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Thematically vs chronologically?

Which do you think is a better way to write an essay?

I'm asking generally and specifically because I'm struggling with the planning of a piece of coursework.

Chronologically would obviously be discussing seperately, in order of their happening, events and then binding them together; thematically would be grouping the discussion into factors ie economic, political.
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Chronological is how you would write a piece of GCSE coursework, where narrative is important. This is not how you should write A Level (and degree level) essays, you should be analytical and this almost exclusively relies on a thematic discussion.
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Chronological is how you would write a piece of GCSE coursework, where narrative is important. This is not how you should write A Level (and degree level) essays, you should be analytical and this almost exclusively relies on a thematic discussion.

See this is what I thought, but the one other piece I've managed to have a look at on the work I'm trying to do was pretty much chronological so I had to ask! Thank you.
Chronological will lead to "And then this happenned because of..." kind of narrative, whereas thematic essays tend more towards the more analytical "The social factors were X in 1914, Y in the 1920s, together with the growth of Z in the 1930s, specifically from 1933 onwards; nevertheless, there are also economic factors that need to be considered, such as the A of 1927 and the general economic decline 1920-1935"

Whilst chronology CAN sometimes work, generally a thematic essay is the way to go.
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Chronological will lead to "And then this happenned because of..." kind of narrative, whereas thematic essays tend more towards the more analytical "The social factors were X in 1914, Y in the 1920s, together with the growth of Z in the 1930s, specifically from 1933 onwards; nevertheless, there are also economic factors that need to be considered, such as the A of 1927 and the general economic decline 1920-1935"

Whilst chronology CAN sometimes work, generally a thematic essay is the way to go.

Mm thank you, the problem I was having was that there's so much interweaving that it was difficulto to keep to themes - I'm almost having to refer to every other theme to explain things if you see what I mean: If I'm talking about economic factors I tend to need to explain the state of the government at the time, or beforehand for example, and then that needs more explanation. The advantage for approaching it chronologically is the linearity I guess.

I think one of the problems is basically that I have to write about 6 different groups all from differing time periods but within the same themes, so some things that pop up in my first theme don't make sense without something from the last. I know that sounds like I'm just crap but it is a lot harder than I'm making it sound! :p:

I've never had trouble with an essay like this before haha!
I've had the same problems and through AS we tended to be given a choice whether to write the essay chronologically or thematically. Writing it chronologically is a much simpler format, and is perhaps better if you don't really understand the content well, or aren't familiar with it within a wider context. Structuring it thematically is a more sophisticated approach to essay writing and it's best to at least try and do it this way, even if it doesn't get as good a grade as it might have done. It just shows that you can take other factors in to consideration and are aware of links between things. I always find that the economic and political factors link together well, and tend to talk about the social and cultural factors together too. It's quite a hard technique to get right to be fair as it requires a much more analytical approach to pick out relevant points than you'd need to if writing chronologically.

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