Writing an essey: guide notes

Study group notes from the useful Royal Literary Fund "Writing essays" guide

Introduction

Welcome to writing essays

This guide doesn't teach you how to do research or form good study habits, it only serves as a list of things to keep in mind when writing. It doesn’t matter what prior experience you have when starting with essays. You aren't born able to write essays, you have to learn how to do it. The more you write, the more you get better!

You the Writer

Don’t let you be stuck and panic because you are inexperienced, or because you are afraid to fail. Everyone struggles, even professional writers, you just have to deal with it and get it done.

Consider that you have to write being an academic, learn to appreciate it and think of it like part of your life.

If you feel inexperienced, you can practice by having a journal or better with learning logs. This will help you gain confidence and keeping track of your days/studies.

Another good practice to get better is to reflect on what you read to learn from others. Be critical of anything you read, without being negative, and try to identify what can be improved and learn from it.

Remember that your writing needs a purpose, you don’t write just for marks, you have to understand who will read your essay and why.

When you are assigned an essay, don’t write it down instantly, try to use all your time and polish it if you have some extra time.

Reflect and understand your thoughts. If you can’t explain it in words, you need to spend some time analyzing it to have it clear in your mind. And if you don’t have clear thoughts on what you are trying to write on, your essay will be affected.

Since we are used to thinking and generating sentences based on the way we speak, we tend to assume that a lot of information is included in our message, but we are usually missing visual/environmental communication from it, so we have to be careful and not fall in that trap.

For example, you shouldn’t be afraid of stating the obvious. You don’t know everyone that will read your essay, so you can’t assume what they know.

But why should you write as part of your academic studies?

Writing helps to hold in your memory whatever you are writing of.

Writing is a way of studying, as it makes you reflect and describe the subject with your own words.
Writing is a valuable skill that will stay with you for the rest of your life

What tutors want

You need to understand and select what's important, and to understand what tutors expect you to do.
Dictionaries aren’t much help. Academic writing is not using more complex words, or complicated sentences, or padding the word count with over explanation and jargon.
What academic writing really is:
- Academic writing is writing that shows evidence of learning.
- Academic writing considers a subject in its different aspects, relations and implications.
- Academic writing reviews a subject with a sense of sceptical enquiry.
- Academic writing re-examines a subject in order to test and develop ideas or theories.
Everyone's writing has identifying marks, or fingerprints. This is the register that they generally use. Jargon is used because it is concise in its meaning.
Say what you are going to do, and attempt to be objective.
Keep in mind that an academic essay is located in a body of knowledge, and you are adding to that body. Common jargon within that body is expected to be understood.
The format of academic writing is well known.
- Academic writing has a serious tone.
- Academic writing is clear and to the point.
- Academic writing is objective.
- Academic writing starts with an element of doubt. It does not assume anything. It’s tentative and exploratory. It does not start by claiming to be definitive or comprehensive.
- Academic writing uses evidence.
- Academic writing locates itself in an existing body of knowledge. Any new piece of writing is a development and an extension of what has already been written on a particular subject.
- Academic writing follows a process of reasoning
- Academic writing advances an argument.
- Academic writing is consistent.

Keeping the Essay personal or impersonal is the choice of the writer. Have you been asked what you think? Or have you been asked what data suggests. If it is what you think, then keep it personal.
Things that tutors look for:
- Clear English
- Ability to answer the question
- Use of evidence to back up each stage of your argument
- Evidence of reading round the subject i.e. don’t just parrot information from one lecture or one course book
- Evidence of reflection i.e. think about the evidence and theories you are writing about and treat them objectively and critically
- Discussion of the issues and ideas that relate to the question
- Demonstration of your understanding of those issues and ideas
- Evidence that you know who said them and when, where, why and how
- Analysis not description
- Precision not generalisation
- Evidence of proof reading i.e. don’t hand in work that’s full of grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes. The person reading and marking it will just assume you couldn’t be bothered with your work.
- Evidence of editing i.e. is your material in the best possible order? Are your words really saying what you want to say?
Use the guides the teachers give you, and listen to their feedback.

What is an Essay

You should try to understand why your professor is making you write the essay, and what it should be about, as knowing it will allow you to make better decisions over its course.

Essays are relatively short and designed for a specific purpose, like the tie-breakers in supermarket quizzes, they only contain a limited amount of material.

