| 1: Select a title from the IB list. | 4. Organize your ideas and plan argument. |
| 2. Read the instructions and the marking criteria. | 5. Write the essay. |
| 3. Gather your ideas. | 6. Hand it in. |
WRITE THE ESSAY.
By now you have done extensive thinking and planning – but you still have no essay! The actual writing, though, is only a small part of a good essay. If you have prepared well it should be straightforward. Keep the following points in mind as you write and revise your draft:
• You should keep your thesis in front of you at all times to keep your mind focused on the central argument you must sustain. Write it on a large piece of paper and tape it to the wall above your desk or above the computer screen.
• The marking criteria favour a concise introduction, one which establishes your topic and sets out your thesis, but does not go on and on and on at huge length. Know where you want to go and don’t use up hundreds of words just getting started. The introduction should do three things: catch the reader's attention (though this stylistic point is less essential than the next two), establish your topic, and take the stand on your topic with a clear thesis.
• Try to develop ideas in proportion to their importance in your overall plan. Your essay must be between 1200 and 1600 words in length, so control the degree to which you expand on an idea as you go. Doing so is not easy, but it is easier than trying to readjust a whole essay at the end.
• You are expected to clarify concepts as you go, defining terms if necessary.
• Do not, however, pad out your essay with definitions of terms which are not particularly ambiguous.
• Do not drop into your essay lumps of definition which are not clearly linked your argument and are ignored thereafter.
• Do not, above all, use a dictionary definition to bypass complexities: no teacher or examiner will be impressed if, after a course in which you discuss possible understandings of “truth” or “knowledge,” you “solve” this problem of knowledge by plunking down a citation from the dictionary as if you have thereby settled the matter!
• Select your examples from a wide variety of sources and cultures. Make sure, moreover, that they really do illustrate the points you are making. A reference to the Copernican Revolution and Galileo, for example, might illustrate a change in beliefs, but it does not demonstrate an understanding of revolutions in thinking within contemporary science. Be warned that Galileo is a worn-out example. Is there no other example you might find in science of the past 400 years?
• Similarly, don’t use Inuit words for snow as your example to illustrate anything about language – unless you speak the language yourself. Almost every IB student in the world uses this example, usually badly. With all the languages spoken in the world, and all the variety of vocabulary, expressions and structures, can’t you come up with something else?
• Do not throw in decorative quotations -- wise words that someone else has uttered -- thinking that you have thereby provided proof for a point you are making. You haven't. A quotation that is a well worded summary of an idea can be a pleasant stylistic embellishment, but one person's opinion remains no more than that. If you are going to use fine-sounding quotations at all, make sure that you are aware that they are no more than a stylistic device, to illustrate a point, perhaps, but not to "prove" it. If the author of the quotation is relevant to your argument, or if the content of the quotation is something you are debating, then the quotation becomes more functional and there is more purpose in including it. (When I refer to quotations here, I'm really talking about the kind that simply expresses an idea nicely. I expect you to quote directly from your science textbook or the newspaper if those sources are relevant, and I expect you to foonote appropriately.)
• You are welcome to use “I” in a ToK essay. If you are speaking about your own experiences or beliefs you probably will want to do so.
• Check your facts. Are your assertions accurate? Acknowledge the source of any quotation or unusual pieces of information, using accepted conventions of footnotes and bibliography. (If in doubt, it is better to footnote too much than too little.)
• Make sure that your conclusion is coherent with the arguments you made. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer to a prescribed title: your essay will be evaluated upon its awareness of problems of knowledge and the quality of your analytical thought. (See the marking criteria.) An effective conclusion must return to the thesis as the central idea which has been explored throughout.
• Polish the essay as you finish writing. Check for mistakes in sentence structure, grammar, word choice and spelling. Errors can interfere with the clarity of your communication.
• Finally, go back over your essay with the general directions and marking criteria in your hand, re-reading them, to make any last improvements.
USING PERSONAL EXAMPLES IN YOUR ESSAY
STEP SIX: HAND IT IN