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Index Cards are an awesome tool to help chunk an essay into more manageable parts and to develop an organized structure for your final piece of writing. This is so basic that I am certain you will achieve success with this process!

Let’s imagine my teacher told the class they had to select a health problem and turn in an essay discussing the ways in which that illness can be treated:

I am very interested in depression since I have heard heaps about that disorder in the media lately. So I head to the library and read about depression and how it can be treated. I find some good books and also look up some websites on the world wide web. While I am reading, I scrawl down some of the major notes on Index Cards like this:

Now that I have the major ideas for this subject noted down on index cards, I can put them into a logical order so that my assignment will have a good structure. You possibly know that a well-structured assignment has an introduction (defining the topic and listing the main points), a body (with each paragraph expanding on a main point) and a conclusion (the last paragraph that reminds the reader about the main points and reaches some kind of decision on the topic). With that in mind I would possibly order my index cards in this way:

Now that my cards are organized into an appropriate structure, I can draft my essay. The first card will form the basis of my introduction. It will discuss depression as an illness and I will most likely add a sentence about the two main ways of treating depression. Each of the other cards then becomes another paragraph in my assignment: I simply extend on the notes I have written on the cards and write the content in my own words as full sentences. Then, I write a conclusion that summarizes the main points from my assignment. I might also add a final sentence along these lines: “Depression is very treatable with medication and psychotherapy so people who are diagnosed do not have to suffer without help.” This would draw my argument to a nice conclusion.

I hope this helps you to write some great essays!

Making use of index cards is just one way to organize your writing. I prefer a technique called Mind Mapping for note-taking and organizing essays. You can find more information about Mind Mapping at Buzan’s Mind Mapping site.