A college essay is often used as a test to assess the student’s critical thinking skills and ability to write down their thoughts academically. This is why it’s a very important part of university education. These days, students are allowed to seek an essay helper or the best essay writers to help them write their essays for several reasons. Although it’s frowned at in some quarters, it has become a common practice that almost everyone does.
Note that almost everyone isn’t everyone. There are still some students who take pride in writing their essays. If you’re one of such and looking for ways to improve your essay writing, this is the right page for you. Understanding some criteria to assess an essay is crucial to developing the right essay. This article discusses important tips to complete your essay writing and make your work perfect.
Analyze the essay question
In most cases, a student essay is a response to a specific question. This means that you must answer this question directly in your essay, and the first step to achieve this is to analyze the question first. You can give the right answer if you don’t know what you’re asked to do.
Generally, there are three main components of an essay question:
- Content terms: The key concepts specific to the essay question.
- Limiting terms: The focus or scope of the topic.
- Directive terms: What you should do relative to the essay, e.g., analyze, discuss, define, evaluate, or compare.
Understanding these three concepts improves your essay question analysis and helps you direct your essay the right way.
Define your main argument
Before you start writing your essay, you must have determined the essay’s main argument. This means you must be informed about the topic or issues discussed in the question. Afterward, you define and present your argument. This helps to provide an overarching position or theme for your essay.
Back up your essay with scholarship, evidence, and reasoning
Using these three elements in your essay helps to make your essay more convincing to the readers. You must refer to and evaluate relevant works to write your essay.
- Evidence: This provides factual and accurate information to back your claim. It mainly consists of facts, examples, statistics, illustrations and quotations.
- Reasoning: This connects your argument to the evidence. So, instead of listing the evidence like a list, you’re evaluating them and showing how they support your arguments through reasoning.
- Scholarship: This shows the relationship between your argument and other works that have been done on the topic. It cites specific works and can also serve as reasoning and evidence for your argument.
Be coherent and organized in your essay.
You must be able to write your essay down in a coherent and organized manner by following the right structure. The main structure of an essay includes an introduction, body, and conclusion.
- Introduction: This introduces the essay and the topic or issues being discussed. It includes the general statement, a thesis statement, and the road map for the essay.
- Body: This is the main part of the essay where you develop your points and elaborate on your arguments. You must present a reasoned case with relevant evidence and scholarship to support your claim. The body of your essay often corresponds with the overview created in your introduction.
This section is written in paragraphs, and each paragraph should discuss different ideas of the essay Learning how to structure your paragraph is integral to the quality of your essay.
- Conclusion: This section of the essay is where you round off your argument and everything you discussed in the introduction and body of the essay. It shouldn’t include any new discussion, evidence or reasoning. Everything should be discussed in the body. The conclusion only briefly restates your position in the main argument and includes a summary of what was discussed.
You can also use this section to inform your readers about the significance or implications of your findings as discussed in the body or if other factors should be considered but are outside the scope of what the essay addresses. Make sure you’re not simply repeating what you’ve said before in this section. It should be very informative without adding a new point or repeating your words.
Cite evidence and sources
Lastly, check your evidence and citations and ensure they’re complete and accurate. You may be asked to use a particular citation style, such as APA style, or you’re allowed to use your preferred method. Whichever style you choose, ensure you’re consistent with it and stick to the guidelines correctly.
Conclusion
Writing a perfect essay can be difficult or even more stressful, but that’s the prize to pay for perfection. The tips discussed in this article are must-follow tips if you seek to write a perfect essay.
