13 topics
Literature essay feedback, against your actual rubric
The most useful moment to get help on an essay is after you have a draft and before you submit it — and it is the moment students almost never get help, because handing a teacher a draft two days early is not usually an option. A draft that has been read against the rubric it will be marked with is a different document from one that has not.
Where students get stuck
I got a lower mark than I expected and I don't know why
Nearly always one rubric category dragging the rest down, and it is rarely the one you would guess. Essays that read fluently often score poorly on 'use of evidence' because the quotes are illustrative rather than analysed. Essays with strong evidence often lose on 'structure' because the paragraph order does not build. Finding out which category is the problem is more useful than general advice about writing better.
My analysis is 'not deep enough'
Depth usually means moving from what a device is to what it does to the reader and why the author would want that. Naming a metaphor is identification. Explaining that the metaphor makes the character's grief sound like a physical injury, and that this prepares the reader to accept their later collapse, is analysis. The test is whether your sentence could apply to any other text — if it could, it is not yet analysis.
I keep summarising the plot without meaning to
Check the verbs in your body paragraphs. If they mostly describe what characters do, you are summarising. If they describe what the text does — suggests, undercuts, invites, withholds — you are analysing. Your marker already knows the plot, so any sentence that only tells them what happened is a sentence spent on nothing.
My essay is over the word count and I can't cut it
Cut the introduction and conclusion first. Most student essays open with two or three sentences of throat-clearing about the human condition and close by restating the body paragraphs. Both can usually go entirely, which frees a couple of hundred words for the analysis that is actually being marked.
What's covered
Literature Essays topics you can work through with a tutor, generate practice on, or turn into flashcards and a study plan.
Before you write
- Unpacking the essay question
- Building an arguable thesis
- Selecting evidence and building a quote bank
- Planning paragraph order as an argument
Drafting
- Topic sentences that make claims
- Embedding quotations grammatically
- Analysing language rather than restating it
- Handling counterargument
- Linking paragraphs so the argument builds
Feedback and revision
- Marking a draft against a rubric criterion by criterion
- Identifying which category is costing you marks
- Cutting to a word count without losing analysis
- Proofreading for grammar and citation accuracy
Literature Essays questions
How does grading against my own rubric work?
You upload the rubric your teacher gave you along with your draft. It marks against those criteria specifically and tells you which ones your draft has the least evidence for, plus what to change. It is feedback on your writing, not a rewrite of it.
Is using this on a draft cheating?
Getting feedback on your own writing is what a writing centre or a teacher's office hours does, and it is normal. Submitting text you did not write is not, and it will not write your essay for you. If you are unsure where your school draws the line, check its academic integrity policy — those vary and yours is the one that counts.
Can it help with an essay on a text it doesn't know well?
Structure, thesis strength, and use of evidence can all be assessed from your draft itself, since those live in your writing rather than in the text. For close analysis of a specific passage, paste or share the passage and it will work from that rather than from recall.
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