Shikhar S: Writing a Super Powerful Level 7 English Essay for Paper 1
Arthur Zargaryan
Firstly, whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever subjects you’re taking, and whatever your favorite food might be, I want to let you know that you’re awesome.
You’re awesome because you’re brave enough to be doing the hardest possible high school curriculum offered in the world. You’re awesome because whilst you read this sentence you could have been getting arrested, you could have been snorting cocaine, and you could have been running away from your misery by sleeping. That last one is pretty common amongst us IB Victims.
Instead, you chose to give me a chance to help you improve your English essay writing skills. The technique that I’m about to outline was shown to me by my High School English teacher (she is also awesome). It helped my peers and me a lot and I hope that it’ll help you as well, even if it’s just a little bit.
The P.E.A.L Method
I’m going to keep things short and simple because I know you’re super busy. So, wtf is PEAL?
P = Point
E = Evidence
A = Analysis
L = Link
It’s really simple and straightforward. Essentially, what we’re trying to do here is to break down a seemingly complex and wordy text into a manner that we can best understand it and then effectively communicate it in our essay. Let me give you an example:
Imagine that you want to analyze the following paragraph:
‘In LA, you can’t do anything unless you drive. Now I can’t do anything unless I drink. And the drink-drive combination, it really isn’t possible out there.
If you so much as loosen your seatbelt or drop you ashes or pick your nose, then it's an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later. Any indiscipline, you feel, any variation, and there’s a bullhorn, a set of scope sights, and a coptered pig drawing a bead on your rug.
So what can a poor boy do? You come out of the hotel, the Vraimont. Over boiling Watts the downtown sky line carries a smear of God’s green snot. You walk left, you walk right, you are a bank rat on a busy river. This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this one serves no heterosexuals. You can get your chimp shampooed, you can get your dick tattooed, twenty-four hours, but can you get lunch?’
-Excerpt from Money by Martin Amis
So doesn’t really matter where this come from: in fact it’ll be better if we don’t know context here as you’ll truly be able to see this technique put into good use. So let’s start.
(1) The Point that I want to make here is that Amis (the author) utilizes hyperbole to effectively mirror the personality of the narrator (a man with a big ego called John Money) with the way the text is written.
(2) The Evidence that I’m going to use is:
‘If you so much as loosen your seatbelt or drop you ashes or pick your nose, then it's an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later.’ to describe the danger of driving in LA
and
‘This restaurant serves no drink, this one serves no meat, this one serves no heterosexuals.’ to describe the varied and distinct tastes of the city.
(3) My Analysis is the following (in super rough terms, don’t worry we’re going to clean this all up when we put it all together):
Amis hints to his character’s grandiose and outspoken personality by making him mention that seemingly small, inconsequential actions (picking one’s nose, dropping a cig) can lead to huge car accidents, outlined in a humorous, entertaining way (Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later).
This use of hyperbole can also be seen when referring to LA’s normally distinct and niche restaurants: Amis juxtaposes in a comical fashion the pickiness of these restaurants (this one serves no....etc) and is able to effectively communicate his character’s distaste whilst simultaneously keeping in sync with his personality.
(4) Finally, you Link everything back to your thesis. I kinda already did this in my last paragraph by stating ‘whilst simultaneously keeping in sync with his personality’. What you’re trying to do here is to make sure that this micro-argument of yours is doing something to advance your thesis statement and makes cohesive, structural sense to your whole essay. As in this case we don’t really have a thesis (I obviously cant write you a whole essay—maybe for next time--- but this part shouldn’t be that difficult).
So everything summed up together:
It can also be seen that (1) Amis utilizes hyperbole to effectively mirror the personality of his narrator (John Money) with the way in which the text is written. Indeed, (2) when describing the danger of driving in LA, Money states that ‘If you so much as loosen your seatbelt or drop you ashes or pick your nose, then it's an Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later.’ (3) Amis hints to his character’s grandiose and outspoken personality by making him mention that seemingly small, inconsequential actions (picking one’s nose, dropping a cig) can lead to huge car accidents, outlined in a humorous, entertaining way (Alcatraz autopsy with the questions asked later). This use of hyperbole can also be seen when referring to LA’s normally distinct and niche restaurants: Amis juxtaposes in a comical fashion the pickiness of these restaurants (this one serves no....etc) and is able to effectively communicate his character’s distaste whilst simultaneously keeping in sync with his personality. (4) Insert Link Back to Thesis, something like: this all steers us towards the main idea that Amis is utilizing a wide variety of literary techniques to emphasize certain aspects of John Money’s character to the reader.
This may seem like an extremely mechanical way of writing, but the transitions can get much more fluid, and you can intertwine your quotations in a much nicer way than I just did to show you. This is just a really basic, rudimentary way of writing: sometimes I hear my friends telling me that they get too lost reading the texts and can’t structure their writing, and I thought that this may help.
Please message us if you have any questions, and I’d be happy to take a look at any of your English essays.
Happy Studying (and winter too ;)
Shikhar