Resource

Essay Plan

Author: ATU Galway

What is it?

The skeleton of an essay including arguments, main points, and conclusions. Students demonstrate their preparation, planning and reading on the topic instead of having to write a full essay.

Advantages & Challenges

Advantages

Challenges

Advantages

Essay plans can help assess much of what an essay could without the detail and extended timeframe.
It could be written in a list format or include another format such as a spider diagram or concept map.
Helps students to structure essays and identify what are the key elements needed for a strong essay.
As it is not as time consuming as an essay students could plan for multiple essays covering a range of topics which in turn can cover more of the module content.

Challenges

Tips for Use

Provide students with guidance on how to structure their essay plan effectively.
Essay plan can be used as a formative assessment tool to provide feedback to students before they begin writing the full essay. Review students’ essay plans to assess the coherence of their arguments, relevance of their evidence, and clarity of their structure.
Clearly communicate the criteria by which the essay plan will be evaluated, such as clarity of argument, depth of analysis, and links to academic literature.
Use grading rubrics to assess students’ essay plans.

Resources

University College Cork (UCC): pdf (ucc.ie)
University College Dublin (UCD): Microsoft Word – Creating an Essay Plan handout.docx (ucd.ie)
University of Warwick: Essay plans (warwick.ac.uk)
University of Sheffield: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/301/study-skills/writing/academic-writing/planning-structure

Resource for students:

The University of Newcastle Australia: php (newcastle.edu.au)

Sample Rubrics

Opened.ca: Essay Outline Grading Rubric – opened

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