english essay writing skill

Establish Your Topic Your teacher may assign you a topic or ask you to choose from among a few topics. The assignment may contain certain key words that will suggest the content and structure of your essay. For example, you may be asked to AnalyzeArgueCompare and contrastDescribeDiscussSummarize If you do not understand what you are being asked to do, check with your teacher. You may be asked to find a topic on your own. Most people find this difficult. Give yourself plenty of time to think about what you'd like to do. Trying to answer questions you have about a particular subject may lead you to a good paper idea. What subject(s) are you interested in? What interests you most about a particular subject? Is there anything you wonder about or are puzzled about with regard to that subject? Be sure your topic is narrow enough so that you can write about it in detail in the number of pages that you are allowed. For example, say you are asked to write a 1-page essay about someone in your family. Since you only have a limited number of pages, you may want to focus on one particular characteristic of that person, or one particular incident from that person's life, rather than trying to write about that person's entire life. Having a narrow focus will help you write a more interesting paper. Too general: My sister. Revised: My sister is my best friend. Similarly, you may be asked to write a 5-page paper about volcanoes. Again, since you only have a limited number of pages, you may choose to focus on one particular volcano or one particular eruption, rather than trying to talk about volcanoes in general. Too general: Volcanoes of the world. Revised: The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June 1991. One method for narrowing down your topic is called brainstorming. Brainstorming is a useful way to let ideas you didn't know you had come to the surface. Sit down with a pencil and paper.
The editing process will help you refine your essay and improve your writing skills. If you've been told time and time again that you express great ideas in your essay writing but your writing needs polishing, you aren't alone. The following tips will help improve your writing skills and turn you into a great writer. Avoid repetition: It's an essay killer Though it may seem difficult when writing a five-page term paper on a single idea or character, avoiding repetition is essential to improving your writing skills. When you use the same words ad nauseam, your reader views it as a sign of laziness. Here are three tactics that will help eliminate wordiness and eradicate repetitive words and phrases: The simplest approach to improving your writing skills is to eliminate the repetitive word or phrase from your essay. If you feel you need to keep the idea, replace the word or phrase with something similar. This may mean substituting a pronoun for a proper name, such as he instead of George; or it may mean searching for an alternative. Use a thesaurus only to remind you of words you already know but have temporarily forgotten. Don't select unfamiliar words that merely sound good; this risky path often leads to the use of words with different underlying meanings, which ultimately can hurt you more than the original repetition. The last of our techniques for improving your writing skills is more difficult, but usually the most effective. Begin by crossing out the offending repetition. Next, circle key words in the sentence (skip words such as a, of, while, it, etc.). Now craft a new sentence that retains the circled words but discards the repeat ones. This may require you to add more ideas to round out the thought, but our term paper editors have found that expanding on your new sentence in this manner will improve your paper. Active voice: Breathe life into your essay.
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. The Five Paragraph Essay 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: Paragraph 1: Introduction Paragraph 2: Body 1 Paragraph 3: Body 2 Paragraph 4: Body 3 Paragraph 5: Conclusion 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. You see, if your essay has the same structure as every other one, any reader should be able to quickly and easily find the information most relevant to them. The Introduction Want to see sample essays? Check out our Sample Essay section where you can see scholarship essays, admissions essays, and more! The principle purpose of the introduction is to present your position (this is also known as the thesis or argument ) on the issue at hand but effective introductory paragraphs are so much more than that. Before you even get to this thesis statement, for example, the essay should begin with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention and makes them want to read on. Examples of effective hooks include relevant quotations ( no man is an island ) or surprising statistics ( three out of four doctors report that ). Only then, with the reader’s attention hooked, should you move on to the thesis. The thesis should be a clear, one-sentence explanation of your position that leaves no doubt in the reader’s mind.
20 March, 2014 The best students enjoy writing essays because they’re a chance to shine; they’re an interesting intellectual exercise in which the writer must craft thoughtful arguments on complex topics within the confines of a prescribed and often restrictive word count. For many such students, each essay brings with it the challenge of making it that little bit better than the last one. The problem is that when you write essays regularly, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of repeating the same formula each time – particularly when you already receive good feedback from the teachers who read them. So how do you take your essays to the next level and go from great to brilliant? Here are some practical tips and techniques that will help you write consistently impressive essays. 1. Read other people’s essays Offer to share your essays with other people and they may return the favour. Even better: start a study group. Just as the books you read subconsciously help mould your own writing style, so reading other people’s essays can help you develop and build on your own essay-writing style. Try to read a range of other essays, including those of your peers and of academics. Read essays on a wide variety of subjects, not necessarily just those that you’re studying; different disciplines might apply different kinds of arguments or styles, so the wider you read, the more possible techniques there are for you to pick up and use in essays of your own. As you read other people’s essays, don’t just take them at face value. Be critical: what do you like about them? What don’t you like about them? How persuasive do you think they are? Is the argument a balanced one, with points adequately supported with evidence? Has the writer used any techniques you’ve not seen before? Another good source of essays is the broadsheet newspapers. Read the opinion pieces and dissect how the writer.