Structure TOK Essay 1

Presentation

TOKEssay

How to structure a TOK Essay

First choose your prescribed Title

Before you can begin your essay, you’ll want to look at the Prescribed Titles and choose one of them. Take some time to think about them before you choose. Sometimes the simple one is not the best one--perhaps because you can't think of any interesting ideas, just the most obvious ones. Complicated questions can make for more interesting essays.

Consider two or three of the titles before you settle on one. Then, once you've chosen your Prescribed Title, get some of your initial ideas down on paper. This seems like an obvious step, but it's valuable. Later you can try to find evidence to support these initial ideas you had.

Second Choose your AOKs

The Areas of Knowledge

Now, take your prescribed title and choose the Areas of Knowledge to explore it with. Some titles will require you to include a certain AOK. With those types of questions you'll obviously just need to choose your second AOK. It's recommended your essay contains two body sections (or "developments"). Each body section will look at a certain area of knowledge and each will have a claim and a counter claim in it.

Courtroom Analogy

It's helpful to think of the TOK essay as though you're sharing the most interesting bits of a conversation argument between two smart people.

Next Class... TOK Essay Structure Introduction (200-250 words) Main body (2 parts - 500/600 words) Conclusion (200-250 words)