The Best Way to Write A Good English Essay

Learning a foreign language can be quite an overwhelming experience, especially if it is English, which is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Several people are under the impression that learning to read and speak English is enough. What they do not realise is that written English skills are also quite a vital asset that you need to have. The ability to write good English can be immensely helpful in everything, from improving your academics to boosting your career prospects. If you can write in English, that not only allows you to communicate and express yourself better in the globalised world that we live in today, but it also makes you feel much more confident. Make sure that you pursue an online spoken English course from a reputed institute.

As children, the first piece of writing that we are introduced to is an essay. If you know how to write an English essay, it is quite a useful skill that will take you through high school, college, and your work life. I can write different types of essays, starting from the basic topics to admission essays, theses, and dissertations, as well as employment-related essays. Therefore, if your child is struggling with essay writing, you should first check out the important tips that will help you write a good essay.

Essays are quite common in middle school, high school, and college. You might even have to write essays in the business world. An essay is defined as a short piece of writing that allows you to express your opinion and also allows you to express the opinion of the writer.

Why Do Students Like to Write Essays?

It is quite difficult to define the reasons why some students are so overwhelmed by writing essays. It is, however, true that essay writing is a skill that can pay you dividends throughout your academic career and even beyond that. You might also find out some surprising ways in which writing essays can transform your academic as well as your professional performance for years to come. Therefore, to start examining the benefits of essay writing, it is first essential for you to understand why students are asked to write essays and why they have to write so many essays.

Why Are Students Asked to Write So Many Essays During Their College Days?

In the past, students mostly wrote brief essays called themes, and through these types of essays, they explained their understanding of the topics. As time passed, the essays became much longer. The question here is: why?

One of the major reasons why college students have to write so many essays is that there is too much information available on the internet. As a result, students can’t memorise all of them as well as they could in the last decade. This is because a lot of information has been offloaded to the internet. In the past, students had to memorise all the important facts of a particular topic, and they had to demonstrate what they had learned by repeating those facts in multiple-choice and short-answer tests. With the rise of search engines, students are now able to look up any fact at any time. Since the year 2000, the need to memorise information has been reduced to a great extent. Consequently, college courses have also moved away from memorization towards higher-level skills. But analytical skills cannot be easily tested in a multiple-choice or short-answer format. Consequently, essays have become a much more powerful and ubiquitous way to teach and evaluate your analytical skills.

There is also another reason why essays have become so popular. It is their accessibility. Most colleges and universities follow accessibility policies that require assignments to be accessible to students with different kinds of abilities. The assignments also include elements that might require accommodations, such as audio or video elements. These assignments can also create extra work for the instructors, who must provide alternative assignments as well as additional grading rubrics. Since essays are considered universally accessible, they are the default choice for most of the course assignments. The result of this is that the students are writing more essays than ever. At times, they have to write somewhere between two and five per week.

What Do Essays Teach?

Essays teach students to think critically and formulate powerful arguments supported by powerful facts, evidence, and reason. Since the essay is a long-form and sustained piece of writing, it therefore requires a depth of argumentation that short answers do not require. That kind of sustained effort at crafting a coherent argument teaches the students the art of organising and developing their thoughts in a way that will clearly and effectively transmit their ideas to their readers most understandably and convincingly. The most important element of any essay is what the reader takes from it. Therefore, we can sum up by saying that the act of writing an essay is the act of communicating your thoughts to the audience.

Essay writing also teaches some very important skills in the field of writing. For example, the length of an essay helps the students develop their understanding of the structure of an organisation. This includes the art of using transitions to link thoughts together. Transitions are especially essential because they show how one thought connects to another, like which incident happened before and which incident followed it. This is a transferable skill that will be important for most communications, like presentations, that you might have to do in the future.

The essays also teach students how to engage themselves in research to support their ideas with facts and evidence. The short answers might just require a personal opinion or a single fact. On the other hand, the essay requires a student to gather and synthesise information from different sources and use that information to support an argument. The ability to identify credible sources, extract information from them, and finally use that information to develop a strong argument is a transferable skill. Having this skill will prove beneficial for the students in their professional lives. Essays teach students how to think.

Finally, the students are also able to improve their mechanical writing skills, which include grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, etc., through essays. These skills are also quite important to master because they are commonly used in all written forms of communication. Employers often cite good written communication skills as one of the most important skills for potential employees, and many employers in recent surveys have also expressed dissatisfaction with the level of writing skills that applicants demonstrate. If you can demonstrate high-quality writing skills, you can also experience an advantage over others in job applications.

