Summary of the lesson on structure

The seminar with sixth form students highlighted the difference between essays in a pre-university environment and essays in a university environment. While it can be unnerving to get away from a formulaic approach to essay writing, it opens up a whole world of freedom of thoughts and ideas, based on your own opinions, your own arguments, your own flow of thought.

Higher education is all about developing your own learning and your own arguments, and having the freedom to explore subjects in a way that interests you as an individual. To do this effectively though, your writing must be good. Your sentences and paragraphs need to have good structure and you need to provide sound evidence to support your ideas. To have freedom in the structure of your argument you need to be very self-critical about the details of your writing.