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It doesn’t matter if you’re a high-schooler, a college student, or you’re preparing for your Ph.D. thesis – essay writing is a skill you need to have. Your academic performance depends on it.
Now, learning to write perfect essays can be a daunting task – especially if you lack experience in academic writing. It’s not something that can be taught overnight. However, with some guidance, you can start improving pretty quickly.
In this article, we’ll provide you with some tips on essay writing to help you enhance your academic performance.
So without any further ado, let’s get right to the bottom of it!
Understand the essay topic
Before you start writing, make sure you’ve understood the essay topic properly. Conduct some basic research so you can formulate an outline and decide what to focus on. Come up with a hypothesis you’ll prove (or disprove) throughout your research.
If you make wrong assumptions about the topic, your entire outline won’t be of much use to you later on. Therefore, doing some basic research on the topic (the in-depth studying comes later) is of the utmost importance for the quality of your essay.
After you’ve understood the basic implications of the topic in question, you’ll be able to conceptualize a good outline for your essay. This will help you write faster and more coherently – you’ll notice the results very quickly after you start applying it.
Pay attention to style and grammar
Now, we’re not saying you have poor grammar, but more often than not, mistakes can happen. When it comes to essay-writing, these mistakes can cost you your grade – something you certainly want to avoid. Make sure you keep this in mind at all times. Additionally, don’t forget to proofread everything (we’ll talk about that a bit more later on).
Besides proper grammar, academic work requires a specific writing style. It needs to be completely objective, so stay away from personal statements (unless the nature of the essay requires you to share your personal ideas and feelings, which is rare). We advise you to read a couple of academic papers to get a better idea of what this specific style of writing encompasses. If you can access your professor’s published work, it’s probably the best place to start.
Other than that, if you’re really struggling with your essay-writing skills, you could always seek some professional help. As noted at top20writingservices.com, there are many quality essay writing services you can take advantage of – just make sure you pick the right one.
Brainstorm ideas and concepts you want to incorporate in your essay
Many essay topics can be quite vast. In those cases, you’ll need to brainstorm some ideas and concepts to keep as focal points throughout your essay. Don’t stray away from those, as they’ll make your research much easier.
Once you’ve decided on a hypothesis (a statement you’ll be discussing in your essay), it’s time to compile relevant literature. In other words, this will help you start your research, which is probably the hardest part of writing an essay.
Either way, essays can take up a lot of your grade – if you don’t know how to write them, you’re probably risking failing the class. To make matters worse for you, as you continue with your education, the essay requirements will just become more complex. So, the earlier you start learning academic writing, the more success you’ll have in your studies.
Transitions are important
Transitioning between paragraphs can be difficult at times, but doing it properly is of the utmost importance. It keeps your essay coherent and readable, which is something you’ll want to achieve at all costs.
Make sure you use proper transitions between paragraphs. Good examples include:
- To put it briefly…
- Furthermore…
- By contrast…
- Following the research of…
- Thus to summarize…
- As a result of…
- Author(reference) suggests that…
- In spite of…
You get the gist – transitions are useful and important, so don’t forget to use them to connect different paragraphs in your essay.
References and literature
One of the things that are strictly forbidden in academic writing is plagiarism – if you leave even the smallest paragraph of your work without its respective source, you’re up for an unpleasant surprise. It’s every author’s worst nightmare.
The only way to avoid being accused of plagiarism in your work is by being mindful of your sources. Make sure you give credit where credit is due when you’re citing other people’s work.
Now, this stands true even if you’re not directly quoting another author. If it’s not your idea (you’ve read it somewhere) it needs to be cited properly. Even if your professor doesn’t check for plagiarism, using citations and references makes your examples a bit more convincing and shows you’ve done your homework.
Proofread as many times as possible
You shouldn’t be proofreading your work only after you finish it. Instead, this should be done consistently throughout your writing process. It’s the best way to ensure you’re not overlooking any mistakes or inconsistencies in your logic.
We recommend proofreading your work after every section or subtitle. Read your last couple of paragraphs and then read the entire essay from the beginning. If there are any errors in your writing, you’ll quickly be able to fix them.
Conclusions are important
Writing a convincing conclusion to your essay is of the utmost importance.
Think about it this way – you’ve been watching a TV show for years. It’s brilliantly written – you’re invested in the characters, the story, and the visuals. However, the series finale rolls – and you’re now disappointed. Nothing makes sense, every character seems to be, well, out of character, the story’s conclusion is illogical, they’re suddenly using the cheapest possible CGI…All of this would leave a bad taste in your mouth, now, wouldn’t it? It’s almost like nothing that happened before that disastrous ending ever mattered, right?
The same logic can be applied to essay writing. If your conclusion is weak or illogical, the reader’s impression of your work so far (no matter how good it is) will be ruined.
So, make sure you put some extra effort into writing your conclusions – it’s the best way to reach academic success.
