Simple essay writing tips to help students write better essays and have good grades
Sometimes, writing an essay can be really intimidating due to lot of researches to be done and most likely at the end of writing the essay, it might even result in a bad grade which makes student sad or unhappy.
In this post I will be discussing some of the tips that can really impact your essay writing as a student because, to be frank am just a student like you and have been in your shoe too â which means this has most of the tips I have learnt along the way of me trying to write my own essay.
What is an essay writing?
Basically an essay writing involves a writing that is based upon your ideas and also the ideas you acquired (mostly through researches) with a proof that you understand the context of the essay or the subject.
Part 1
Read and understand the context of the essay
This is obvious because you canât really do something great or good if you donât understand the context of essay or what the essay requested that you write on.
Google similar essay and draft things out
Make sure even before researching on the topic of the essay to look for past essays or similar ones so you will be able to get the overview of what you need to write.
Plan and make research
After finding similar essays or going through some written essays, it is time to start planning and researching to know what you need and not need to include in the essay.
While making research, make sure to take note of all the sources where you are getting the informations from so when it is time to make citation or reference, it will be easy.
Note
Another thing to note is not to overdo the research so you wonât end up not meeting the deadline or doing something good because most time done is better than perfect.
Part 2
Start with a hook
When setting out to write an essay, make sure that the introduction part of the essay contains a hook. i.e. start with a sentence that makes the reader or the essay aggregators to go âawwâ and are motivated to want to read more of your writing.
How to start with hook
Hooks are of different types and can contain known facts, definitions or statistics. For example, if the essay question says discuss on the âImpacts of 4G to the societyâ.
First you can start off by saying â4G which is termed the fourth generation is among the fastest wireless technology that has increased the growth rate of businesses in Mexico to approximately 200%.
As you can see, this introduction sentence contains
- A slight definition â â4G which is termed fourth generationâ
- Amazing fact about it â âfastest wireless technologyâ
- Statistics â âMexico business growth rate is approximately 200%â
Using hooks like this can really grab the readerâs attention to wanting to read more.
If the essay need to contain an abstract, make sure it contains a hook also because an abstract is written at the end of an essay (i.e. after you have done making all researches and logically presenting your point).
Thatâs why an abstract is called a comprehensive summary of the whole essay and it is placed before the introduction part of the essay which means a great hook in an abstract of an essay will result to reader going further to read the introduction part.
An example of an abstract using the previous essay topic is
Quote
The impacts of 4G to the society is mind blowing due to the fact that it has make businesses to grow, expand exponentially and has even provided more business opportunity for the unemployed graduates.
The overall point here is to always use a hook when starting off an essay writing.
Give more facts and points
After writing a good introduction, the body section is the next important part of an essay which mostly contains more explanation and elaboration on the easy topic.
It mostly has about 2 â 3 paragraphs and can be merged with the introduction part.
Write a good conclusion
The conclusion part needs not to explain or start anything new rather, should roundup everything that you have just written.
So make sure your conclusion is good enough because thatâs what will make the reader to always remember or not forget your writing.
Reference it out
If the essay requires a reference, try to write them out using either APA or MLA format.
Some DOâs and DONâTs when writing an essay
Express your thoughts well and logically -
When writing an essay, do your best to express and explain every sentence in such a way that the readers of the essay will think and believe that you have done some research and understood what you are really writing about.Donât use personal pronouns in an essay. -
Try as much not to make yourself appear in the essay. i.e. instead of saying,I will explain the impacts of 4G to the society rather use the sentence, this essay put on a position to discussing the impacts of 4G to the society. Do you see how abstractive you have become in the essay.
Use simple words -
This is very important in every writings that you will be doing throughout your career because, the goal is to impact more minds than trying to use difficult or hard words that is for only professionals.Use active voice and not passive voice -
- For example twitter was banned in Nigeria by its president â passive voice
- The president of Nigeria banned twitter - active voice
As you can see, using an active voice reduce the sentence length, make the sentence a lot more effective and easier to understand.
Use quotation and always remember to make citation by crediting the author in the reference section or read more on how to make great citation.
Part 3
Proofread your work
When you are done doing some research and putting things together using software like Microsoft word.
It is high time to share what you have written with great minds that you trust so that the errors that you couldnât figure out can be identified.
Preferably, try to print out about 2 -3 copies and share it with them.
After collecting the papers back, try as much to make some necessary adjustment to your essay.
Next is to use, a grammar checker to help you remove more errors like grammatically error, missing punctuation marks and the like.
Also you have to check for plagiarism to make sure your content is unique and has valuable information that is not available elsewhere. Here are the tools I use to check for errors.
The reason I use more than one tool is because these softwareâs, are still not perfect so running your write up on different softwareâs might make your essay flawless.
After you have done all this, have faith in God and believe in your hard work because, the reality here is that essays are subjective since, even if you write an essay, to some people it might be perfect while to others, it might be good or poor.