The primary level of meaning of the word ‘essay’ is not about writing at all. An essay is an attempt to do something, an initial or tentative effort. It comes from the French word ‘essayer’ which means ‘to try or attempt’; and this, in turn, comes the Latin word ‘exagiare’ which means ‘to weigh’, which is exactly what you do in the essay: weight a topic in words.

An essay can’t contain everything that’s known and said about a subject, as it is limited in size by definition.

And even if you don’t fully understand what an essay is, you should understand that an essay, like any other writing you do at university, will help your learning and understanding. It will improve your skills in self-expression.

Different essays are designed to do different things, and there is a lot of different kinds of essay:

Analytical writing: this type of writing makes a detailed examination of something in order to understand its nature and its essential features;
Chronological writing: this type of writing relates a sequence of events;
Compare and contrast writing: This type of writing examines two or more things and the similarities and differences between them;
Descriptive writing: this type of writing gives a picture of the main characteristics of something;
Evaluative writing: this type of writing makes a judgement about something;
Summary writing: this type of writing gives a brief account of the important features of something;

remember that a well-written, effective essay will probably use several of these different types of writing.

Understanding the question

Make sure you understand the question.
Identify the keywords in the essay question, and then the directives to apply to those keywords.
Break the question into multiple sub-questions, to make it easier to explore the topic.
Now that the topic has been broken down and understood, brainstorm.
Brainstorming is for idea collection only, and the essay is where the ideas are organized and presented.
Do plenty of research, and collect sources that might be even tangentially related.
Write down everything you know about the topic, and then write down every question you want to know the answer to before starting; continue this process until you feel you have enough information.
Brainstorming with friends goes faster, and creates more ideas.
Brainstorming helps get over the ‘fear of a white page’ feeling.
There are several ways to organize your ideas before starting.
Rank them by importance or relevance
Color code them by connections to other ideas, and ideas that can be grouped together.
You can also do different point generation techniques like mind mapping, continuous questioning of information, and so on.