What Are the Things That An Essay Should Include?

There are three main sections that you should focus on when writing an essay: the introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction and the conclusion have one paragraph each, and the number of paragraphs in the body would depend on the length of the essay.

Introduction

The principal purpose of the introduction is to present your position on the issue at hand. The effective introductory paragraphs are, however, much more than that. Before you even get to this thesis statement, let us understand it with the help of an example. The essay must begin with a “hook” that grabs the attention of the readers and compels them to read on. Some of the best examples of effective hooks include relevant quotations like “no man is an island” or surprising statistics like “three out of four doctors report that…”

Sentences like these will hook the attention of the reader, and they will be more interested in moving on to the thesis. The thesis should be in one sentence that clearly explains your position. This should not leave any doubt in the mind of the reader about which side you are on from the very start of the essay.

After the thesis or the introduction, you should provide a mini-outline that previews the examples that you will have to use to support your thesis in the rest of the essay. Not only does this tell the reader what to expect in the paragraphs to come, but it also gives them a clearer idea of what the essay is all about.

Lastly, if you design the last sentence this way, it has the added advantage of seamlessly moving the reader to the first paragraph of the body of the essay. Thus, it is quite clear that the basic introduction need not be more than three or four sentences in length. If you find that it is too long, it would be better for you to edit it a little.

With the help of the introduction, you should introduce your essay and also address the essay prompt question directly. You should use words that are similar to the question. You should explain exactly what you are trying to prove and also define the terms or concepts that might be important. The introduction should not be long. It should just have a few sentences at par with the length of the essay. It should prepare the reader for what they can expect. It will be good if you do not get into too much depth, because you will do so in the rest of the essay.

At times, it can also be quite helpful to write the introduction at the end. This is because the argument will change and develop as you write it. Once you have written the whole thing, it should be easier for you to introduce it.

Body Content

This section should be split into paragraphs. Each of these paragraphs should have a different part of your argument that should be written clearly and concisely. The paragraphs that are there in the middle are called the body paragraphs. The main purpose of a body paragraph is to spell out the examples that support your thesis. For the first body paragraph, you should use your strongest argument or the most significant example to date; some other more obvious beginning point is required. The first sentence of this paragraph should consist of the topic sentence of the paragraph. This sentence should relate to the examples that are listed in the mini-outline of the introductory paragraph.

Each paragraph is a new step. This will help your reader understand what you are trying to prove. As a result, this part of the essay must be very well planned and continued most logically and understandably. Here, you should be able to support your points with details, quotes, examples, or other evidence. You should also be able to explain why these points confirm your argument.

You should keep the information relevant. Do not try to veer off the subject. Use transition words such as “furthermore”, “on the other hand,” etc. throughout all the paragraphs that will signal the beginning of a new argument. You should also write an essay that is easier to follow. A well-thought-out argument will ensure that it addresses all the possible counterarguments. This will expose the reader to other ways of thinking and explain why yours is better.

Just a one-sentence body paragraph that cites the example of “George Washington” is not enough. Following this, there will be an effective essay that follows this topic sentence. Here, the topic sentence will be explained in detail to the reader. Here, the reader will be able to understand who or what an example is and, more importantly, why that example is relevant.

Even the most popular examples need context. For example, George Washington’s life was extremely complex. By using him as an example, do you intend to refer to his honesty, bravery, or the wooden teeth that he had? The reader needs to know this, and it is your job as an essay writer to paint the appropriate picture in front of your readers. To do this, it will be good to provide the reader with five or six relevant facts about life in general or about any particular event that you believe most clearly illustrates the point that you want to make.

Example of a Body Paragraph: Take the example of Thomas Edison. The famed American inventor rose to prominence in the late 19th century because of his successes. Here, it is also important to know that he felt that these successes were the result of his many failures. He did not succeed in his work on one of his most famous inventions, the lightbulb, on his first try. Rather, he did not even succeed for the 100th time. Rather, it took 1,000 more attempts to make the first incandescent bulb. He also says that all these failures helped him learn several things. He said that he did not fail 1000 times; rather, he learned 1000 ways in which that would not work. Thus Edison demonstrated both in thought and action how instructive his mistakes could be.

