Writing a 6,000 - 8,000 Word Essay

This is the first time that most of you will have to write an essay of this length, and at the
moment this may seem a daunting task; however this is an opportunity for you to research,
engage with and discuss a topic in depth. These essays can be extremely enjoyable. They
give you the chance to include more of your thoughts and ideas and explore the topic in
greater detail. Here are some suggestions to help you write an essay of this length, and the
blue sections are an example to help highlight the points:

1. Start early! Get organised and start thinking about the topic of your essay as soon as
you start the course. You will need to read more sources than for shorter essays, which
takes more time, and there is always competition for these, so get in early! You need to
acquaint yourself with all the resources available. The VLE is a good starting point. It is
impossible to say how many books/articles/sources you should read, because this depends
on the essay. You should read until your thoughts take shape and an argument starts to
become clear, then plan your essay and the plan should help you see what further reading is
needed.

2. Select an appropriate question. You must be interested in the topic, or you will not get
the most out of this exercise. If your tutor allows you to write your own question you MUST
speak to her/him before you start. The question itself must have the potential to become a 6-
8,000 word essay. It mustn’t be too ‘big’ i.e. too much to cover in the word length, or too
‘small’, i.e. there isn’t enough to say to write an essay that long. You must avoid choosing a
topic or subject area that has insufficient scholarship available in English.

3. Read academic articles as examples. You should use JSTOR to access and read
academic articles for several reasons. You will expand your knowledge of the topic, but you
can also use them as a guide for producing longer essays. They are often around 8,000
words, a similar length to your essays. A good article situates itself within the academic
argument early on and will often provide you with a summary of the existing scholarship. You
can analyse its structure and organisation and look at the way the author has made an
argument. You can also use the footnotes bibliography to find further sources.

4. Spend time finding relevant articles/books/chapters/sources. You really need to find

relevant sources – quality is more important than quantity. This does, however, take time.
Good sources, as mentioned above, are the bibliographies of recent, relevant articles and
books. You can read the abstracts for articles, or the introductions and conclusions where
there is no abstract, and you can read reviews of books via JSTOR. These will help you see
if the piece is relevant to you. It is sometimes enough to read the introduction, conclusions
and carefully selected chapter/s of books, not the whole book. You should use the index.

5. Use your tutor! This sounds obvious, but many students don’t do this. At the start he/she
can help with how to approach the question, enabling you see where you can contribute to
scholarly debate. He/she will certainly be able to help you choose the right ‘size’ question.
She/he may be able to suggest resources; there may be primary sources that he/she can
point you to that will substantially improve your answer, and she/he may be able to give you
a list of relevant scholars/publications to read. It is a good idea to draw up a plan after you
have done some of your reading, and you should show this to/email this to your tutor for
comments. This will save you a lot of time in the long run.

It is also important that you do all the formative work your tutor sets you. Your course is
designed to help you develop the knowledge and skills you will need, and the feedback from
this will be valuable. If a tutor offers to read a draft of your essay, take them up on it. This is
a fantastic opportunity to develop ideas, correct mistakes or fill gaps before you hand in the
final version. You should find out when the tutor’s office hour is and go to see them.

6. Plan your essay carefully. You must structure these sorts of essays with care. There
isn’t a ‘standard’ way to do this, or a standard number of points the assessor is looking for –
but good pieces of work are organised around the argument you are making, and they flow
when they are read. It needs to work as a single whole, working towards solving a historical
problem. A clear plan before you start should help with the organisation and flow of the
essay and the eventual essay making a coherent argument.

EXAMPLE QUESTION:

Below is the plan and are some extracts from a 6,000 word essay that gained a first class
grade. Don’t worry if you don’t understand the terms used by the student – this is just a
guide to how this student approached this question. You will see that this student used a
combination of primary and secondary sources, and you should discuss with your tutor if you
could do this.

How were children’s perceptions of Empire formed in Britain in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

EXAMPLE PLAN:

Introduction (see point 7 below)

Context paragraph: Explain: attitudes to empire and race (social Darwinism) at this
time; relevant attitudes to childhood – the invention of adolescence and growth of
media for children.

Part 1 – Message of Empire in school text books. Character formation seen as an

important part of history lessons. Say this section will concentrate on representation of
Indian Mutiny. Primary Source - Samuel R Gardiner’s treatment of the Indian Mutiny
in A Student’s History of England from the Earliest Times to 1885, published in 1898.
How Havelock is described, how Indians are described/vilified. Extracts.

What these text book stress, what they play down, suggested reasons why they
present empire as they do (scholarship - Kathryn Castle) – how these depict historical
events in the empire as facts, so building children’s knowledge/attitudes to events

Part 2 – Photography used in schools. 1902 The Colonial Office Visual Instruction
Committee (COVIC) – development of Lanternslides in schools. James Ryan’s
analysis of these – what they depict and why. The Queen’s Empire magazine and
pictures in it. Why were children drawn to these images? What they lead children to
 believe about colonial spaces and people. Again – presented as fact/photos don’t lie.
Inter-action with imagination.

