First Person and Essay Writing

Using the first person is widely seen as a stylistic ‘faux pas’ in essay writing at GCSE and A-Level.

I suppose the point is that it draws attention to its subjectivity – perhaps by writing in the third person, there is the assumption that we remove (or appear to remove?) bias.

Nonetheless, there is one GCSE English Language question that actively encourages the use of the first person when evaluating a statement.

Moreover, I was surprised – in a good way – to hear from a student that their sibling studying English Literature at Cambridge had no problems writing an essay in the first person.

It does make me reflect on why we insist students remove the first person from their academic essays. After all, this is very much your essay, your thesis and your angle that you are arguing. Why pretend otherwise?

Strong opinions welcome!