Conclusion (The Last Paragraph)

The conclusion is the final paragraph, where you can lay out your case. It is for this reason that it is considered the most important part of the essay. This can be just a few sentences long. This paragraph should be able to restate your essay topic and echo the arguments that have been presented in your introduction without restating them. This ties the essay together in a good way. This also reinforces the points that you have mentioned in the text. Conclusions are sometimes the most difficult part of the essay, as you can’t simply copy what you have already mentioned. Here, you will have to sum up to your audience the major points that you have made and leave them with something to think about once they have read the entire essay.

Although the conclusion paragraph comes at the end of your essay, it is important for this not to be an afterthought. Since this is the final paragraph, it represents your last chance to make your case. Therefore, you need to follow an extremely rigid format.

The conclusion should be a second introduction. This is because it does contain several features. While it does not need to be too long, four well-crafted sentences should be enough. This can make or break an essay. You should use a variety of words in the body paragraphs. It is also acceptable to use some of the original languages that you used in the introduction. This also ties it nicely to the second key element of the conclusion: a brief where just two or three words are enough, a review of the three main points from the body of the essay. Once you have done all that, the final element and final sentence in your essay should be a global statement or a call to action. This gives the reader signals that the discussion has come to an end. In the end, one thing is clear: mistakes can improve us much more than successes. Writing an essay allows you to display your knowledge. It is also important for you to get the structure right. In case you are not sure about how to put your essay together, it would be good for you to first understand how to write a good essay.

Transitions

You might have noticed the fact that, though the above paragraph aligns quite closely with the provided outline, there is one exception to it: the first few words. These words are some of the best examples of transitional phrases. Some of the other transitional phrases include “moreover,” “furthermore,” “but also” “by contrast” and “on the other hand”. Using these will help you write a good essay.

Transitional phrases are useful. This is because these show the reader where one section ends and another begins. It might also be quite helpful to see them as the written equivalent of the kinds of spoken cues that are used in formal speeches to signal the end of one set of ideas and the beginning of another. As a result, they also lead the reader from one section of the paragraph to another.

To further explain this, consider the second body paragraph of our example essay:

Similarly, we are all like Edison in our own way. Irrespective of whether we are learning to ride a bike, drive a car, cook something, or bake a cake, we learn from our mistakes. It is not possible to go from training wheels to a marathon in just a single day, but these early experiences or mistakes can help us improve our performance over time. You need to understand that you will never learn to bake a cake without breaking a few eggs. Similarly, we learn by doing, and doing inevitably means that you are bound to make mistakes. This example provides another example of an effective body paragraph and also illustrates how transitional phrases can be used to distinguish between them.

Types of Essays

Essays are long-form writing assignments. These persuade or inform a reader about a particular topic. You need to know the type of essay to use that will best deliver your message to the readers. You might also use an essay that will help you convince readers to take your side, explore an abstract topic, or even try to evoke an emotional response. Some of the different types of essays include:

Narrative Essays

Narrative essays are personal essays that tell stories. They also allow you to exercise creativity and imagination. You can also base them on a particular prompt. For example, the first time you drove a car by yourself, or a prompt that is a little more open-minded, like a time you overcame a fear. You might submit a narrative essay, usually called a personal statement, for college or graduate school applications.

You can also use literary techniques in narrative essays that will help you create an essay that reads like fiction. To do this, you will first have to consider using metaphors, analogies, alliteration, imagery, and dialogue. A narrative essay generally has an opening that gets the attention of the reader and provides enough background information to help you create a sensible story. A conclusion has to be added that will also help you summarise the main point of your essay or reiterate your goals. For example, if you are writing a narrative essay for a job application, you will have to conclude by summarising how your experience solidified why you chose the particular profession.

Descriptive Essays

Descriptive essays will provide you with a detailed description of your subject. This might be a person, place, thing, or event. When you write these types of essays, you will have to be more creative in your approach. This is similar to the narrative essay. Unlike narrative essays, which provide a complete story, descriptive essays also focus on a particular subject.

When you are writing a descriptive essay, you need to consider including vivid imagery and also incorporating certain actions, thoughts, sensory details, and emotions that will immerse the readers rather than simply explaining the situation or events. You can also do this by using strong action verbs and unique, descriptive adjectives. This can also make your writing much more engaging and thereby help the reader feel much more involved and connected to your essay and its characters.

Expository Essays

Expository essays are those where you will have to explain a topic neutrally. Writers also use expository essays that help demonstrate their knowledge or expertise in a particular field. Teachers also assign expository essays to test the students’ understanding of a particular topic. These essays often avoid emotion or opinion and rather focus on factual information. For instance, if you are writing about environmental conservation, it will be good for you to avoid saying that someone should do something or take a stance on any controversial issue. Expository essays can take different formats, but in most cases they have:

an introduction with a thesis statement that explains exactly what the essay will discuss.
The body will discuss in detail the facts of the subject, often citing sources.
a conclusion that will summarise some of the main points.