Part 3 – Novels, comics and leisure time. Boys Own Paper – typical contents –
Patrick Dunae’s argument about appeal to boys’ interests. Joseph Bristow’s analysis of
these comics - heroes and villains - the power of comics – argument about more time
for leisure/relaxation and using the imagination. My close analysis of novel – Primary
Source - The Coral Island depiction of native populations and superiority of Europeans
– extracts. Depictions of cannibalism, overt racism. (use Stuart Hannabuss)

Joan Rockwell said fiction produces a society – my thoughts the society produces the
fiction, it is reflected in it. Again – inter-action with imagination – perception of empire
entering through children’s imaginations.

Conclusions – Overtly racist views found in textbooks, images and leisure reading – I
think this repetition/constancy of message is what gives it power.

6. Your introduction should introduce the topic and then point the way that you are
going to go to answer the question/solve the problem. You can include what you are going to
conclude in the essay – telling the reader what your argument will be. The introduction
provides a ‘road map’ to your answer and then the essay should ‘lead’ the reader there. The
introduction can also introduce existing historiography – who has said what on this topic and
what sources have they used? What is the/are the key historical debate/s?

Some students find it helpful to read their essay out loud to themselves, imagining they are
reading it to an audience. This can help you see if the piece flows or not.

EXAMPLE INTRODUCTION –

British children were socialised in the late-Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries to

believe their country’s involvement in Empire was a ‘civilising’ mission and that their
race’s superiority qualified them to undertake this mission. This essay will discuss how
these beliefs were inculcated into children. I am particularly interested in looking at the
formation of attitudes to subject populations, the ideas around native populations as
‘the other’, as well as how images of the self were shaped. I wish to examine how
ideas around national and racial superiority were transmitted to children justifying
British activities in the colonies. There has been some scholarship in this area: Kathryn
Castle has examined school text books, James Ryan has analysed images used in
school Lantern Slide presentations, Joseph Bristow has looked at popular comics and
Jeffrey Richards at popular novels.1 It is my belief it is the inter-action of these that was
powerful. It is my view that the messages children received in schools were reinforced
by those received in their leisure time, for example in the books and comics they read
for pleasure. Kathryn Castle said this cross over was common, and the boundaries

1
Kathryn Castle, Britannia’s Children (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); James Ryan,
Picturing Empire. (London: Reaktion Books, 1997); Joseph Bristow, Empire Boys. Adventures in a Man’s
World. (London: Harper Collins Academic, 1991); Jeffery Richards, ‘With Henty to Africa.’ Imperialism and
Juvenile Literature. ed. Jeffrey Richards. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989) 72-107.
 between instruction and entertainment were blurred. She says ‘both worked together
to fashion an empire for the young.’2

Due to space limitations, I intend to look only at written and photographic material
produced for boys, but we must bear in mind there were many other agents of
socialisation, for example the popular youth movements of the time, and messages
aimed also at girls as potential wives or nurses in the colonies. This essay will look
first at changing attitudes to empire, and race, in the period to give context to the
messages aimed at children. It will then discuss how Empire was represented in
schools, particularly in textbooks and slide shows, and in leisure time reading,
examining both novels and comic books, using The Coral Island, an adventure story
published in 1858 as an example. The essay will show how these worked together to
convey the notion of a natural racial hierarchy that labelled native populations as
inferior, both physically and morally, and built a British identity based on physical,
cultural and spiritual superiority. This superiority provided a justification for the
subjugation of native populations.

7. You can use sub-headings. You can either write your essay as a whole, single piece, or
sub-divide it into sections/chapters with headings. Most students find this easier to manage,
and most topics lend themselves well to this. Make sure though that you don’t end up writing
two or three short essays. This is not two or three shorter essays put together! What you
should be doing is making more in-depth comments with more analysis of the points you do
make, to allow for more considered opinion, and these should knit together to result in your
conclusions.

8. Your answer should be analytical. Longer essays allow for more analysis, and it is the
depth of analysis that makes the good essays stand out. Analysing something means you
can visualise what the problem is, explain it and then suggest a solution. This means you
need to be engaged with the source/s or the body of scholarship, and ask: What does this
mean for the historian trying to solve this historical problem? How does this source help
answer this question? What are the weaknesses in this argument? You need to be critical
about sources you use, asking why does this author think what they do? Why would he/she
say that?

FOR EXAMPLE:

This extract demonstrates analysis. It comes from Part 3, the discussion of Coral Island. You
will see that the student has used extracts from the book and then discussed the messages
they contained and how they could influence readers’ attitudes:

2
Castle, 6
 Kathryn Castle tells us that contemporary studies of racism in children’s books
suggests the inclusion of stereotypical images does affect the idea formation of
children at a vulnerable stage.3 I will look closely at the representation of native people
in The Coral Island because I think Western attitudes to the ‘uncivilised’ and the ‘other’
come from sources like these. The ‘savages’ are what Richards calls ‘identikit
villains’.4 Two groups of native people land on the island and there is a fierce fight
between them:

‘The battle that immediately ensued was frightful to behold. Most of the men wielded
clubs of enormous size and curious shapes, with which they dashed out each other’s
brains. As they were almost entirely naked, they had to bound, stoop, leap and run, in
their terrible hand-to-hand encounters, they looked more like demons than human
5
beings.’

