Writing to explain
Writing to explain is concerned with making clear how or why something is the way that it is. It involves having some form of knowledge or understanding that you will pass on to your reader.
Writing to explain in your examination
In your examination the question may not explicitly say ‘explain’ in the title of the question. However, if the question starts with ‘how’ or ‘why’, it is asking you to explain something.
When writing to explain, the question is asking you to demonstrate your understanding. You may be asked to explain the atmosphere, particular characters, and symbolism.
A writing to explain text may contain these conventions:
- The title often asks ‘how’ or ‘why’.
- The text may use layout features such as bold headings, subheadings, paragraphs, bold text, bullet points and pictures. Layout features help to structure the explanation.
- May use present or past tense depending on when events took place.
- The text will use connectives. This is important as a explanative text needs to explain a sequence of events and the result of the process.
- The text may use specialist jargon or vocabulary.
- An explanative text will often use a formal and impersonal style, where neither the writer nor reader is directly involved. This is because the information is factual and remains unaltered by the writer or reader.
- This type of text will reach a final conclusion, or answer the original question.
You must be aware of your audience when you are writing. The audience will affect the tone, formality and structure of your text. When writing to explain don’t become too personal or confuse your reader by giving them too much information.
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