Essay Writing Tips

Students both in their school and higher education come across countless essay prompts that they have to understand and deliver essays on. Explore this guide to know the details about the analytical essay example and get good grades in your subject. As the students write their essays, they learn through trial and error the mistakes they have made and so they try to do away with these mistakes; in doing so they improve their essay writing bit by bit.

However, some mistakes are obvious— such as mistakes in writing— while others are not. The essay writer, for example, usually can’t easily tell how the essay process affects his/her writing. Only through outside help or through tinkering with the process, can the student change the process for the better.

Cursorily reading the prompt

Students tend to go over the prompt quickly in their hurry to get on with the essay writing. The prompt needs close attention and the students should dissect the prompt question and scrutinize it for its several parts: Subject matter, subject parameters, and task words. This information will tell you what type of academic writing you will produce, and what the subject of the essay is. Get the essay wrong and you might end up with the wrong essay.

Writing without scheduling

Expert writers schedule not only the main parts of the writing but also schedule each part separately. As you gain experience in the essay writing and get to know your writing speed, your strengths, and your weaknesses, you will be able to schedule your essay perfectly.

Schedule your essay from the prewriting processes to the post- writing ones. Make sure that you stick to a schedule during the research as many have a tendency to drown into the research information, taking up extra time. The essay draft should be completed earlier to allow for enough time to review and edit the essay.

Skipping past brainstorming
Brainstorming is essential to essay writing and diving straight into the essay, no matter how much you know about the topic, is a bad tactic. You have to understand that brainstorming is there to help you arrange the ideas and the connections that are in your head, prior to the writing; such that your mind will be free to think and write critically rather than expending energy in trying to remember ideas and their relationships.

Getting information from popular sources

While it was okay to use information from popular sources in the essays that you wrote in middle school or higher, in advanced academic essays— such as those in high school and college writing—the teacher expects you to consult scholarly sources in your writing.

Popular sources might have great ideas and opinions, but the information is unreliable, as long as they are not produced by an expert in the field or backed by strong scholarly evidence. Teachers and instructors, therefore, advise students to stick to scholarly research papers and academic articles for their essays. If you are confused about the authenticity of a source, you can always check the references or consult your teacher for help.

Researching ahead of brainstorming

The instructors and teachers grading your essays love nothing better than original ideas, as the majority of the essays usually churn up ideas and arguments already well known and out there. People who think critically, question the content, and challenge his/her opinions, tend to come up with unique ideas.  Writing a high-quality and successful persuasive essay examples are just as much about avoiding doing certain things as it is about following certain principles. These unique ideas come up during the brainstorming process, where you think about the topic at hand without being in any way influenced by the ideas and opinions of others.

Researching ahead of brainstorming fills your mind up with ideas of others such that you barely can think of any new ones. It is therefore important to brainstorm ahead of researching.

Related Resources:

Top 5 Helpful Tips To Improve Your Essay Writing

The Four Main Types of Essay | Quick Guide with Examples

Step by Step Guide to Writing an Essay