Writing academic essays plays an essential role for students throughout the world. But it is also a task that many students dread. Using the right vocabulary, putting punctuation marks properly, and employing correct grammatic structures are simply a few of the many basic things that can make some students overwhelmed.
However, writing a perfect academic essay should not be a daunting task. It can be a fun and learning activity.
If you are struggling in writing academic essays, the following tips can help you a lot in becoming a pro.
1. Follow the instructions for your assignment
Before you start writing your academic essay, you should carefully read the instructions for your assignment. Try to understand what the assignment is really about. Also, you should know if there are some specific rules that you need to follow.
Different instructors have different formatting and citation style requirements. So, you need to make a note of it to make sure how you actually write is in line with how you are supposed to write.
If you are not given a specific assignment, you will require to pick a topic for your assignment. In such a case, you should always pick the topic that really interests you.
The next time, don’t start writing your essay unless you have understood all the instructions for your assignment well.
2. Research Your Topic Thoroughly
Research plays a critical part in winning academic essay writing. With the presence of the Internet, it has become easier to research any academic topic. But you need to be cautious about online resources. You cannot reply to all the resources you find online.
To conduct research for your academic essay, you should always check digital scholarly resources like ResearchGate, JSTOR, WorldCat, or Google Scholar.
Wikipedia can be a good starting point to research, but heavily edited Wikipedia articles are not appropriate resources for academic research. Instead, you should check the “References” section of Wikipedia articles to get information.
Read your sources critically when you’re researching to grasp information well.
3. Write a Clear Thesis Statement
A thesis statement is the most important part of an academic essay because it gives readers the central message of your academic essay.
Put simply, it tells your readers what to expect from the rest of the essay. All the words, sentences, and paragraphs support, explain or argue your thesis statement.
Here are some tips to write a clear, powerful thesis statement:
- Write your thesis in 2-3 sentences, not more than that
- Be clear and specific
- Write a thesis statement that you can effectively prove in your essay
- Tailor your thesis to the type of your essay (Analytical, expository, or argumentive)
- Place your thesis statement at the end of an introductory paragraph
A thesis statement allows you to let readers know about the main agreement you’re going to make in your essay. So it is imperative that you get it right.
4. Create an Outline
You have conducted research for your essay, and you have written a thesis statement. Now, it’s time to create an outline. As an outline provides a structure for you to write your essay, you should develop an effective outline.
How can you create a good outline for your essay?
You can consider the following simple structure to create an outline for your academic essay:
- Introduction
- Body
- The first point with supporting evidence
- The second point with supporting evidence
- The third point with supporting evidence
- Counter argument/s
- Your Point to refute counter-argument/s
- Conclusion
Knowing how to create good outlines is an important skill. You may need to submit the outline first if your instructor requires it. So it is imperative that you should learn to create good outlines.
5. Construct Your Essay Well
After creating the outline for your essay, you are ready to start writing your essay.
When you move toward the body of your essay after completing the introduction, you need to pay extra attention. This is because the body is the main part of your essay.
Here are some tips that can help you construct your essay well:
- Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that will explain the main point
- You should support your points with examples, analysis, and evidence
- Use transitional sentences
- Try to minimize passive sentences
- Cite your sources correctly
- Write the counter-argument well
When you construct your academic essay, you should always keep the word count in the mind because you wouldn’t like to write a too long or too short essay.
6. Edit Your Essay
Once you are done with writing your academic essay, you should put it aside for some time and do something else to refresh your mind.
After a brief break, you’re ready to edit your essay. However, you should think beyond proofreading, copyediting, and line editing while polishing your essay. I’m not saying that you should not proofread or copyedit your essay.
What my point is you should also check the following two things:
1- Coherence – You should make sure that the flow of ideas from one sentence to another is smooth and logical
2- Cohesion – You should ensure that flow of words, sentences, and paragraphs from one to another should be natural and smooth
If you want to make your academic essay powerful, you will have to bring both coherence and cohesion in your writing.
7. Get a Writing Tutor
A private writing tutor can help you in many ways.
You will improve your writing, learn some good writing techniques that you can easily apply to write your next academic essay, and start to feel writing an academic essay is not a daunting task.
A good writing tutor will know which areas you’re lacking in and help you excel in those areas to write winning academic essays.
At Talentnook, we have excellent writing tutors that have years of experience in helping students write great academic essays. You can easily request a trial lesson from here.
Final thoughts,
Writing a winning academic essay is possible only when you pay attention to its every element. Follow the above-discussed tips to learn academic essay writing skills. Let your creativity, writing skill, way of expressing yourself shine through in your essay perfectly.