English 30-1 · Critical essay
Assignment II: the critical essay
You choose the text, the exam supplies the idea, and you argue a claim about one using the other. It is 30% of the diploma — the biggest single piece — and almost all of the preparation happens before exam day.
- 1. The task and the marks
- 2. Choosing your text before the exam
- 3. Building a thesis
- 4. Evidence and analysis
- 5. Structure and conventions
The task and the marks
The idea: five scoring categories, each rewarding something different. Knowing which is which tells you where to spend your time.
| Category | Worth | Rewards |
|---|---|---|
| Thought and Understanding | 7.5% | How well you understand the text and the idea, and how perceptive your argument is |
| Supporting Evidence | 7.5% | Specific, well-chosen detail from the text, used to prove the claim |
| Form and Structure | 5.0% | Organization that develops the argument rather than listing events |
| Matters of Choice | 5.0% | Word choice, sentence variety, precision — how you say it |
| Matters of Correctness | 5.0% | Grammar, punctuation, spelling |
Thought and Supporting Evidence together are half the assignment, which is the answer to whether it is better to write more or to think harder. The suggested length is 800–1600 words.
Choosing your text before the exam
The idea: you cannot prepare an essay, but you can prepare a text so thoroughly that any prompt can be answered from it.
- Know two texts properly rather than five vaguely — one novel or play, plus a shorter text as a backup.
- Choose a text with weight: one where characters make consequential choices, so it can meet a prompt about motivation, sacrifice, identity or conflict.
- Memorize a handful of short quotations — six to eight lines that cover the turning points. Short is better; a phrase you can embed beats a sentence you half-remember.
- Prepare the architecture, not an essay: the central conflict, the turning point, how each main character changes, and two or three images or motifs that run through it.
- Practise bending it. Take past prompts and ask how your text answers each one. If it cannot, that is worth finding out now.
Building a thesis
The idea: a thesis makes a claim someone could disagree with, and hints at how you will argue it. Announcing a topic is not a thesis.
| Not a thesis | Why |
|---|---|
| This essay will discuss ambition in Macbeth. | Announces a topic and commits to nothing |
| Macbeth is a play about ambition and murder. | True, and unarguable |
| Ambition is an important theme in literature. | Not about a text at all |
A thesis: Macbeth's ambition destroys him not because it is strong but because he pursues it alone, cutting off every relationship that might have checked him.
Building one from a prompt in three steps
- Turn the prompt into a question about your text: what does this text show about the cost of ambition?
- Answer it in one sentence, as specifically as you can.
- Add the because — the reason — which becomes the spine your paragraphs follow.
Evidence and analysis
The idea: a quotation proves nothing on its own. The sentence after it is where the marks are.
- Introduce the moment briefly, so the quotation makes sense.
- Quote — short, woven into your own sentence rather than dropped in as its own block.
- Analyze: explain how those particular words support your claim.
- Connect back to the controlling idea before moving on.
The difference in practice
Description: Macbeth decides to kill Duncan after he talks to his wife, and then he does it and feels guilty.
Analysis: Macbeth's admission that he has no spur but ambition concedes that nothing outside himself is driving him, so the murder becomes a choice rather than a fate — which is why the guilt that follows cannot be shifted onto anyone else.
The first tells the marker what happens. The second tells them what it means, and uses the text to prove it.
Watch out: plot summary is the single most common way this assignment loses marks. If a paragraph could be written by someone who had only read a synopsis, it is not analysis.
Structure and conventions
The idea: the shape should follow the argument, not a template. Three body paragraphs is a habit, not a rule.
- Introduction: name the text and author, frame the idea, and state the thesis. No long preamble about literature in general.
- Body paragraphs: each opens with a claim — not an event — that advances the thesis. Reading only your topic sentences should reveal the argument.
- Order by argument, not by chapter. If the essay marches through the plot, it is a summary in disguise.
- Conclusion: land the idea somewhere — what the pattern you traced suggests beyond this text. Do not restate the introduction.
| Convention | Do this |
|---|---|
| Tense | Literary present: Macbeth hesitates, not hesitated |
| Titles | Novels and plays in italics; short stories and poems in quotation marks |
| Author | Full name at first mention, surname after |
| Quotations | Embedded in your sentence, punctuated as part of it |
| Register | Formal, but not inflated — precision beats vocabulary |
Leave five minutes to proofread. Matters of Correctness is 5% on its own, and tense slips and missing quotation marks are the cheapest marks on the exam to give away.