Of course for you,
you might need to write down more dot points. You can write fewer dot points,
it's really just dependent on every individual. If you are somebody who
needs to write down the quotes more, then go ahead and do that. But for me,
a lot of the quotes will stick in my head. I just need one point just to bounce off,
and then from there, I'm able to pull in all of the other quotes that are necessary.
You also notice that I do things in different colors. Now, I think this
is a strategy that I implemented in order to make things a lot clearer for myself before
jumping into an essay. So for example, for anything that's a metalanguage based,
I'll write it in green. The whole purpose for that is to ensure that in every single body paragraph,
I do cover some form of a literary device because that was always really important for
me. I thought that it was one of the key things that helped me differentiate myself from other
students. So if I took a step back from the plan and I looked at it overall, I could see,
okay, there's a green color in every single body paragraph, done. I have ticked off that criteria.
I also used to write quotes in red as well. So red just helped me do the same thing. It helps
me take a step back and go, "Yep, there's a bit of red in every single body paragraph.
I'm definitely including quotes," which might sound pretty stupid, but it's just that little
bit of reassurance that I think really makes that difference when it comes to a stressful situation.
That's pretty much it. It's just five minutes of your time, so we probably don't need to go into it
in too much more detail than that. But as you can see from my essay plans, I'm quite minimal. I just
keep things as short as possible because that's all I really need because a lot of the information
is here, but I just need to reinforce it and ensure that it is concrete when it is on paper.
So for yourself, I would recommend that you start practicing your plans. You can
try my method and see if that works for you, but over time,
I'm sure that you'll come to find your own way of writing plans that work for you.
Next week I'm going to have another essay topic breakdown for you. Can you guess what it might be?
If you want to take a stab, put it in the comment section below, but that's it for me in this week
guys. I hope that was helpful for you, and don't forget plans are crucial to an amazing essay.
If you needed any extra help, then my mailing list is always available for you guys. I send
out emails every single week just giving you new advice and tips for your studies,
so I'll put that in the description box below for you to sign up. Other than that,
I will talk to you guys next week. Bye.