Before you write an essay it is important to fully analyse the prompt in order to understand exactly how you need to answer it. This may be the most important step in the writing process because if you do not do the assignment that your professor gives you, you will not pass.

Picking the essay prompt to bits

Read the title carefully, several times.
Underline the key words and phrases.
Break the title down into its elements, making sure you don’t miss any out.
Identify all the instruction words and define them.

Instruction words

Most essay titles contain a key instruction word such as ‘Explain’, ‘Discuss’ or ‘Analyse’. These have specific meanings in the context of an academic essay and you can download our key words glossary for a comprehensive list to help you.

Critical or not critical?

Sometimes essay prompts will say 'critically analyse' or 'critically evaluate' and other times just 'analyse' or 'evaluate'. Don't be confused by this - you should always be writing critically at university. Help on writing critically can be found on our Being Critical pages.

Topic v focus

As well as this instruction word, essays titles will usually also contain a topic and a focus.

The topic is the big picture: the broad area that you are going to write about.
The focus is the specific aspect (or aspects) that you must concentrate on.

You are never going to get a question that says 'write everything you know about x'. You need to make sure you focus on the particular aspects of x required by the question.

The table below shows examples of essay titles in some different academic areas. It pulls out the general topic, specific focus and instruction for each one.

Question	Topic	Focus	Instruction
"Discuss the causes of happiness in [essay] by [author]"	The article	The causes of happiness	Discuss
"How important is symbolism in John Steinbeck's 'The Pearl'?"	"The Pearl"	the value of symbolism	Analyse
"Compare different cultural ideas about happiness from the research"	The research (article)	similarities and differences types	Compare and Contrast*
"What are the strengths and weaknesses in an author's argument?"	The article/ author	make an evaluative judgement	Examine and analyse
"Do you agree or disagree with a claim or quote?"	a primary source	agree or disagree with that source	Make an argument

* Note that the instruction word is sometimes not explicit in the title itself but is just implied.

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