Students will have practised writing essays throughout their time at school. Despite this, many find it difficult to write under pressure, particularly when it comes to examinations. Writing an essay is the final but crucial stage that follows all the hard work, study and preparation that students will have undertaken in the run-up to the examination.

In this unit, students are shown how to get vital information from past papers, how to read questions carefully, and how to recognise what the key concepts and ideas are in a question.

An important part of writing any essay is to understand the key instruction terms that tell you what is expected from essays - for example, 'discuss', 'illustrate', 'contrast'. These are all words that dictate how the question should be answered. All the main terms are presented here in a list with their definitions. Students can print these out to keep.

There are also instructions and opportunities to do activities that practise planning an essay, give tips on how to work effectively under pressure, and give advice on checking and editing.