ABSTRACT
It is not enough just to tell students the principles of essay writing: they need to see how these principles work in practice and to be involved in deciding for themselves what makes a good essay. Students who know how to write a competent descriptive essay can have difficulty coping with a discussion essay: they can fail to recognise that they must cover both sides of the question, back up their points with facts and discussion and weigh up the evidence in some kind of conclusion. This chapter presents an exercise that takes them step by step through the necessary process. Writing essays often seems to students to be an odd thing to do. The audience usually consists of a single tutor who knows more than the students about the essay topic. Students can find it difficult to decide how to explain something to someone who already understands what it is they are struggling to explain.