After the battle, one group starts to set fire to the bodies and then:

‘the monsters cut slices from is body, and, after roasting them slightly over the fire,
6
devoured them.’

There are several incidents of cannibalism witnessed, and the reader is left in no doubt
that people who inhabit the South Seas, and have not been converted by Christian
missionaries, do not hesitate to eat their enemies.7 It is easy to imagine how shocking
this would be to a Victorian reader. It embodies all that was seen as ungodly and
uncivilised. The boys bravely intervene to stop the murder of a young native girl, and
she is described as paler skinned and more modest and gentle looking.8 Later in the
book, when the boys escape the island, they help her escape to be with her lover, a
Christian. Her lighter skin, and so less native appearance, is relevant, in my opinion. I
think it makes it more important to save her it sets her apart from the other natives.
The boys learn they can only trust the natives who have converted to Christianity. The
missionary they meet on the island of Mango is willing to risk his life for them to
escape, and at the end they are all only saved because the Chief himself has
converted. The boys earlier in the book had saved him, but he does not repay them
automatically, and we are left with the impression that, because he is not yet Christian,
he has no sense of gratitude or fair play.9

Most importantly you should think what do I think? You must avoid being descriptive or
simply re-iterating what the scholar/s has/have said. Remember – the topics we cover are
complex, there are numerous ways to debate them, and your answer needs to show that you
are aware of the complexities of the issue/s you have discussed, and you have thought them

3
Castle, 4
4
Richards, 58
5
The Coral Island, 173
6
The Coral Island , 175
7
See particularly The Coral Island pages 227, 235-6 and 304
8
‘One of the women was much younger than her companions, and we were struck with the modesty of her
demeanour and the gentle expression of her face, which, although she had the flattish nose and thick lips of the
others, was of a light brown colour, and we conjectured that she must be of a different race.’
9
The Coral Island, 330-336
through to present your argument. Apart from sharp analysis, original thinking is valued most
highly. It will gain higher grades than a re-hash of old debates.

SOME EXAMPLES:

In part 3 the student discusses why fiction may be as powerful as school text books in
formulating children’s attitudes. She writes:

Richards says, of novels of this period ‘It is almost as if the Empire were a games field,
and the British heroes were athletes on it.’10 I think this is certainly an accurate view
of The Coral Island, and Ballantyne’s novel can be seen as a social document, as
historical evidence of the widely held views of that time. These were being
disseminated through adventure tales aimed at boys and young men, and they
confirmed what was being learnt in school textbooks and seen in the photographs
seen… I think that when you combine real life heroes, in real life settings, with chunks
of history (presented as fact, even though the history books he and his secretary used
most likely had a strong bias!) you present a fiction as if it is true, and you embed your
heroes in a reality that makes it difficult for children to critique.

In the conclusions she argues:

…It is my view that little changed in terms of attitudes to racial superiority and fictional
representations of ‘the other’. It wasn’t until Lena Jeger criticised Enid Blyton in The
Guardian in 1966 that people questioned the representation of black people in
children’s fiction. Sheila Ray, in defence of Blyton and Katherine Tozer (author of the
Mumfie books which represented gollywogs as subservient and lazy) said that they
were writing for a different kind of society to the one we have now. She is saying that
these views were widespread and perpetuated by children’s literature up until the
1960s and 1970s.11 Ray’s conclusion serves to show us how deeply embedded these
racist attitudes had become, and they persisted well into the twentieth century.

9. Your conclusions go further than the research you have presented. It should show your
opinion, pointing out the weaknesses in other arguments or perhaps suggesting areas for
further research.

‘There are many children’s books and comics that have not been analysed, and many
other forms of media children were exposed to, such as advertising….

What I think is most powerful, however, is how the media both in and out of school
projected similar messages, for example racial superiority, and so reinforced each
other.’

10
Richards, 60
11
Sheila G. Ray, The Blyton Phenomenon. The Controversy Surrounding the World’s Most Successful
Children’s Writer (London: Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1982), 68-69
10. When you have finished spellcheck your work and style-edit it. The PALS can lend
you support with this, as can the Centre for Academic Writing. You can ask your personal
tutor about the help available to you. Poor language and spelling spoil essays of any length
because they detract from the clarity and quality of your argument. Please also follow the
departmental guidelines for citations; these can be found on the VLE.

11. You need to remember to focus on the question. It sounds obvious – but doesn’t
always happen! When you have finished read it through asking yourself: Has this answered
the question? It is easy with longer essays to lose sight of the question. Also, read the
grading criteria (on the VLE).

A note on word count: You are allowed to go 5% over or under the prescribed length. Word
count includes the footnotes but not the bibliography.