Some student essays are made up of a series of detailed descriptions of relevant ideas and evidence from the module, but they don’t explain what it all means or how it relates to the essay question. They remind me of Sherlock Holmes stories in which Holmes points out several pieces of evidence e.g. the butler had orange mud on his left heel, the body of the dead wife had a tear on the collar of her dress, and it was snowing in Edinburgh on Thursday. But although it all seems very obvious to Holmes what this means, Dr Watson (and we, the readers) are still clueless about who the killer was. We need Holmes to do more than just present the evidence: we need him to explain what each piece of evidence means, and why it proves that the disgraced younger brother was the murderer.

You have to do the same. You may have correctly identified and described relevant evidence, but you also need to give an explanation of what each piece of evidence it means, and why it solves The Puzzling Case Of [Insert Essay Question Here].

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