Definition Essays

Definition essays are the type of expository essays that define a term or idea. These essays typically examine very complex or abstract topics and also provide in-depth analysis as well as explanations. For instance, a definition essay might discuss the meaning of quantum physics. Definition essays are mostly common in academic and research settings.

Process essays are also a variety of expository essays. These describe the process of doing something or how something works. To maintain clarity and organisation, you should write a process essay in chronological order. Process essays, in most instances, contain the following elements:

Introduction: Here, you will introduce the process that you will describe.
Body: This will include paragraphs that describe each step in chronological order. Consider using transition words. These help you understand where you are in the process.
Conclusion: Here, we will summaries the process that will help the readers remember the most important idea of the document.

Compare and Contrast Essays

Compare and contrast essays will discuss two main subjects and detail the similarities as well as the differences between them. These essays include at least one part of the introduction where the similarities of the subject are explained, at least one paragraph that discusses differences, and finally a conclusion. Compare-and-contrast essays are quite common in academic settings. One of the best examples of a compare-and-contrast essay describes the similarities as well as the differences between bees and wasps.

Argumentative Essays

Argumentative essays are those that try to convince the reader to take a certain side based on the information that is provided by the writer. Argumentative essays are the ones that rely on facts rather than emotion to draw the attention of the readers. For instance, an argumentative essay might discuss why organisations should offer wellness packages as part of their benefits plan. The essay might also incorporate research about how regular exercise increases productivity and how people who eat well and work out take much fewer sick days.

Argumentative essays should not be written in first- or second-person statements. Rather, they support one side of an argument and might even argue against the other side using objective information. You can also use phrases like “Research suggests” to present the facts that will support your argument.

Persuasive Essays

These are essays that aim to persuade readers to have an opinion or take a side using certain facts and emotional appeals. To support an argument or cause, these persuasive essays might include moral and emotional reasoning that will help them connect with the reader.

For example, a persuasive essay about the previous topic of companies that include wellness packages in employee benefits might include appeals to the employers’ satisfaction with providing an extra perk to the employees. It could also discuss the responsibility of the employer to ensure their employees have access to certain features that keep them healthy or how excited and grateful employees are for the new benefits.

Cause and Effect Essays

The cause-and-effect essays will discuss in detail why certain events or situations led to other events. The writers create a clear connection between the two sets of events or circumstances and also explain what features of the initiating event created the subsequent incidents. Therefore, these essays state facts, and there are no subjective opinions expressed here. A cause-and-effect essay might examine how the scientific discoveries of Charles Darwin led to the origin of new theories of social science.

Critical Essays

Critical essays provide an in-depth analysis of a particular topic. They can critique paintings, movies, plays, books, or restaurants. Many college courses, especially literature and humanities courses, require students to write these sorts of critical essays as a way to test their ability. These types of essays help students think critically and identify evidence from specific works that validates their observations. For instance, in a movie review, a writer could write about a movie that uses boring dialogue. They can then support that observation by citing some specific lines from the film.

How to Choose a Good Essay Topic?

In writing, there is nothing more important than choosing an essay topic. The topic idea behind the essay is the backbone of your paper. So, if it is weak, it will be extremely difficult for you to succeed. The best topic ideas are those that you are very passionate about. If you do not care about your subject, you will find it very difficult to write an essay. On the other hand, if the topic is something that you truly enjoy, writing it will be quite easy. Another point that you will have to consider when choosing your essay topic idea is your audience. If your audience has little or almost no knowledge of a certain topic, then you should not select it. You should consider omitting very technical and specialised topics. Make sure that you choose a topic that is interesting and exciting. Try to put yourself in your reader’s shoes: What is it that you would want to learn about?

Cause and Effect Essay Topics

Understanding Panic attacks and the causes
Does social media improve people’s communication skills?

Good Argumentative Essay Topics

Should everyone engage themselves in volunteering and charity?
Does the press get into the private lives of popular people?

Narrative Essay Topics

My most recent travel experience
Death of a friend or relative that influenced you greatly

Research Essay Topics

Pesticides and how they influence us
Alternative medicine vs. traditional medicine

Informative Essay Topics

The problems with getting pregnant at 16
The importance of protection during sex

Definition Essay Topics

What does power mean to you?
Cloning and its consequences for the human race

Descriptive Essay Topics

The most embarrassing situation in your life
Talk about an object that is very special to you.

