You may notice that in this section we talk about essay titles, questions, and assignment briefs. These are some of the terms used for the instructions given for writing essays. Title or assignment brief may be more common because the instructions you will be given for your essay will rarely consist of a straightforward question. They will contain a lot of information about what you need to do, so it’s important that you can decode that information and understand what is being asked of you.

Components of an essay title:

Topic words:	these tell you what broad area covered in your course you are to write about (e.g. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and what your specific focus should be within that topic (e.g. gender roles)
Task words:	verbs that tell you what you should do (e.g. discuss, explain, analyse, describe)
Limiting words:	narrowing down the scope of the essay to make it manageable (e.g. use a set number of examples, or a specific time frame)

Look at this essay title, and see the components in action:

Choose a case study company from those covered in class. Apply relevant theory to analyse and discuss how leadership style influences employees' motivation and satisfaction in your chosen company.

To check your understanding of the different parts of essay titles, complete the short quiz on the next page. You may find it helpful to open the quiz in a new tab so you can refer to the information on essay titles at the same time.