Reading and Researching

How not To Read
- If you have a time constraint, you should be aware of the time you spend reading and document yourself.
- Classic mistake you neanderthal monkey
- Students overload themselves with readings due to different common factors, like the scarcity of copies in the library or the huge reading lists that professors give, but in reality what they should do is efficient reading on the relevant bits of the various books.
You, the Reader
- Reading academic texts should be approached differently to reading texts for leisure.
- Read academic literature for 15-20 minutes everyday, to get used to it
- Take note of unfamiliar terms and look them up for context
- Make sure the environment is conducive to reading quietly and efficiently without distractions, and you are in the right frame of mind
- Before you start reading, make sure you have everything else you need: drink, snacks, pens and paper for taking notes, dictionaries for looking things up.
- Break up readings into chunks, instead of reading for hours on end to finish things. This gives the brain time to absorb information and rest
- After each chunk, critically reflect on what you have read. What did you learn? Did you understand it? How is it relating to other literature on the subject? Is it relevant?
Choosing your Reading
- Go to the library you worthless millenial
- Libraries usually place books based on topics(DDC system), and they have staff to guide you in case you don’t find what you are searching for. They also have useful courses on how to do academic research.
- It's impossible to read all the books on the reading list, so you don’t just read a book from start to finish, instead you pluck out just what is needed for your work.
- Use titles, chapters, keywords and common sense to find the relevant bits
- Try to grasp the general direction of a paragraph before reading it, so that you won’t lose time on it if it's not useful
- Check the background of the author and the age of the book to have the best chances to read qualitative content
- Think about what you are reading, and have a purpose for it. You can’t just mindlessly read, you have to aim at something and be purposeful
How to read: SQ3r
- SQ3R is a reading technique designed to help take in information
- It stands for Survey Question Read Recall Review
  - Survey
    - Look through the book and try and get a sense of whether it’s useful or not. Look at the index, the contents page, the chapter titles and the introduction.
  - Question
    - If the book looks useful then examine it in more detail. Ask yourself questions about it. Where are the relevant sections? Who is the author? Have you heard of her and are therefore already aware of her ideas or viewpoint? Is she someone your tutor mentioned in last week’s seminar? What are the aims of the book? To sum up, ask yourself the five Ws about what you are reading: Who, What, When, Where and Why.
  - Read
    - Let’s imagine there is one section that’s particularly relevant. Read that section but read it in two ways. First, read quickly, making sure you get a good general sense of what is being said and what’s relevant and what isn’t. Second, read the section again but this time make notes of the important points.
  - Recall
    - Once you have finished reading the relevant section, go over it in your mind several times. Can you summarise the key points without referring back to the book or to your notes?
  - Review
    - Now go back through the text again. Make notes of anything you missed out in your original reading. If necessary, expand your existing notes and make them more detailed. Ask yourself questions at this stage too. Has the book told you everything you needed to know? If not, what else do you need to read? Has the book pointed you towards any other books? What do you need to do next?
- SQ3R is best done with a friend due to having different perspectives and will enhance the review section in particular.
- There is no better way to see if you understand something than trying to explain it to someone.
How to read: Other Techniques
- There are different ways of reading:
  - Skimming means looking through something very quickly to find out if there’s anything relevant (quick)
  - Scanning means that you know what you want and so are looking for specific information (quick)
  - Studying means that you’ve identified that a particular passage is relevant and are reading it carefully and systematically, taking notes and making sure you’ve grasped it
- Try to understand what is the article and who are the persons that it’s trying to reach, because that could change the importance of a certain reading for your research
- Thinking about and understanding the layout of a particular piece of written material(like a scientific article, or a newspaper one) can help you extract what you need more efficiently
- Have a list in mind on what you want to get out of the reading you are doing
- Rank the readings based on the expected importance
Reading around the Subjects
- Using a wide range of sources shows creative thinking about where to get information, and dedication to learning
- There are several different sources you can explore, such as:
  - Lectures and Seminars
    - Lectures generally provide an introduction and overviews of a subject. Seminars are where it is explored in more depth. Each lecturer has a different personal style.
  - Reading Lists
    - Discuss these with your tutor, and don’t expect to read all the books on the list. Pick and choose your material carefully
  - Newspapers
    - Find out what is relevant to your subject. It is a lot of information to skim through to find relevant articles.
  - Trade Magazines
    - These are specialist publications aimed at particular industries. They are more focused than newspapers,
  - Academic Journals
    - There will be a wide range of journals relevant to your subject. Get access to your university library to find them.
  - Guest Speakers
    - Most universities will have guest speakers visit to give talks about their work. Take advantage of them.
  - Internet
    - You can use this in all sorts of ways. Many national newspapers now have extensive online archives. The internet is also a good place for finding quick, useful definitions of things
  - Postgraduate Dissertations and Theses
    - All university libraries archive postgraduate work and this can sometimes be a good source of information.
  - Local and National Government Publications
    - They can be good sources of information for matters of public policy. Imagine you are writing an essay on initiatives to promote healthy eating: local and national government departments will have published materials about this
Taking notes
- Take notes based on what you need, not only on what is written. This will make your notes meaningful
- Balance using your summaries and quoting some of the author’s, but always try to use your own words
- Always make a note of relevant page numbers
- Make short summaries of books that you may want to refer to again
- The Cornell system:
  - 1. Record: as you read, simply write down as many facts or ideas in large right hand column, either in your own words or using quotations from the book you are reading.
  - 2. Reduce: When you have finished making notes in this way, read through your notes and make notes about the key points in the left hand column
  - 3. Recite: this is an excellent way to retain and understand information. You need to say out loud and in your own words the facts or ideas you have just been reading about. You can use the help of the record part
  - 4. Reflect: Now you have learnt the relevant information, you need to reflect on it. Ask yourself question about the meaning of the content
  - 5. Review: repeat the ‘Recite’ stage, perhaps several times a week. Remember: you are not just reading and remembering for a particular essay but to learn more about your subject.
  - 6. Recapitulate: when you have reduced, recited and reflected on your notes for the first time, write a summary at the bottom of the page.
- Organize information using headings or short phrases that move from the general to the specific, and indent them accordingly
- Make visual maps, it helps remembering them

What planning and structure mean and why you need them

Reasons to be structured
- Helps you following your flow of thoughts
- Helps you distributing the focus of your essay

Three parts
- There are three parts in a common essay:
  - Introduction
  - Main body
  - Conclusion

