An essay is a short piece of writing on a particular subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative or interpretative that gives the author’s own argument. Essays are written composition about anything.
Shakespeare said, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” the pen is itself not enough to make an effective writer. Inspiration alone is not the key to effective essay writing.
An essay takes discipline, foresight, research, strategy, and, if done right, ends in total victory. In terms of “writing,” you need to create a handful of original sentences for the entire essay: a thesis, a theme, a mini-thesis that begins each paragraph and a concluding sentence that says all. An essay is for scholarship, a class, contest; students often find the task overwhelming.
Writing an essay often seems dreaded task among students. The idea behind is to make it easier for the reader to navigate the ideas put forth in an essay. If your essay has the same structure as every other, any reader should be able to quickly and easily find the information most relevant to them.
There are many steps a student can take that will help break down the task into manageable parts:-
- Introduction Paragraph: The introductory paragraph should have an attention-grabbing hook. It should also comprise of a thesis statement. It should also have a preview of the subtopics to be covered in the body paragraphs.
- Body Paragraph: Body paragraph consists of a topic sentence which states the subtopic and carries the supporting details.
- Concluding Paragraph: The conclusion should rephrase the main topic and subtopics and should carry a call to action.
With a little planning and a lot of hard work, you can write an essay that’s good enough in just a short time.
Preparatory Work for your Essay
- Develop a Plan: Planning helps to figure out how long to spend on each part of the essay and will keep you on task. Know your strength and weaknesses. Take regular breaks for yourself to refresh your brain and recharge yourself.
- Essay Question: Consider the question and different ways to make arguments about the topic. This brainstorming will help the writing process go more quickly. Understand what the question is asking for. Choose the subject that interests you to write a good essay.
- Thesis Statement or Argument: This is the point one makes in an essay through evidence and research. Experience is must to develop an argument. Consider counter-arguments to strengthen your essay.
- Research your Topic: Research is necessary to find the evidence that helps to construct the argument and form the body of the essay. Journals, newspapers, library, and internet are the sources for research. Use reliable sources for research only, example government websites, newspapers and magazines written by professionals. Don’t use information from biased sources
- Write Outline: Write an outline to guide through the writing process for an essay. Structure it in the same form as your essay. This helps in identifying the areas that need better development. Structure an outline with an introduction, a body and a conclusion. It is easier and quicker to write an essay when you add more detail to your outline.
Tips to Write an Impressive Essay
- Read other People’s Essays: Reading other people’s essays will help in building own essay writing style. Read essays on a very wide range of subjects, the wider you read, more possible techniques will be available to pick up and use in essays of your own. Another good source to read is newspapers.
- Provide a mini-outline and pay Attention to the Introductory Paragraph: This tells the reader what to expect in the paragraphs to come and gives them a clear understanding of what the essay is all about. The introductory paragraph not only gives the reader an idea of what you will talk about but also tells them how you will talk about.
- Build Vocabulary and Use it Properly: This helps in expressing exactly what one means. A good essay writer should never rest when it comes to vocabulary; it’s something that should be worked upon continually, as there are new words to learn and helps to convey any point more effectively. A good vocabulary displays intelligence and allows being persuasive in your essay writing.
Some Important Ways to Build Vocabulary
- Read Different Genres of Fiction and Non-fiction Covering Various Topics: This will result in widening your general knowledge as well as vocabulary. Also, refer to a dictionary.
- Learn Prefixes, Suffixes: This will help in learning a great many words. It’s often possible in finding the meaning of a new word if you know its root. Prefixes are added to the beginning, while suffixes are added to the end.
- Subscribe to a Daily Email: That sends new words. You can learn new words in an idle moment.
- Aim for Variety: Add variety to your words of knowledge, if you use the same words again and again. In a thesaurus, you find words that have the same meaning.
- A Vocabulary Book: Collect new words and find their meanings. Also, write their definitions and frame them in sentences so that you memorize them while writing essays and put the new words right away.
- Punctuation and Tone of Voice: While writing, it is important to make yourself easy for readers to understand. The sentence structures shoe how intelligent you sound. The reader should not read a sentence more than once to understand it. There should be a tone of voice to use while writing essays. A confident tone of voice shows the reader about the topic you are talking about.
- Do not use Passive Voice or Me/ My Words: Try to be more general and the readers will remain hooked on.
Few Steps to Write a Successful Essay
- Read the essay question carefully.
- Brainstorm ideas in response to the question.
- Write the introduction.
- Write a plan and develop a thesis-the main idea of your essay. It should be precise and short.
- Write the main body of the essay.
- Write the essay conclusion. Write a quotation, a thought-provoking idea, a call to action.
Writing a Timed Essay
- Plan your Work: Taking out some time at the beginning results in a quick plan that helps to perform at your best. Timed essays too need argument or thesis.
- Timings-Spending too much time on the introduction leaves you with less time to write later.
- Cut Whatever is Unimportant: Do not put anything in a times essay that doesn’t support the main point of the essay.
- Claim, Evidence, and Explanation
- The claim is the main argument of the paragraph, located in the topic sentence
- The evidence is the supporting detail that proves the claim.
- Explanation connects the evidence to the claim and explains why the evidence proves.
- Give Time to Revision: Read through the whole essay. This helps in checking spelling and other minor errors.
- Offer a Conclusion: Conclusion will sum up the argument. It also helps the essay to feel complete.
Writing an Untimed Essay
- Set a fixed Time to Write: Allot a specific amount of time to write. It results in writing quickly as it puts pressure to perform. The working environment should be without carrying any distractions. Turn the TV off, switch off the phones and exit out of social media sites. All the material required to write should be available nearby whether paper, pen or snacks.
- The introduction should be Catchy: Introduction explains what you’re going to say in an essay. It should grab the reader’s attention. The introduction should not be more than one paragraph.
- The body of the Essay: Body consists of the points that help in making an argument or thesis. You may further expand to reach the word limit.
- Write Clearly: Write easy sentences without difficult grammatical mistakes.
- Write Freely: Writing freely you have text to shape up during the revision time and can come back to it later.
- Conclusion: Conclusion brings an essay to an end. It provides the summary and leaves the reader with a strong impression. The conclusion should also be short.
- Revise your Essay: Revising and proofreading ensure that the essay does not have any errors and leaves a good impression on the readers.
In short, Pick a topic and prepare an outline of your ideas. Then, write your thesis statement, the introduction, and the body part. Finally, end up with a conclusion and finishing touches.
The best students enjoy writing essays. For many students, each essay brings with it the challenge of making a little better than the last one. When one writes an essay regularly, chances are there to get stuck and repeating the same thing each time.
Essays are self-generating, self-reinforcing, and self- fulfilling. Essays should be balanced so that one can learn from the best of the writers and be able to pick up techniques to help in shaping up a balanced piece. Essays constitute a formal, academic context, but that does not mean they should be boring. Don’t use big words in an essay just for the sake of it; it may have the opposite effect. Ultimately, the goal should be that the writing is clear and easy to understand so that it is a pleasure to read. The economy with words is a characteristic of all good essays.
