Essay writing in school life is an activity that students engage in multiple ways. It is done during class, as homework and assignments and some students take part in essay writing competitions as part of extracurricular activities.
The point is that as long as you are a student in school you will have to deal with writing essays one way or another. As students are still in their learning phase, it is natural that they will face many setbacks and difficulties in writing essays. And that is okay, this is what learning is about.
In this article, ten tips to write excellent essays in school will be discussed and students, as well as any other interested parties, are welcome to read them.
10 Tips for Students on How to Write Excellent Essays in School
1. Learn About Your Topic
Before you can start writing your essay, you need to conduct some research about the topic you were assigned. This is essential if you want to write a great essay. You will increase your knowledge in the process as well.
To conduct research, you can simply Google the topic and read some blog posts, Wikipedia entries, and research papers (if they exist and are available). Then you need to take notes when reading them. This will ensure that your understanding of the topic is sufficient.
Only when you have an ample grasp on the topic can you write well about it. Researching also gives you more insight as to what angle/perspective you should target when writing the essay.
2. Create a Web plan/Outline
When writing anything at all, be it an essay or a blog post, it is a good idea to create an outline of what you want to write. In some cases, the outlines are very easily created. Such as in this article, my outline simply consisted of the intro, the ten tips, and the conclusion.
But in essay writing where topics may be more abstract, outlines may require more thinking. The advantage of creating an outline is that you are able to stay focused. Your writing becomes clear and to the point. You avoid rambling and going off on tangents.
This improves the essay quality as rambling is generally considered pretty bad. It only serves to make the essay more confusing.
3. Write in Your Own Voice
An important thing you need to take notice of is that you should not try to emulate someone else’s writing style. Use the words that come naturally to you. Your style should not be outright casual, but it should not feel robotically formal either.
A great method of “using your voice” is to write as if you are talking to someone. That someone can be your friend or family member. Envision how you would explain the topic to them. Then mimic that style in your writing.
And that’s how you will find your voice. Writing in your own voice makes your essay unique to you and teachers appreciate uniqueness. Take it from me, that they also get bored when they have to read the same copy-pasted essay ten or fifteen times.
4. Get Help from Rewriting Tools
Many times, throughout your essay writing attempt, you will find that you are unable to articulate very well when it comes to some concepts or ideas. That is not something to be ashamed of, on the contrary, it is something that is expected of you.
Students are still in the learning phase of their life, and they will make mistakes in writing. It is the teacher’s job to correct those mistakes and teach the students how to avoid them. However, during essay writing, students can utilize an essay rewriter to rephrase poorly written parts.
An essay rewriter is an online tool (with many free variants) that can rewrite some text using different words and phrases. These tools can rephrase sentences to make them look different and often that results in better articulation. Students can learn how to write better and explain concepts using these tools.
5. Discuss Your Main Themes in Detail
This step is an offshoot of the second step. Outlines are made so that writers can consult them when they feel lost. They also prevent writers from getting sidetracked. So, make sure that your main themes are included in your outline.
When finally writing the essay, you should allocate more words to the sections that discuss the meat of the topic. That is the part that should be the most fleshed out. Your reader/s should walk away from this part having gained meaningful information.
It is scarily easy to get sidetracked and spend more time writing almost irrelevant details in different sections of the essay. Students are also usually under the misconception that “more words = higher quality”. That is not true. More words usually mean more rambling.
Hence care should be taken to only really go into details when discussing the main points of your essay, everything else should be short and succinct.
6. Keep Lines and Paragraphs Moderately Short
As I mentioned in passing in the previous step, more words do not necessarily mean higher quality. If you can explain something in two lines, then only use two lines. Writing a paragraph will make that part sound repetitive and more confusing than it actually is.
Hence you should take care to keep the length of your sentences and paragraphs small and short. Long paragraphs are difficult to read and can lose the attention of the reader.
7. Enticing Introduction
Since the Introduction is the first part that the teacher/reader will see, it is the most opportune place to make a good first impression.
Hence writing an enticing intro is essential to writing a great essay. It will make a good first impression and set the expectations of the reader for the rest of the essay.
Good impressions can really make or break an essay. If the first impression is not that good, even if the rest of the content is great, the reader will still feel a little sour. The opposite of this situation is also true.
8. Follow Any Formatting Guidelines Provided
Most of the time when essays are assigned to students by their teachers, they are also provided with some guidelines. These guidelines may provide instructions on how to format the essay, how many words it should have, is the outline supposed to be included as well…. things like that.
Following the guidelines is a must, as failing to adhere to them can result in an automatic disqualification. That is not a good thing to happen, nobody wants to see their hard work wasted. So always follow guidelines to a tee.
9. Write a Convincing Conclusion
Conclusions are some of the easiest things to bungle when writing an essay. A lot of people seem to have trouble finishing their essays. They start off great, write a great body, but suddenly fumble at the end.
The simplest way to write a conclusion is to summarize everything that you wrote in your essay. The conclusion should be quite small, approximately only ten percent of the rest of the essay. By practicing writing, you will eventually become good at writing good conclusions.
10. Reviewing and Editing
This crucial final step can never be left out of any writing process. No matter how proficient a writer is, it is almost guaranteed that their first draft is not perfect. There are small mistakes here and there that can be rectified.
By proofreading these mistakes can be caught and then edited to make them right again. Proofreading also allows you to see if certain sentences can be rephrased and written better. By constantly reviewing and editing, the essay’s quality can be improved. However, be careful of getting stuck in a vortex and know when to stop. Accept that your essay will not be perfect and stop editing it after the major issues have been dealt with.
Conclusion
Students in schools are being trained to write better so that they face no problems when pursuing higher education and in their careers. Essay writing is a great method to practice writing and penning down one’s thoughts.
The ten tips discussed in this article, are very useful for students who want to improve their essay writing skills. The tips about researching and sticking to the point are particularly important as they are useful in all types of writing.
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