Planning

Planning for length
- Plan it beforehand, helps maintain consistence in your parts
- Helps you understanding if you are writing too much in details
Planning for content
- Divide the main parts in subsections with logic grouping on content
- Helps you give the right importance to your points
Planning on the computer
- Use multiple word documents for the division, to have a better tracking and utilize wordcounts efficiently

Introductions: what they do

Introductions
- Should do at least 4 things:
  - Show that you understood the request
  - State your objectives in the essay
  - Outline which aspect of the subject you are dealing with
  - Indicate what you are going to argue
- Think of it as a map for the reader: this is going to tell him what is discussed on the document, and how you are going to approach it
- It also helps defining in your mind your own intentions
Some things an introduction can do
- Overview of the subject
- Main idea of the essay
- Interpretation of the request
- Defining own glossary and premises
- Explaining your methodology
- Outline issues to be explored
- Quote other authors to give an idea of what is going to be written

Different essays need different introductions
- Different types of essays use different introductions, depending mainly on subject and essay layout
First things last?
- Not necessarily the first thing to write, its easier to write one knowing the rest of the essay first, as you will have a better idea on what to write specifically

Main bodies: what they do

Main points about main bodies
- Development of the argument
- Working through key point and support them with evidence or related explanation
Structuring your main body
- Depends on the request and type of argument
Some things the main body can do
- Present arguments, points and theories
- Give an overview of the main issue, topic or proposition
- Explore strength and weaknesses in the main proposition of the essay (test your opinion/facts)
- Identify differences and similarities between ideas, theories or reviews
- Quoting relevant theorists or critics opinion to support/attack your argument/proposition
The scientific model
- Standard structure for scientific papers is a good layout in general for the MB:
  - Materials and methodology: how and where do you get your data and evidence
  - Results: analyzation of the data in detail
  - Discussion: conclusion and final observation on the results

Conclusions: what they do

Summing up
- Summing up the point made in the main body, without all the details
- Do not give definitive answer, consider it your opinion or something not certain at 100%
Moving the subject on
- Point readers towards new ideas/possibilities
- Way of communicating intentions and will with the reader
Here’s something I forgot earlier
- Introduce new material that you don’t explore in this document but is related and/or similar
- Don’t overdo its not the main body
It’s not about you
- Personal opinions should be in line with the discussion of the document
- Your viewpoint should be already discussed in the main body
Some things a conclusion can do
- Sum up your argument
- Revisit the essay request and show how is answered
- Give a sense of completion
- Indicate what the essay has and has not done
- Show the fulfilment of the introduction premises
- Offer a point of view considering the evidence
- Establish your position

Sentences

Can you spot the differences?
- Don’t make sentences look like opinion, by adding conversational words
- Don’t let your mood affect your writing too much
- Make simple sentence structures, without too many conjunctions
- Use correct punctuation
- All of this make your document more readable
Common problems in sentences
- Length: ideal 12-15 words
- Main clauses and subordinate clauses: don’t interrupt the main clause of the sentence with the subordinate one
- Active and passive voice: prefer active voice, but the passive voice can be useful when you don’t know the subject of the sentence or you don’t want to call attention to it
- Unclear pronouns: the further away the pronoun is from who or what it refers to, the more confusing the sentence becomes
- And & but: Don’t start sentences with ‘and’ and ‘but’. Words like ‘and’ and ‘but’ are called conjunctions which means they are used to join things together
- List and noun strings: don’t exaggerate! Noun strings usually result from students’ attempts to cut words
- Parallel constructions: When you have a sequence of phrases or clauses put them all in parallel construction – i.e. the same grammatical from – so the reader can see the relationship between them more easily

Drafting and Editing:

Process, process, process

The raw & the cooked
- Never present something “raw” (first draft)
- Iterative processing (multiple drafts)

Drafting & editing – what they mean
- Drafting: preliminary or tentative version
- Editing: making suitable for publishing or public presentation
What the professionals say
- “Of every four words I write, I strike out three” – Nicolas Boileau, 1665
- “I constantly rewrite” – Thornton Wilder, 1961
- “I do a lot of rewriting. I find that the more versions you see […] the more you get it right in the end” – William Trevor, 1989

