Essay Writing Tips for Students

Writing is an essential part of university life. Regardless of where you study or your major, you will have a writing assignment in one or two subjects while studying abroad. This blog provides you with the best insights and tips for writing an essay. An essay is usually used in academic writing, university applications, exams like the IELTS,  and delivering opinions. If you are still a junior and your first assignment is near, here are essential essay writing tips to help you ace your project.

1. Determine Your Essay Type

Before writing your essay, you should know what type of essay you need to use. There are many different types of essays; argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive. Read about the types below and choose the best option for your assignment.

• Argumentative Essays 

These essays are usually opinion essays. If you’re writing an argumentative essay, it means you are trying to convince the reader and prove a point; therefore, you should provide evidence to support your argument. The evidence can be quotations, analysis, or examples. 

• Expository Essays

An expository essay is usually used for analysing something. It is a focused explanation of a certain specific topic that aims at conveying information. It could explain an idea, a character, a subject, and even an event.

• Narrative Essays

If you want to tell a story, use the narrative essay format. This type of essay should be engaging and entertaining. Furthermore, the events of the story should be stated chronologically in a certain order.

• Descriptive Essays 

A descriptive essay is known to have a plethora of adjectives that help you paint a picture of what you’re trying to describe. It is used to describe people, objects, and scenes. You can also use creative and figurative language in describing your topic. In conclusion: Show, don’t tell.

2. Organise Your Writing Process 

After you’ve decided on the type of essay you want to use, you need to follow a number of steps that will facilitate the process of writing. The writing process demands you to be organised. Below are the crucial steps of writing a decent essay:

1. Brainstorm

This step and the next are the most important steps in the writing process. At times, you may have many ideas about the subject you want to write about. Jot your ideas down before you actually start writing the essay, and pick up what’s useful and relevant to your topic.

2. Create an Outline

This is the step where you try to organise your thoughts and compile all relevant ideas. It should give you an idea about how your final draft should look like.

3. Choose Your Title

Write a good title that is relevant to your topic and would tell the reader about what’s to come.

4. Write Your Essay

Start putting your thoughts into words. Remember the essay structure; Introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction is where you present the idea of your topic to the readers, the body is where you get into more details about the topic, and the conclusion is where you recap or deliver an opinion.

5. Cite Your Evidence

It’s important to avoid plagiarism. Citing your references is a crucial step in essay writing. There are two formats you can use to cite your references; APA and MLA. APA style is generally used for writing scientific papers and social sciences papers. MLA is used for literary and humanities academic papers. 

6. Proofread Your Essay

Before submitting your final draft, make sure you revise your paper thoroughly. Watch out for grammatical errors, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. 

Here’s a trick: You can get essay writing help online. Use Grammarly to detect and correct all the big errors in your paper.

3. Technicalities Are Always Important!

In addition to the above essay writing tips, keep the technicalities on the top of your head. Let’s get to the bottom of the essentials.

1. Thesis Statement

The thesis statement is a sentence that should be situated at the end of the introductory paragraph. It should inform the reader about the purpose of the essay. Always write a clear thesis statement regardless of the length of your paper. You can always go back to the statement and edit it after finishing your assignment. 

2. Topic Sentences

This type of sentence usually gives background info about the topic. Furthermore, it states the importance of the subject. For example, in this article, the first sentence is a topic sentence explaining why we are writing on the subject and its significance.

3. Supporting Sentences

Simply put, supporting sentences shed more light on the topic. These are what you use to expand the argument. 

4. Concluding Sentences

Concluding sentences are used at the end of each paragraph. They’re supposed to include an interesting remark or indicate a transition to the next paragraph or idea.

5. Unity

Your paper should discuss only one main topic. Also, it should be cohesive and coherent, meaning that every sentence should be linked and related to the other and understood.

Overall, essay writing can sometimes seem like a challenging task, but if you follow the above tips, the process will be much smoother! Also, don’t forget to ask for advice from seniors if you can. They know exactly what your professors want.