An Intermediate Guide to Writing in

English for University Study

Unit name goes here

ANALYSING THE
QUESTION
Video transcript

For many university assignments you are given a question that you have to answer in an essay, and
therefore one very important aspect of academic writing is answering the question with relevant
content. This means you need to ensure that you understand the essay question completely. The
following technique will show you how to analyse a question and understand what you need to write
about.
What is the topic of the essay? What is the question asking you to do? Pause the recording now to think
about these questions.
This question comprises two sentences. The first is a statement, and the second gives you some
instructions. The first sentence gives you the topic, which is the fact that the average age of people in
many countries round the world is going up - we have more elderly people than in the past.
The question asks you to focus on the problems caused by an ageing population and on possible
solutions. You have to discuss those problems, suggest solutions and then evaluate them, so there will
be three parts to your essay. On university programmes you will generally be expected to answer all
parts of the question, so you need to ensure you are doing this here; discuss problems, suggest
solutions, evaluate those solutions.
By “discuss” you would be expected to describe the problems and possibly assess how serious those
problems are, and what impacts they have.
By “evaluate”, you would be expected to compare the different solutions and decide which one is likely
to be the most effective.
One way of approaching an essay title is to ask questions, which you would try to answer, and which
help you establish what you already know and what you need to find out about the topic. It also helps
you to begin to develop a viewpoint.
And here are some possible questions you might have: Why is the population of the world ageing? What
are the potential problems of an ageing population? What are the possible solutions? How feasible are
these solutions? And, what other impacts might these solutions have?

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