The basics

Stand back from your own work
- Try not to never think about your essay as finished, there is always room for improvement
- Take occasional 24h breaks, to come up to your work with a fresh pair of eyes
- get a friend to read your work, to get a different and unbiased point of view
How many drafts make a good essay?
- No final answer
- At least 2
- Until you have time and something to refine, rewrite

The first draft

Two things first
- Reading + notes
- made an essay plan
What should it look like?
- Expression of ideas and organization of content (general structure)
- Titled sections
- Sketch out main point with rough and quick writing

You don’t have to start at the beginning
- Better to start with what you already have clear in mind than staring at a blank page waiting for inspiration, so you can start writing the main body if you feel like
Keep going
- Don’t mind precise writing and details, the important part is that you keep writing. Momentum will help your idea flow, and the next drafts will clear up the mess. Doing this help you taking only the important decisions, balancing your stress load.
Don’t struggle 1: how to unblock yourself
- If you are blocked:
  - Write a short letter to yourself outlining what you want to say in the essay
  - Write for 15 minutes about any aspect of the subject you need to write about
  - Try a relaxation and visualisation exercise
Don’t struggle 2: break it up & don’t get stuck
- Take regular breaks
- If you find yourself getting stuck in the middle of a particular section stop writing, make a note and start another section

The second draft

General points
- Revise first draft:
  - Does it match your overall argument?
  - Does each section carry your argument forward?
- Is everything connected or does it feel like separated parts?
- Read it aloud and try analysing it like a speech from a professor
  - Do you sound like you know what you are talking about?
  - Do your sentences flow or are they jerky and disjointed?
  - Are you stumbling over short phrases or getting lost in sentences that go on for half a page?
- Check every section systematically rewriting them as necessary to make sure that each section is clear and contains all the relevant material
- Check grammar and typos
- Check style
Bring yourself in for questioning!
- Ask yourself these questions:
  - Have I answered the initial question?
  - Have I included all the relevant material from my notes?
  - Is there anything that should not be here, anything that is nice to have but not essential?
  - Are all my points illustrated with examples?
  - Have I missed anything?
  - If you’ve written “This essay will…” or “I will argue that…”, then have you?
  - Is everything in the best possible order?
Using feedback
- Check previous essay’s marking comments
- Make other people read your essay and ask opinions
Tone: Postmodernism is really heuristic, know what I mean?
- Is your tone consistent?
  - Too chatty?
  - Too overloaded with expert terminology?
  - Both?
  - Are you sure about the meaning of every specific vocabulary you used?
Tone: exploratory and tentative
- Keep awareness that academic writing always involves elements of doubts and of testing assertions and assumptions through the discovery of evidence.
Tone: Confident
- Direct style that communicate with your readers
- Using a good range of valid material to support your confidence
- Personal knowledge brings to confidence, but it could lead to arrogance
- Give explanation over quotes from experts to demonstrate to the reader that you thought carefully on what you have written
- read widely

Editing – 1: getting your essay into shape

Copy-editing & proof-reading
- Copy-editing: reading your essay for content and style
  - check that you have expressed yourself as clearly as you can
  - identify superfluous words and clumsy expressions
  - helps you keep withing word count
- Proof-reading: reading your essay for grammar and presentation
  - Grammar (punctuation, spelling mistakes, typos, sentence structure)
  - Presentation (formatting, sentence that stops in the middle of the point, paragraph length, referencing system)
Using feedback
- Common specific mistakes from experience? (previous essays)
Upside down & back to front
- Last final check
- Helps stepping out from our brain capability of completing sentences while reading and hiding mistakes

Editing – 2: what’s on top & what lies beneath

Two types of editing
- Simple/surface editing
- Complex/deep editing
Simple or surface editing
- Checking spelling, grammar and punctuation
- Be aware of spell checkers: not perfect
- Research over doubts
- Important to remove stupid mistakes as they give bad impression and make hard to read
Complex or deep editing
- Redrafting
- Reading your assignment as if you were an outsider or a stranger
- Involves asking yourself particular types of questions:
  - Does your essay have a central idea? Is it clear to the reader or is it hard to spot?
  - Do you raise questions that you don’t answer? Have you done everything you said you were going to in your introduction?
  - Have you said everything you want to say?
  - Is there a definite sense of an argument developing? Can you follow your own argument? Do you agree with it? (Redraft if not)
  - Have you made an argument and answered the question set by the assignment or have you just put down everything you know or could think of about the subject?
  - Do the different points you make follow on logically?
  - Is there a good balance between the information you report and summarise and your analysis and view of it?
  - Is your use of subject terminology or special vocabularies clear and consistent?
  - Have you got a conclusion? Does it give the reader a sense of arrival?
  - Have you answered the questions you’ve been set or discussed the topic you were asked to explore?
Finally, check your essay against your plan
- Confront essay and plan, looking for modifications you made and justifying them(if you can’t, redraft)

Making an argument

Are you looking for an argument?

