How to Write a Macbeth Essay (OCR GCSE English Literature)
Revision Note
Written by: Nick Redgrove
Reviewed by: Kate Lee
How to Write a Macbeth Essay
Paper 2 of your OCR GCSE English Literature exam will include questions on your anthology poetry, unseen poetry and on the Shakespeare play you’ve been studying.
You will have 50 minutes to complete one Macbeth question from a choice of two options:
A question based on an extract (of about 40 lines) from Macbeth or
A “discursive” essay question, which is not based on any extract
Examiner Tips and Tricks
You will not have access to a copy of Macbeth for either of these two questions, so it’s important you know the plot of the play really well, and that you have memorised some references and quotes from the play to use in your essay.
For the Macbeth essay, OCR examiners state that you need to use evidence from elsewhere in the play, even for the extract-based question: to get a Grade 9, it’s not enough to rely on the text from the extract. See our Macbeth Quotations and Analysis revision note page for some great quotations to learn.
How do you start a Macbeth essay?
It’s always daunting when you have 50 minutes to write one long answer. So how do you start writing? It might sound odd, but the answer is don’t start writing.
The single most important thing you can do to get the highest mark on your Macbeth essay is to write an essay plan before you start your answer. For both the extract-based question and the discursive essay, examiners award the highest marks to students who create a “coherent line of argument” and who maintain a “focus on the question” and a “critical style”. What do these phrases actually mean?
Examiner comment | What this means you should do |
|---|---|
“Focus on the question” |
|
“Coherent line of argument” |
|
“Critical style” |
|
By creating a plan before you start writing, you can make sure that your essay covers all three of these points.
Your plan could look something like this:
How do you structure a Macbeth essay?
As we’ve seen, examiners give the highest marks to students who have managed to create a “coherent line of argument” throughout their essay. We’ve seen that the best way to achieve this is to create a plan, and to use that plan to structure your essay clearly and logically.
To achieve a grade 9, OCR recommends that students include an introduction, clearly organised paragraphs and a conclusion.
If you look at the example plan above, you will see that the example plan includes a “thesis statement” and “topic questions”. See how to include these into your essay below:
Top tips for structuring your Macbeth essay:
Always begin with a clear thesis statement that sets out your argument:
Your thesis statement should only be one or two sentences in length
Include three or four paragraphs in your essay:
Including more paragraphs can result in a rambling essay that doesn’t always answer the question - less is more when writing a focused, coherent essay
Each paragraph should begin with a topic sentence:
This is one sentence that sets out the argument of the paragraph
Topic sentences should always be directly related to your thesis statement and the key words of the essay question
All the evidence (quotations or textual references) you include in any paragraph should help you prove your topic sentence
Finish your essay with a short conclusion:
The conclusion shouldn’t include any new evidence
It should sum up how you have proved your thesis statement
Examiner Tips and Tricks
Some schools and teachers teach students a “scaffold” for writing essay paragraphs. This usually takes the form of an acronym, like PEE (Point, Evidence, Explanation).
However, more and more, OCR examiners are recommending students don’t follow these fixed structures. This is because they restrict your ability to bring in additional pieces of evidence, explore contextual factors, extend your explanation to include different interpretations, or include your own opinions.
To see an example of how to include these elements in your essay, see our model answer for the OCR Macbeth extract question, and a model answer for the Macbeth discursive essay question.
Macbeth essay top exam tips
Top-grade students: | Students who don’t do as well: |
|---|---|
Plan their essays before writing them | Don’t make an essay plan and write rambling, unfocused essays |
Include their own line of argument in the form of a thesis statement | Write pre-learned essays that don’t answer the question, but rather answer the question they wished they’d been asked |
Always focus their response on the question given | Don’t use topic sentences to focus their answer on the question that has been set |
Include contextual analysis only when it is relevant | Include irrelevant context (usually at the end of a paragraph) and don’t relate it to the analysis of Shakespeare’s language, structure or form |
Consider different interpretations | Explain or retell the plot of Macbeth, rather than analyse Shakespeare’s choices |
Choose only relevant evidence from the extract, or play as a whole | Include irrelevant quotations because they’ve learnt them and feel they should include them |
Develop and extend their analysis of language, structure and form to more than just one sentence | Make simple comments, and don’t extend their analysis |
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