Process Essay Topics

A place that is special to your heart
Your favourite time of the year

Good Persuasive Essay Topics

Electronic book readers vs. physical books
UK English vs. American English: differences and similarities

Controversial Argumentative Essay Topics

Does bullying make people stronger?
Is it necessary for small children to have access to smartphones and tablets?

Funny Argumentative Essay Topics

What if teachers and students exchanged places?
Will our lives be different when we have flying cars?

How to Write an English Essay Perfectly?

Create A Word bank

First, you will have to choose a topic and write a thesis. For example, if your topic is reading, your thesis might be something like “Reading makes you knowledgeable.”

Once you have a thesis, you will have to think about your main topic, and then you will have to find words that relate to it in several ways. Then, you will have to diversify your list to include words that are not very closely related to your main topic.

For the example that has been mentioned above, your primary list might include certain words like “books,” reading,” and “knowledgeable.” Your other “Diversified” list might include “Harry Potter,” “reading by a fire,” etc. This process will help you expand your vocabulary over time. When you use these words while writing, it will make your essay appear much more energetic, vibrant, and colourful.

Act Like a Researcher

When you are first assigned a particular topic, you will have to explore the possible options for your thesis. Here, you need to ask questions. You should get a bit curious. The more questions you ask before you start writing, the more information you will have that you will be able to include in the essay.

A strong essay covers a lot of content in a point format. This process of acting like a reporter will give you some valuable quotes, resources, and vocabulary, with the help of which you will be able to start the process of writing.

For instance, if you’re writing about a new diet plan, you should come up with questions like, “Who is the best candidate for this particular diet plan?” “How can someone start?” and “What is the most difficult part of this diet plan?”

Read Backwards

If you are in the process of learning English, you have an advantage. Several native speakers have learned improper grammar from the start. It will be difficult for them to undo the damage by unlearning whatever they have learned their entire lives.

As you learn the English language, you need to make a serious effort to practise your grammar and sentence structure. One way to spot improper grammar in your English writing is to read each sentence backwards, which means that you should start with the last word and end with the first word. This way, you are not fooled by how the words sound when you read them in your head.

Now, you will also have to check if everything is in the correct tense—past, present, and future—or not. For example, if you are writing about plurals, then are the possessive nouns plural? Are the apostrophes in the correct places? Do all the sentences end with a punctuation mark like a period, question mark, or exclamation point? Reading the text backwards also helps you focus on the rules of grammar rather than the flow of the sentence.

Use a Dictionary and an Online Thesaurus

You might have learned several fancy words while you were studying for an entrance exam. But before you start using them in academic essays, you need to be sure about what exactly they mean in the context of your essay. This is where the dictionary can play a very important role.

A thesaurus is quite a valuable tool that helps you when you are writing an essay. A thesaurus tells you synonyms, or words that have either the same or very similar meanings to the words that you look up to. It is also essential, as it can also add some volume to your essay and increase the impact of the words.

For example, if your topic of writing is cooking, you might have to use certain words like “stir” and “add” quite frequently. This repetition might get very boring for a reader. So, rather than constantly saying, “Add the onions” and “add the eggs,” a thesaurus will teach you to say things like “whisk in the eggs” or “gently fold in the onions.” This sounds much better and also makes your essay quite interesting.

The Visual Thesaurus is also a resource that works very similarly to the regular thesaurus, but it also shows you the connections between the words. For example, if you type in the word “stir,” you will immediately see a whole circle of other words that are connected to “stir” with lines. From there, you can click on any of the words that are there in the circle and then see all the words related to that particular word. This helps you find and learn new words quickly. This is also a lot of fun.

Combine or Shorten the Sentences

Once the essay is written, you will have to go back through it to see if there are sentences that are too long or too wordy. Break these sentences into two. If the sentences are too long, you will not be able to express your ideas clearly. If you want to write in any other language, you need to practise writing in creative ways, like blogging, writing fun poems, or texting a friend who speaks the language that you are learning every day.

Instead of writing this long and unclear sentence, you could also write it as

If you want to write in any other language, you need to practise creative writing regularly. For example, you could start writing a blog, create fun poems, or even text a friend.

You can also do the opposite with sentences that are too short.

You should look for sentences that are very closely related to one another. If it seems that the thoughts of two sentences are connected, you can combine them using a semicolon (;).

