An Ultimate Essay Writing Guide for Students
High school and college students have to write a lot of essays and other papers in their academic years. Writing academic essays means coming up with a coherent set of ideas that develops into a solid argument.
Sitting down to prepare an essay can be a very daunting task at any academic level. Coming up with an effective piece of writing requires a strong combination of planning, research, analysis, writing, and revising.
Full Description
The Essay Writing Process
The essay writing process consists of the following stages:
- Preparation
- Writing
- Revision
Preparation
An essay writing is based on original research, analysis, and interpretation from the author. It can be a bit of an overwhelming task to start with. That’s why here is a step by step guide of the preparation stage of an essay that you can follow.
Understanding the Assignment
To complete an essay successfully, a student needs to gain a thorough understanding of the topic, requirements, and assignment instructions. Here are some tips that can help:
- Read it a number of times and look for anything confusing that you might need to clarify with your instructor.
- Identify the purpose of your assignment, length specification, required format, and the method of submission.
Choose a Topic
There are several ways to come up with an idea for your essay. Whether you prefer to brainstorm ideas or talking help from your professor on how to decide on a topic.
You can also try freewriting to choose a topic for your essay. It involves taking a broad topic idea and writing on it until you identify anything relevant that could be interesting.
Once you have decided on the main idea, narrow it down and select the topic that is:
- Interesting
- Original
- Possible to research
- Fulfills your assignment requirements
Conduct Initial Research
After deciding on the topic, conduct initial research. For this purpose, you can use different sources which include hooks, journals, and reliable websites. In this way, you will not miss any important information that might be helpful to establish your point.
Writing
At this stage, you are required to write your main argument in the introduction, develop and explain in the body section, and conclude the information in the final paragraph.
Revise and Edit
Editing the document approximately takes as much time as producing the first draft of the essay. The purpose of editing is to ensure that the essay is as accurate as possible by completing all the outlined tasks.
Some writers edit the document as they write. Some writers prefer to save the editing process once they are done with the writing. No matter what option of editing you choose to revise your document, consider the following:
- Make sure the essay completes every task that you have mentioned in the outline.
- Check for the logical connection between paragraphs and sections.
- Is there a topic sentence in each body paragraph?
- Do the supporting details fit the topic sentence?
- Look for redundancies in phrases, clauses, and sentences. If the sequence of words is repeating information, remove it.
- Make sure to provide evidence from credible and reliable sources.
- Make sure you have provided clear transitions to help your readers follow you along the path of your thoughts.
Once you are done through the above list, leave the document for a day or two. After that, proofread the entire paper for the final time. In this way, you can look at the paper with a new perspective by taking a break of a few days.
Different Types of Essays
The content and length for each type may vary depending upon the subject, level of difficulty, and specific course.
However, all essays share the same goal of persuading readers of a particular position through solid arguments based on evidence.
Here are the following types of essays you will encounter during your studies:
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