Essays, whether they’re narratives, persuasive pieces, or research papers, can be challenging. The writing process often incorporates a long road of false starts and detours (revisions). Along the way, students must steer around or power through a variety of hurdles. To guide you to become a great essay writer, the following ideas are especially important to take into account.
- Read as much as you can
Just like the key to excellent speaking is listening, the key to great writing is reading. You cannot be a great writer without spending a lot of time reading pertinent resources. Reading will help you improve your vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, as well as demonstrate the variety of ways in which ideas can be communicated. As an illustration, if you’re writing an essay about social or economic issues, it’s always a great idea to read books, the Internet, or any other source you can think of to gain background knowledge. After having read the sources, you can attempt to scribe your own.
- Keep an English Dictionary
Having an English dictionary allows you to look up words to determine their meaning and learn antonyms and synonyms to avoid repeating words or phrases, which will help you improve your communication skills.
- Brush up your grammar
While you are not required to “study” grammar, working on grammar exercises will significantly improve your English writing. Additionally, keep in mind that grammar is more critical when writing than when speaking, as writing is typically more formal and structured.
- Check your spelling before and after writing
How do you feel when you read something in your native language that is riddled with spelling errors? Poor spelling can detract from an otherwise interesting piece of writing, and we generally write for others to read.
- Learn how to organize an Essay
It is important to organize your essay in a way that your ideas are easy to understand. Start with an introduction to introduce the topic to your readers and indicate your ideas or thesis statement. Next, the body paragraph is aimed at developing the ideas you come up with in your thesis statement. The body paragraph can be more than one paragraph, depending on the topic and your idea. Finally, write the conclusion to summarize the main points you argue in the body paragraph or restate your thesis statement, followed by a final thought or recommendation or prediction. What’s more, use transitions amongst paragraphs whenever necessary to signal your ideas’ shift.
- Learn how to organize a paragraph
Just like an essay that requires organization, a paragraph needs to be organized so that your readers can easily follow your ideas. A great way to write is to begin each paragraph with a topic sentence, which is a sentence that describes the subject of the paragraph, continue with supporting sentences – sentences that expand on the subject, and finish with a conclusion – sentences summarizing the ideas developed in the body of the paragraph. Additionally, learn how to use transitions to indicate relationships between ideas to create a fluent body of text.
- Write an Outline
To convey your message in a clear and orderly manner, even in a simple piece of English writing, some level of organization is required. There are a variety of ways to write an outline, and they all have to do with how you organize your thoughts.
- Understand the Rules for Writing a Good Essay
A good essay has characteristics including: a) It aims to persuade readers of an idea based on evidence; b) It should answer a question or task; c) It should have a thesis statement and an argument; d) It should present or discuss something, develop a thesis via a set of closely related points by reasoning and evidence; and e) it should include relevant examples, supporting evidence, and information from academic text or other credible sources.
- Common Mistakes in Essays
There are three common mistakes in writing essays: structural, stylistic, and content. Structural mistakes include sentence errors and text structure errors, while stylistic mistakes include word repetition, too long or too short sentences, inappropriate words or phrases that are either too formal or too informal, too many passive structures, and sentences beginning with a coordinating conjunction. Finally, the following are the content mistakes to avoid:
– Write an essay, in which the content does not reflect and develop the real topic.
– Write an essay without an introduction.
– Write an essay without a thesis.
– Write a thesis statement that lack ideas.
– Use ideas that you cannot prove with examples.
– Write an essay without a conclusion.
- Try to get someone to read what you’ve written
Your best bet is to seek out the help of an expert in the language who can help you correct any errors in grammar or spelling, as well as in the structure of your paragraphs.
To sum up, you will not be able to write fluently in English right away, but with dedication, hard work, and time, you will get there. As you gain experience writing more complex essays, you can progress to more difficult ones.