For example, the following sentences are very closely related to each other:

Learning to write in a different language can be quite a difficult task. This is especially true when you are getting started for the first time. It is for this reason that you need to practise every day.

Learning to write in another language can be difficult, especially when you’re first getting started, so daily practice will be helpful.

Get Your Essay Edited by a Fluent English speaker

Meet up with someone who is fluent in English or is at least able to speak English more fluently than you. This person will be able to edit your essay and point out any repetitive errors. If they find that you make certain mistakes too often, you will be able to watch them more closely when you write English essays in the future. This friend will also be able to point out any grammatical or spelling errors that you might have missed. If you do not have any friends who can speak English fluently, you can pursue an online English-speaking course. This course will allow you to improve your writing skills.

Review the Whole Essay, and Then Make Changes As Per the Requirement

Once you review your essay and highlight the errors, you can rewrite the entire thing. This step is essential. Make a note of the mistakes that you have made so that you can avoid them in the future. By making changes to the essay and keeping in mind the corrections that are required, you will be able to teach yourself how to write those sections properly. You will also be able to use correct grammar or spell each word correctly. This will ensure that you write the same essay correctly the next time you write it.

Use Online Apps

Some very good online resources are available. These can help you improve your writing. For instance, the Hemingway Editor can help you review your document and ensure that the essay does not have any confusing or wordy sentences. You can also rewrite these sentences to make them easier to understand.

If you need some practice with words and grammar but think that you will be able to learn better from audio and video, let me tell you that it can be challenging to improve your writing ability. One way that will help you improve your English writing skills is through a multimedia approach. Here, you will be able to use the language learning programme.

These programmes enhance authentic English web videos with interactive subtitles that will help your brain make the connection between written words and their contextual meanings. This is also combined with flashcards and personalised quizzes that will help you form English sentences that will sound much more natural to native speakers. Since several online resources are readily accessible, you can easily experiment with any of these options. You should try to opt for the ones that cater best to your learning needs.

Learning a new language is certainly a challenging task. There are so many small details that you need to learn. The process might take a lot of time and commitment. But with practice and study, you will surely improve. The best thing you can do is join an English-speaking class with a certificate.

Writing Style

You should use formal language. An essay is not a place where you can use slang, casual phrases, or contractions.
Write in the third person. You should use words like “he,” “she,” “they,” or “it” and never refer to yourself (“I,” me), and you should also never refer to the reader (“you”) directly. You can replace “I” with “one”.
Make sure that you write in active speech as opposed to passive. This is because the active voice is a much more powerful way to express your points. So, rather than writing, “The actor was given a lifetime achievement award”, you could write, “The actor earned a lifetime achievement award.”
Each paragraph should flow seamlessly into the next. Although it should be split into clear sections, similar to the way it has been mentioned above, the last sentence of each paragraph should relate to the first sentence of the next.

Tips to Write a Good English Essay

For some, writing an essay is as simple as sitting down in front of the computer and starting to type. But actually, there is a lot more planning that you will have to do before you can write an essay successfully. If you join English-speaking classes, that will help you improve your English. If you have never written an essay before, if you find it difficult to write an essay and want to improve your essay writing skills, or if you need to write an essay fast, it will be good to follow some tips that will help you write the essay in the best way:

Plan

Brainstorming and organising your ideas will make your life much easier and will also help you write an essay quite easily. It will be a good idea to make a web of the ideas along with the supporting details. There is a lot of effort that you will have to put in if you want to write a successful essay. Fortunately, these tips for writing essays can help you along the way and can also help you get on the path to a well-written essay. The worst thing that you can do here is to plagiarise someone’s work, so you must plan so that you can create something unique.

Choose the Type of Essay

In this step, you will have to plan out the type of essay that you want to write. There are different categories of essays, and you will have to select a category first and then choose the topic for the essay.

Brainstorm Your topic

You cannot write an essay without having an idea of what to write about. Brainstorming is the process by which you come up with the topic of the essay. You need to simply sit and think of ideas during this phase. In this step, you can write down everything that comes to mind, and you can narrow down the topics later. You can use clustering or mind mapping to brainstorm and come up with an idea for the essay topic. This involves writing your topic or idea at the centre of the paper and creating bubbles (clouds or clusters) of the topics that are related to it. Brainstorming is a wonderful way that will help you develop a topic much more deeply and will also help you recognise the connections between various facets of your topic.

Once you have prepared a list of possible topics, you will then have to choose the best one that will answer the question that is posed for your essay. It will be good if you can select a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow.

