Active essay writing: ten steps to success!

What is the idea? This chapter presents one approach to using the Active Essay Writing Programme (Taylor et al., 2019); an innovative approach we devised at the University of Sussex to support students in planning, preparing, and presenting original, insightful, and well-presented essays. Why this idea? From our experience, most students arrive at university with little-to-no understanding of how to approach essay assignments. If left unchecked, this can lead to them feeling overwhelmed and, in-turn, submitting incoherent and uninspired essays that do not accurately reflect their true potential. The Active Essay Writing Programme was designed to address these issues and make the task of completing essays more manageable and enjoyable for students. How could others implement this idea? To guide your students through this ten-step programme, you will need to create an example essay question that you can collaboratively answer with them. This will provide them with the opportunity to develop and subsequently apply the acquired skills to their own essay assignments.