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Home / Language / Learn English / An Intermediate Guide to Writing in English for University Study / Analysing the question

Analysing the question

Analysing the question
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For many university assignments you are given a question that you have to answer in an essay, and therefore one very important aspect of academic writing is answering the question with relevant content. This means you need to ensure that you understand the essay question completely. The following technique will show you how to analyse a question and understand what you need to write about.
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What is the topic of the essay? What is the question asking you to do? Pause the recording now to think about these questions.
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This question comprises two sentences. The first is a statement, and the second gives you some instructions.
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The first sentence gives you the topic, which is the fact that the average age of people in many countries round the world is going up - we have more elderly people than in the past.
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The question asks you to focus on the problems caused by an ageing population and on possible solutions. You have to discuss those problems, suggest solutions and then evaluate them, so there will be three parts to your essay. On university programmes you will generally be expected to answer all parts of the question, so you need to ensure you are doing this here; discuss problems, suggest solutions, evaluate those solutions.
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By “discuss” you would be expected to describe the problems and possibly assess how serious those problems are, and what impacts they have.
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By “evaluate”, you would be expected to compare the different solutions and decide which one is likely to be the most effective.
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One way of approaching an essay title is to ask questions, which you would try to answer, and which help you establish what you already know and what you need to find out about the topic. It also helps you to begin to develop a viewpoint. And here are some possible questions
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you might have: Why is the population of the world ageing? What are the potential problems of an ageing population? What are the possible solutions? How feasible are these solutions? And, what other impacts might these solutions have?

It is very important that you directly answer the question in an academic essay. In this video, Jonathan shows you how to analyse an essay question and understand what you need to write about using the following example essay question:

“The population of the world is ageing. Discuss potential problems arising from this situation, and suggest and evaluate possible solutions.”

Think about the topic of the essay and what the question is asking you to do. Can you think of any other questions not listed in the video, that would help you to establish what you already know and what you need to find out about the topic? Share your thoughts in the comment area below.

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An Intermediate Guide to Writing in English for University Study
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An Intermediate Guide to Writing in English for University Study

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