Relevant evidence
The quality of evidence you have in your essay depends on how well you’ve managed your reading and note-taking.
The way you present the evidence depends on the quality of your plan.
You may be tempted to include material that isn't relevant because it’s interesting but your evidence has to work hard for you and earn its place in your essay.
In your plan, you will have key themes and under each theme, points you want to make. Use your plan to select evidence from your notes. Fit your evidence to the plan you’ve spent so long making.
Prioritise your evidence by making a list and cross-reference it with your plan. What can’t be left out? What does it support? What would you like to put in but might not make it?
Activity
Take a look at the example essay plans below. Can you see the development of ideas? Can you spot how evidence is being used to support the argument.
Second year student: Molecular Cell Biology essay outline:
What are peroxisomes? What do they do? And, how are proteins targeted to them? [pdf 65KB]
Example plan
Is globalisation a new phenomenon? [pdf 22kb]
(originally produced by Sherry Ferdman, Academic Skills Handout 5 (2005), University of Sussex)
The text resources (excluding the example student essays) on this page have been adapted from original work by Moira Wilson, copyright 2009.