If you are given an assignment where you will have to write a one-page essay, you should not choose a topic like “the history of the U.S.,” as that could fill entire volumes of books. Rather, you could write about a particular event in the history of the United States. This topic might be something like the signing of the Declaration of Independence or when Columbus discovered America. You should choose the best topic idea from the list. You should then begin moving forward with writing your essay.

Research the Topic

Once you have done your brainstorming and have already selected your topic, you will have to do some research to write a good essay. For this, you can go to the library or even search online for relevant information about your topic. You can also interview people who might be experts on the subject. You need to keep your research organised so that it will be easy for you to refer back whenever you desire. This will also make it easier for you to cite your sources when you are writing your final essay.

Use and Cite Sources

Do your research. You should use quotes and paraphrases from your sources, but make sure that you never plagiarise. You need to cite sources and evidence. You will finally have to check your citations to ensure that they are accurate and complete. There will be certain faculties that might want you to use a specific citation style (e.g., APA), while others might allow you to choose your preferred one. Irrespective of the style you use, you need to follow the guidelines correctly and consistently.

Write a Draft

It is said that the first draft is always crap. There is every possibility that the truth behind this statement is debatable. Draughts are mostly a good place where you can get your “crappy” ideas out of the way, and these are often required by professors and instructors.

Outline Your Essay

After preparing the draft, you will have to create an outline where you will mention what you are going to write about. This means that here you will have to essentially draw the skeleton of your paper. If you write an outline, this can help ensure that your paper is logical and well organised, and it will also ensure that it flows properly. If you are given the task of writing an argumentative essay, the best thing that you can do is first create an outline of the essay.

Respond to the Prompt

Once you have worked out any kinks in your draught, you will finally have to write the final draft of the essay. This is very important for you to read and get a good understanding of the prompt. You should understand exactly what is expected of you. It will be good if you can dissect the prompt into different sections.

Make a Strong Thesis

You should start by writing the thesis statement at the top. After that, you will have to write a topic sentence for each paragraph. This means that you should know exactly what it is that you will be discussing in each of these paragraphs before even starting to write them. Make sure that you do not jumble too many ideas in each paragraph, or there is a possibility that the reader might get confused.

It is also important for you to have transitions between paragraphs so the reader understands how the paper flows from one idea to the next. You will have to fill in supporting facts from your research under each paragraph. Each of these paragraphs should tie back to your thesis and create a cohesive, understandable essay.

The thesis is the most important thing you’ll write. Therefore, you need to make it a strong point. The thesis statement is the main point of your essay. Mostly, this is one sentence. It is this sentence that says everything that is included in the essay. You can consider this thesis statement to be the basic premise for your entire essay. Therefore, you should remember that all of the different points throughout the entire essay should lead back to this one main thesis. You should state the thesis in your introductory paragraph. Moreover, the thesis statement should be broad enough, and there should be enough to say about it. It should, however, not be so broad that you can’t be thorough. Make sure that you structure your thesis perfectly.

Choose a Writing Style

The writing style that you select for your essay is dictated by your teacher or the topic of your paper. Two main writing styles are used in high school and college. These are as follows:

MLA (Modern Language Association)

This is a style that is designed for humanities and language arts essays. This is quite a common writing style that can be used by high school and college students.

APA (American Psychological Association)

This is the writing style that is referred to as the author-date citation style. This was created for social science and psychology research papers and essays. This is the second-most common writing style.

Each different writing style has its own unique format for in-text and reference list citations.

Analyse the Questions

Student essays are mostly responses to specific questions. The essay needs to address the question directly. The first step should be to analyse the question. You should know exactly what is being asked of you.

The essay questions have three parts:

Content terms: These are the key concepts that are specific to the task.
Limiting terms: This is the scope that the topic focuses on.
Directive terms: This is what you need to do about the content. Some of the examples are discussed, analysed, defined, compared, and evaluated.

Examples

As you plan and prepare to write the essay, you must consider what the argument is going to be. This means that you should take an informed position or point of view on the topic that has been presented in the question, then define and present a specific argument.

The position towards the direction in which the entire essay is directed It will be good for you to use evidence, reasoning, and scholarship. To convince your audience of your argument, you will have to provide evidence and reasoning that involve referring to and evaluating relevant scholarship.

Evidence

This provides concrete information to support your claim. It typically consists of specific examples, facts, quotations, statistics, and illustrations.

Reasoning

This connects the evidence to your argument. Here, you do not have to cite evidence like a shopping list; you will have to rather evaluate the evidence and show how it supports your argument.

