We all wish to write like professional essay writers. However, essay writing presents a unique challenge to students. It’s relatively common for students to be inundated with essay writing assignments in their academic lives. That’s because essays form a part of the curriculum at every academic level, from high school to university.
Writing a good essay is an essential skill that demonstrates knowledge, comprehension, and critical thinking. Essay writing serves you well even in your professional life. Hence, learning how to craft excellent essays can be a boon for you.
To avoid writing generic essays, you must understand the fundamentals of essay writing. This article will provide you with helpful essay writing tips that will enhance your speed and writing ability. With these techniques, any writing task will be a piece of cake for you.
Top essay writing tips to utilize in your essay
1. Understand the assignment at hand:
The biggest blunder you can commit when writing an essay is to start without adequately understanding the requirements. Essays are of different types, and each requires a different approach. You must understand what is asked of you before you begin the writing process. For example, you cannot present an argumentative essay when the requirement is that of an expository one.
We recommend that you clearly understand the demands of the essay. Moreover, figure out the scope of work well before you start the writing process. You need to have a clear picture of how to present the essay. You must analyse whether you should compare and contrast two ideas, explain a phenomenon, or persuade the reader of your view on a subject matter.
Your entire essay revolves around your understanding of the topic. From research to formatting styles and sentence structure, everything must be in a seamless flow. The content you include in the article must be relevant to the central theme at all costs. You must evaluate all aspects of the research paper and discuss the critical points logically.
Here are key points to consider when you are analysing the essay:
1. Identify the keywords in the research question.
2. Understand the process words.
3. Recognize the topic of the question.
4. Understand the limitations of the question.
5. Deeply analyse the topic.
2. Plan and organize your schedule:
While understanding the essay topic and requirements is essential, assigning adequate time to write the content is equally critical. If you don’t plan ahead, you always run the risk of running out of time and missing the deadline. And as we all know; missing deadlines is equal to bad grades.
From topic selection and writing to text citation and proofreading, you must set a specific time for each task. Setting deadlines for yourself ensures that you will not be overwhelmed with work right before your due date. It’s also crucial to leave sometime between writing your initial draft and proofreading the final copy.
3. Read extensively:
Reading is a brilliant way to gain knowledge and improve your writing skills. When you read books or other literature extensively, you shape and develop your writing style. To better understand different writing styles, you must cover as many genres and disciplines as possible.
We suggest that you don’t limit yourself to online databases and books. You can refer to broadsheet newspapers, online publications, blogs, and journals to grow your knowledge.
It’s essential that you dissect and analyse the writers’ opinions critically. You must note whether the writing is persuasive or argumentative enough. You can learn from top writers and pick up their techniques to use in your essays.
4. Develop your vocabulary and terminology:
The primary characteristic of all good essays is the use of vocabulary. An extensive writing vocabulary is essential to be a good essay writer. A robust vocabulary facilitates precise, accurate writing.
Advanced vocabulary helps writers express their thoughts and opinions clearly. Thus, developing your lexicon is essential to improve your essay writing skills. When you use advanced terminology and vocabulary in your essays, you display a higher level of intelligence and comprehension.
Moreover, these words help make your writing more persuasive and authoritative. Effective use of vocabulary comes with practice. So, remember that it’s better to use common words correctly than to misuse complex words.
Learning new vocabulary is a continuous process that never ends. Here are some excellent methods to develop your vocabulary and learn new terminology-
1. Build a reading habit.
2. Use a dictionary and thesaurus.
3. Subscribe to an online “word of the day” feed.
4. Play word games like Scrabble, Crosswords, and Boggle.
5. Read the newspaper daily.
6. Try using new words in conversations.
5. Be critical:
Critical thinking is of significant consequence in essay writing. When you are given a specific topic, you must critically analyse the theories, arguments, evidence, and research associated with the topic. As the author, you must judge the credibility of the research material and its sources. Moreover, you must learn to differentiate between facts, opinions, and hypotheses.
Even when reading other authors’ works, don’t just read the material but critically analyse them. The marker of excellent essay writing is not just summarizing previously published studies. It’s more about offering genuine critique that helps identify gaps in research or missed opportunities.
6. Pay attention to structure, flow, grammar, and tone of voice:
The essay structure, flow, and tone of voice are crucial in how the audience perceives your work. You can create a riveting reading experience when all these three elements are in sync. How you present your arguments is just as critical as the argument itself. If you fail to provide coherent information, you won’t attract the attention of the readers.
You need to structure your arguments and evidence logically. Furthermore, you need to employ the use of long and short sentences to keep the content interesting. You must use transition phrases to connect the different paragraphs in your essay.
Your responsibility is to ensure that the audience doesn’t have to read any sentence more than once. Hence, it’s essential to keep the text concise and clear.
Additionally, effective use of punctuation and syntax adds more conviction to your writing. So, ensure that your essay has proper grammar, punctuation, and syntax. There’s nothing worse than a text riddled with errors.
Coming to tonality, keep the essay’s tone of voice formal. A casual tone is usually not appropriate for academic writing. Your sentences should be in active voice rather than passive voice.
You must adopt a confident tone to make your writing more persuasive. A confident tone prevents the writing from being bland.
Conclusion
Constant practice is vital to upskill your essay writing skills. Planning, preparation, and research are crucial steps that must never be skipped. Plan your routine to ensure that you have ample time to write, edit, and proofread your essay.
Remember that reading more is critical to improving and developing your personal writing style. So, do expand your reading list to include diverse writers, genres, disciplines, and formats. We hope these essay writing tips and techniques will help you write better academic essays in the future.