4 Tips For Essay Writing

4 Tips For Essay Writing Be ruthless â€" you will have far more information than you need and must select carefully only that which you need to support your argument. This is without doubt the most vital part of writing an essay. It is your plan that determines what approach you take to answering the question. If you have written your plan properly, you will know exactly what your answer is going to be â€" this is not something that should be decided while you are writing your essay. More importantly, your plan will ensure that you actually answer the question. Always recall the essay question as you write and continually link your body paragraphs to the essay question. To ensure your writing is cohesive and coherent - use linking words. Try to synthesise your evidence into each body paragraph in order to substantiate your points. Once you have planned your essay, this section will almost write itself It is just a question of filling in the gaps. You will know what paragraphs you are going to write and what information you are going to use. However, remember that you are making an argument, not narrating a story. You have already identified the key words in the question â€" now is the time to use them. Every paragraph must refer in some way to the key words or it will be irrelevant. You may already be quite comfortable writing essays and if so, you will have a definite feel for what works for you. You should pay special attention to Section 4.3 on stylistic conventions, as there is little scope for flexibility on these matters within a particular academic discipline. However, you must equally avoid an essay consisting only of argument â€" you must not make unsubstantiated claims. Everything you write must be related to the question, and without a plan it is all too easy to lose focus and write irrelevant nonsense. This will be immediately obvious to anyone reading the essay and gain you a few marks. Read the question several times to make sure you understand what it is asking. Whenever you do use evidence you should follow the referencing guidelines that have been specified by your tutor or lecturer. In addition to commencing your paragraph with a clear topic sentence, it is important to use linking words and phrases to create cohesion within and across paragraphs in your writing. Don't make the mistake of writing all the information you know regarding a particular topic. Essay writing is a skill worth perfecting as the techniques you need to master in order to write good essays generalize very well to the world outside academia. Components of a good essay also relate to other communicative skills, such as giving talks or presentations. What constitutes “good style” is one of the hardest things to state explicitly, and is perhaps the criterion most open to personal variation. But there are some points that you should bear in mind. One of these points is that you are writing an academic essay, and as such, are required to use a reasonably formal style of writing. This does not mean that you should be obscure, or use impossibly long sentences with multisyllabic words, but you should avoid being overly colloquial. The words you see on your screen are what we call transition signals or signpost words, and they can help the reader follow the order and flow of your ideas. Let’s look at one of the paragraphs from the chocolate essay to see how the text is an interplay of the internal voice of the writer and the external voices of other authors. Referencing is integral to academic essay writing and shouldn’t be viewed as an ‘add-on’. When you are referencing, always use a referencing guide to help you ensure 100% accuracy. For everything you say you must have a supporting fact or example â€" otherwise your essay will be just so much hot air. This balance between analysis and supporting detail is what makes up the skill of' essay writing, and takes time to learn. The main body of the essay is where you prove your case. Academically, the information provided will help students from upper grade school to adult writers. Don't make the mistake of simply writing everything you know of a particular topic, be selective. Each paragraph in your essay should contribute to answering the essay question. Remember that an essay is simply a discussion / argument on paper.