How do I make sure I am effective in answering the question when writing an essay?

You should firstly make sure you understand exactly what the question is asking. For example if you are asked to discuss the statement, 'Much American literature is characterised by the importance of hope in adversity', you should aim to try and understand why the question specifies 'much' as opposed to 'all' and show your understanding of the qualities, differences and similarities between 'hope and adversity' and how they effect 'American literature'; by effectively picking apart the question you develop a sound understanding of what the question is looking for in your essay and you can then focus on conveying this as effectively as possible. After this you can then apply your textual understanding of the novel(s) you have studied with a knowledge of which quotes will work best.A good piece of advice in terms of practising effectiveness is to construct a 'skeleton-essay'; gather as many past paper questions, even have your teacher write some for you, as you can and methodically answer at least 3 of them; then go through the essays and work out which arguments, quotes, critics, themes and ideas you seem to come back to in each; following this you can start to construct a 'base essay', a basic argument about the text, and then layer the essay question over this. You should find that after developing a skeleton essay you have a collection of key quotes you can turn to in most essays and you should have developed a sound understanding of how to be effective in your writing.