Write Clearly

An essay that makes good, evidence-supported points will be able to get a good grade. The important thing here is to ensure that it is written clearly. Clarity can be achieved if you look through it as if someone else has written it. Careful revision and editing will help turn a good essay into an excellent one.

Overall Structure

You should also ask yourself the following questions:
Did you state your argument in your introduction?
Does the actual structure correspond to the ‘road map’ that has been laid out in your introduction?
Have you indicated how the main points support your argument?
Have you marked the transitions between each of the main points for your reader?

Paragraphs

Does each paragraph introduce one main idea?
Does each sentence in the paragraph support the actual idea?
Does each paragraph include relevant evidence and reasoning?
Does each paragraph logically follow from the one that is before it?

Sentences

Are all the sentences grammatically complete?
Are all the spellings correct?
Is the link between sentences clear to the readers?
Have you checked for any kind of redundancy or repetition?

When you are planning, you have to think that the essay is like an argument or a speech. This needs to have a logical structure. All the points should come together to answer the question. You should start with the basics. The best thing that you can do is choose a few major points. These will become your main paragraphs. For an exam essay, three main paragraphs will be enough, as it will be time-bound.

Back Up Your points with Well-analysed and Appropriate Quotations

It is quite obvious that you wouldn’t write a scientific report without including evidence to support your findings; then, why should it be any different from an essay? It is true that you don’t have to substantiate every single point that you make with a quotation. There is, however, no point in not trying this. When you are selecting the best quotations to use in your essay, you should keep an eye out for some of the most specific literary techniques.

You need not worry even if you are not able to locate these literary devices in the work that you’re analysing. You can also discuss more obvious effects, like metaphor, simile, and onomatopoeia. It is not a problem, even if you are unable to remember all the long names. It is, however, very important to explain the effect of the literary techniques and their relevance to the question rather than use the correct terminology.

Be Creative and Original

Anyone can write an essay using the tips that have been mentioned above. The thing that makes it ‘perfect’ is your unique ideas about the topic that you are discussing. If you have noticed something unusual in your reading, you should point it out so that the examiner also notices it and finds it interesting.

Creative writing and essay writing are quite closely connected. You must keep the idea that you’re writing a speech or argument in mind, and you can be sure that it will grab the attention of the readers.

You need to set out your line of argument in your introduction, introduce the main points, and outline the general direction your essay will take. Make sure not to forget to keep something back for the conclusion, too. You have to summarise your main points in the conclusion. If you, however, simply repeat the things that you have mentioned in the introduction, then writing the entire essay will be pointless. You should consider the conclusion to be the climax of your speech. It should be a bit of everything, rather than a boring paragraph at the end of something interesting.

Proofread

Read your essay carefully to make sure that there are no mistakes and that you didn’t miss anything. Revise to ensure that there is enough clarity, consistency, and structure in the essay. Check if you have adequately supported your thesis with the information in your paragraphs. Each paragraph should have a topic sentence. This is the most important sentence in a particular paragraph. It is this sentence that tells readers what the rest of the paragraph will be about. You need to make sure that everything flows together. As you move through the essay, the transition words will be of paramount importance. Transition words are the glue that connects every paragraph and also prevents the essay from sounding disjointed. You can even use a list of transition words that will help you get started. Re-read the introduction and the conclusion. Try to find out if there are chances that the reader will walk away knowing exactly what your paper is about.

Check Spelling and Grammar

Now that the essay is written, that does not mean that you are done with your work. You need to reread what you have already written. This way, you will be able to find the mistakes and typos.

Revise for Technical Errors

Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. Quote marks are something that needs to be checked, as people often tend to make mistakes with them. You need to cite your sources accurately and with a lot of clarity. You should follow these guidelines on how to use quotes in essays and speeches.

You might also want to know the exact difference between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarising. Quoting is reserved for lines of text that are identical to an original piece of writing. Paraphrasing, on the other hand, is reserved for large sections of someone else’s writing that you might want to convey in your own words. Summarising means putting down the main points of someone else’s text in your own words.

Conclusion

While this sounds like a lot of steps to write a simple essay, if you can follow them, you will be able to write a more successful, clear, and cohesive essay. The best way to improve your writing skills is by writing essays. Shakespeare indeed said that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” But you will also have to understand here that a pen is not enough to make an effective writer. We might consider ourselves to be the next Shakespeare, but just inspiration will not help us write a good essay. Make sure that you join a good spoken English course.

August 10, 2023