“My tutor read my essay and said he couldn’t find one”
- Common mistake
- Multiple reasons, depending from kind of essay and kind of tutor
Does ‘evaluate’ mean the same as ‘critically analyse’?
- Spend some time understanding what tutors mean with the request wording
All arguments are different but they all do the same thing
- It’s not just different subjects that require different types of argument – different types of material do too
- essays with effective arguments arrange their material and the discussion of it in the best possible order - argument is closely related to structure

Simple definitions

What an argument isn’t
- A heated debate
- A quarrel
- A dispute
- A disagreement
What an argument is
- A course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating a truth or falsehood
- A set of statements in which one follows logically as a conclusion from the others
- The act or process of arguing, reasoning, or discussing
- A coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view
Key words
- An argument is something that moves from a definite starting point to a definite conclusion.
- An argument is made up of a number of smaller parts that are clearly linked together.
- An argument is made up of a number of smaller parts organised in a developmental order i.e. one part leads naturally to the next.

More definitions

It’s more than one, two, three, four, five, six
- making an effective argument is about deciding on the best possible order
- but its not a linear process
More key words
- Get your material in the best order possible to create a logic flow for the reader to follow
What’s the big idea?
- The essay needs to have a central main idea
Tell me a story
- a good way of thinking about how to make an argument is to think of it in terms of telling a story
- Stories are satisfying to readers if they have a beginning, a middle and an end in that order
I can drink more than you…
- think about the differences between an argument and an assertion
- identify what proves your essay
- prove where missing
Silly example, serious points
- Even this silly essay sets out with a proposition and then attempts to prove it using evidence and theories
- Not about the content but about the way of exposing it to the reader

Different types of argument

Ground rules
- An academic argument:
  - begins with an arguable premise or claim
  - uses facts and evidence
  - is logical and coherent. It moves from step to step in a clear, developmental manner
  - uses references and credits them
Theory X and Theory Y – 1
- start with a brief history
- work through the X and Y theory saying if and how their five main points(each) are applicable
- Your conclusion would depend on the number of X and Y features that you have found to be applicable
Theory X and Theory Y – 2
- start with Theory X and Theory Y and give accounts of both
- work through the key points in the recent history of the relevant data/facts and look at each point in terms of Theory X and Theory Y
Pros and cons – 1
- start by exploring the claim
- look at the evidence (data/facts)
- work through x main pro points and then work through the x main con points
- conclude stating your final take based on the evidence discussed
Pros and cons – 2
- start by exploring the claim
- In contrast to method one, you would then work through the x main pro and con points in pairs: Pro 1, Con 1, Synthesis; Pro 2, Con 2, Synthesis…
- conclude stating your final take based on the evidence discussed
Mediative argument
- Like theory x and theory y, but at the end you try to mediate between the two
- good way of exploring different points of view
Alternative arguments – categorical, chronological, perceived importance, sequential
- Categorical. An essay that asked you to look at examples of organisational structure in the USA, Europe and the Third World would be asking you to organise your material and make your argument in a categorical way i.e. by looking at different categories or classes of things.
- Chronological. An essay asking you to look at the history of scientific paradigms in psychology from 1900 to 2000 would be asking you to make a chronological argument. So you would start with the early 20th Century, perhaps then look at the period 1950-1970 and then look at the closing decades.
- Perceived importance. An essay title asking you to examine organisational functions and discuss their importance would be asking you to review which functions experts regard as most important. So you might well start such an essay by saying something like ‘Most management and organisational theorists agree that functions should be ranked as follows…’
- Sequential. An essay asking you to examine organisational functions using the example of a successful product would be asking you to think about the processes behind that success. So you might start by looking at market research, then move on to product design and finish by looking at marketing and advertising.
- An essay might even involve combining two or more of these approaches.