Writting essays
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Essay Structure
Every challenge is an opportunity to learn. If writing an essay sounds a little bit scary, just think of it as a chance to improve your writing skills. This is an interesting approach to writing your essay. First, choose a topic and write a thesis. A thesis is the main argument of your essay. This process will help expand your vocabulary over time.
You can find great vocabulary to add to your word list by using the FluentU English program. FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks —and turns them into language learning experiences. FluentU makes it easy to watch and understand native English videos with interactive captions. Tap or click on any word to see what it means, learn how to use it, hear it pronounced and more.
FluentU also keeps track of your learning, then suggests videos and examples perfect for you. When you are first assigned the topic, go ahead and really explore the possible options for your thesis. Ask questions. Get curious. The more questions you ask before you start writing, the more information you will have to use in the essay. A strong essay is one that covers a lot of content in a succinct short, to-the-point way.
This process of acting like a reporter will give you valuable quotes, resources and vocabulary to begin the writing process. Set these aside. Then, when you start writing the essay, refer to your topic sentences to create a solid structure that begins at point A and ends at point C.
If you have to write a longer or more complex essay, it might help to outline both sides of the argument before you start writing. When you write the essay, you will need to choose one side to focus on. But as you prepare, having a side-by-side list of points can be helpful in developing your thesis. Also, by arguing for the opposite side of your opinion, you will learn which points you need to better address in your essay.
You will learn more about the topic, and you will gain more vocabulary words to enrich the essay. As an example, you might be writing an essay arguing that people should drink less coffee. How will people quit if they are addicted? What about the antioxidants in coffee?
Really explore the entire concept both sides of the argument before you write. Proper grammar is difficult for even the most fluent English speakers. Because you are learning English, you actually have an advantage.
Many native speakers learned improper grammar from the start. As you learn the English language, make a serious effort to practice your grammar and sentence structure. One way to spot improper grammar in your own writing is to read each sentence backwards start with the last word and end with the first.
Is everything in the correct tense past, present, future, etc. Are the apostrophes in the right places? Does every sentence end with a punctuation mark period, question mark, exclamation point? Reading the text backwards make you focus on the rules of grammar instead of the flow of the sentence.
But before you start using them in academic essays, be very sure you know what they mean in the context of your essay. This is where the dictionary can come in handy. A thesaurus is another valuable tool when writing an essay. This repetition is boring for a reader. It sounds a lot better and adds interest to your essay. Visual Thesaurus is a resource that works just like a regular thesaurus, but it also shows you the connections between the words.
Once the essay is written, go back through the writing to find any sentences that seem too long or wordy. Break these into two or more sentences. If you want to write in another language, you need to practice in creative ways every day. For example, you could start a blog, create fun poems or text a friend. Also, look for sentences that are very closely related to one another.
If two sentences seem like the thoughts are connected, you can combine them with a semicolon ;. Meet up with a friend who is fluent in English or, at least, more fluent than you. This friend can edit your essay and point out any repetitive errors. If they find mistakes that you make often, you will be able to watch more closely for that error as you write future essays. This friend will also be able to point out grammatical or spelling errors that you might have missed. Lang-8 is a free site where native English speakers will correct your writing.
In exchange, you correct the writing of someone learning your native language. Once you and your friend have both reviewed your essay and marked any mistakes, rewrite the whole thing. This step is important. Just noting that you made some mistakes will not help you learn how to avoid them in the future. By rewriting the essay with the corrections in mind, you will teach yourself how to write those sections properly. You will create a memory of using proper grammar or spelling a word correctly.
So, you will be more likely to write it correctly next time. Lastly, there are some fantastic online resources that can help improve your writing. You can rewrite these to make them easier to understand. The advice in this post is mainly for improving your essay writing over time.
However, if you want a more professional opinion for an important essay, you can also use Scribendi. Scribendi is an online essay editing resource that helps with academic and admissions essays.
Learning a new language is certainly an ambitious challenging task. Hopefully, you were able to find one or two tips that you believe will help you improve your essay writing abilities. Good luck! Robert Morris is an essay writer from custom writing service NinjaEssays. He lives in NYC and loves online tutoring. If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to learn English with real-world videos. Experience English immersion online! FluentU brings English to life with real-world videos.
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Brainstorm your topic. Research the topic.
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Academic essay writing is a style that anyone can learn to produce, once they know the basics of writing an essay.
Is Wikipedia really a no-go? Should you bother with the whole reading list? And how do you make a convincing argument?
Baby Steps: 10 Proven Tips to Write Better Essays in English
Despite the fact that, as Shakespeare said, "the pen is mightier than the sword," the pen itself is not enough to make an effective writer. In fact, though we may all like to think of ourselves as the next Shakespeare, inspiration alone is not the key to effective essay writing. You see, the conventions of English essays are more formulaic than you might think — and, in many ways, it can be as simple as counting to five. Though more advanced academic papers are a category all their own, the basic high school or college essay has the following standardized, five paragraph structure:. Though it may seem formulaic — and, well, it is - the idea behind this structure is to make it easier for the reader to navigate the ideas put forth in an essay.
Essay Tips: 7 Tips on Writing an Effective Essay
There are many types of essays and papers you can write as a student. The content and length of an essay varies depending on your level, subject of study, and specific course requirements. However, most academic essays share the same goal. They aim to persuade readers of a position or perspective through informed arguments, which are based on evidence, analysis and interpretation. Furthermore, every essay has an introduction , body and conclusion that always do more or less the same things. Table of contents Essay writing process Introduction of an essay Body of an essay Conclusion of an essay Checklist: How to write an essay. The essay writing process consists of three stages: preparation, writing and revision. These stages apply to every essay or paper.
An argumentative or persuasive essay takes a strong position on a topic through the use of supporting evidence.
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9 steps for writing a great essay
Every challenge is an opportunity to learn. If writing an essay sounds a little bit scary, just think of it as a chance to improve your writing skills. This is an interesting approach to writing your essay. First, choose a topic and write a thesis. A thesis is the main argument of your essay. This process will help expand your vocabulary over time. You can find great vocabulary to add to your word list by using the FluentU English program. FluentU takes real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks —and turns them into language learning experiences. FluentU makes it easy to watch and understand native English videos with interactive captions. Tap or click on any word to see what it means, learn how to use it, hear it pronounced and more.
How to Write a Good Essay
Writing an academic essay means fashioning a coherent set of ideas into an argument. Because essays are essentially linear—they offer one idea at a time—they must present their ideas in the order that makes most sense to a reader. Successfully structuring an essay means attending to a reader's logic. The focus of such an essay predicts its structure. It dictates the information readers need to know and the order in which they need to receive it.
