#### [[BHS Writing Essays]] --- ## Structuring essays: ReCOVer System ### Recall After applying the BHS, we should have a deep and heavily connected knowledge of the topic itself. In this step, we will recall all the relevant points with respect to our essay question stem. You can express this as a mindmap with the stem in the middle and relevant points branching from the centre. During exams, you should spend up to 10 minutes on this step. **Struggling with this step indicates a superficial or rote-learned material, rather than highly connected material learned through the BHS.** ### Chunk Once we have all of our relevant points down, go through the list and remove any points that are of weak significance with regards to the question stem. Once obviously low-yield points have been removed, identify chunks by grouping together the points that relate to the same underlying theme or reason for importance. This should be relatively easy if you have learned the material using the BHS, to begin with. You may have already created chunks in the first step, if this is the case, look for more chunks. While we are used to looking for 4 or more branches in learning, when it comes to essay writing, we want to aim for 3 points or less to make sure our essays are concise. In the exam, spend up to 5 minutes at this step. **If you struggle with this step, you have almost certainly learned the material too superficially with a strong chance of inadequate chunking or relationship-focused learning earlier on.** ### Order Arrange your biggest chunks and major sub-chunks (if any) into an order of main ideas. This is the order in which you will write your essay, starting with an introduction that cleanly covers the main ideas and how you will flow between them, leading subsequently from one important chunk to the next, unravelling each chunk as you go with the supporting evidence and statements within each chunk and every paragraph (or multiple paragraphs per chunk if your essay is long). **Try to order the chunks logically so that more basic understanding is presented earlier in the essay.** As you can see from the table below, the total number of points to be discussed in an essay becomes overwhelmingly large later in academic life. However, this basic structure of essay writing is effective even for the highest level. Level Chunks Sub-Chunks Points Per Chunk Total Discussion Points Essay Length High school 3 to 5 0 or 1 2 to 4 12 to 20 Approx. 2000 words Early university 5 to 7 1 or 2 3 to 5 20 to 40 Approx. 3000 words Late university 5 to 7 1 to 3 4 to 7 40 to 70 Approx. 10,000 words Academic publication or thesis 5 to 10 2 to 4 5 to 10 50 to 100 Approx. 30,000 to 100,000 words The trick to doing this step correctly is if you can look at your order of chunks and sub-chunks and feel that your points are being delivered very logically with the key understanding being met in the best possible sequence. If you feel like the organisation of chunks is messy, it is highly unlikely that your essay will sound good. Furthermore, you are likely to waste significant time during the writing process from trying to figure out how to structure your points and references mid-sentence. It’s like seeing a blue-print for a building that looks really messy, but still expecting it to be easy to actually construct the building. If even the plan looks bad, it’s unlikely that the execution will be better. If it is, then it would certainly be slower and less accurate. Once you have a good overall structure, you can proceed to the next step. In an exam, spend up to 5 minutes at this step. **If you struggle at this step, you may have inadequate chunking, potentially due to inadequate chunking during the initial learning of the material, or potentially due to inadequate chunking in the previous step. Alternatively, if the chunking is adequate (for essays, remember this is usually when each chunk has no more than _3 points_), you may simply require more practise of this process.** ### Verbalise The final step is to take your order of chunks, sub-chunks and points and string them into statements and sentences. Depending on your technical writing skill and mastery of the language, this may be the easiest step since you already know what you want to say and how all the supporting statements and evidence fit into the bigger points (chunks). If you have many points, you may want to create **bullet-points** first in the same order, and then turn the bullet-points into sentences. You will be unlikely to have time to do this in an exam, but exam essays tend to be much shorter with fewer points, so it is also less likely that you will need this extra step. --- Tags: Reference: Related: [[Icanstudy]]