How to explain in an essay
NESA defines it as: “Relate cause and effect; make the relationships between things evident; provide why and/or how.”
Explain asks you to make the how and the why visible on the page. NESA wants the connections spelled out, so nothing is left for the marker to infer. Where analyse takes a text apart, explain makes the links between its parts unmistakable.
New here first? Start with breaking down the whole question, then come back for this.
Show your working
Explaining is making every link in the chain visible, so the marker never has to guess.
- 1
Make every link explicit
Name the because and the so, rather than leaving cause and effect implied.
- 2
Follow the chain
Move from cause to effect to consequence, one connected step at a time.
- 3
Leave nothing implied
If the marker has to fill in the logic, you have described a relationship rather than explained it.
The shape of the paragraph
The paragraph names a relationship, then makes the causal chain that produces it explicit, step by step.
Topic sentence (the relationship)
Open by naming the cause-and-effect relationship the paragraph will make clear: X produces Y.
Watch out:State a relationship, not just a topic. 'Fear and the court' is a topic; 'the court produces fear' is a relationship.
Evidence
Ground the relationship in a specific quote.
Watch out:Pick evidence that actually shows the cause, not just the effect.
The explicit chain
Spell out the logic with connective words: because this, therefore that, so the next thing follows.
Watch out:This is the heart of explain. Do not compress the chain into a single leap the marker must trust.
Return line
Close by stating the consequence the chain has established, tied to the question.
Watch out:End on the result of the reasoning, rather than restarting the description.
A model paragraph, labelled sentence by sentence
Here is the structure at work. Read the paragraph straight through first: it should sound like one continuous argument, not a checklist. Then read the label beside each sentence to see the job it is doing. It is written to support this thesis:
The thesis
Miller explains the spread of the Salem accusations as a machine of fear: once the court declares that doubt itself is guilt, self-protection compels ordinary people to accuse others before they can be accused.
The paragraph, read straight through
Miller shows how fear, rather than belief, drives the accusations, by making the court itself the cause that manufactures it. This begins with Danforth's warning that “A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between”, and the effect of this false dichotomy is decisive: because neutrality is redefined as guilt, every villager is forced to prove loyalty, and the safest proof is to accuse someone else first, so suspicion spreads outward as an act of self-preservation rather than genuine conviction. Miller makes the cause and effect this explicit so that his audience can see how an authoritarian court, his and any other, produces the very hysteria it claims merely to be judging. The accusations, then, are not a mystery of evil but the predictable output of fear engineered from above.
Miller shows how fear, rather than belief, drives the accusations, by making the court itself the cause that manufactures it.
This begins with Danforth's warning that “A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between”,
and the effect of this false dichotomy is decisive: because neutrality is redefined as guilt, every villager is forced to prove loyalty,
and the safest proof is to accuse someone else first, so suspicion spreads outward as an act of self-preservation rather than genuine conviction.
Miller makes the cause and effect this explicit so that his audience can see how an authoritarian court, his and any other, produces the very hysteria it claims merely to be judging.
The accusations, then, are not a mystery of evil but the predictable output of fear engineered from above.
Every quotation above is verbatim from The Crucible (Arthur Miller) and verified against the source text.
See it done on your own paragraph
Paste your essay and we will show you, sentence by sentence, where your writing stops short, and rewrite your own lines toward Band 6. Free, about a minute.
Mark my essay — free →The other key words
Back to all the key words, or learn the techniques that give you something to write about.
The definition is quoted from NESA's Glossary of Key Words. The structure, teaching and model paragraph are our own, aligned to the 2017 English Advanced syllabus (2019–2026 prescriptions).