How to Write an Academic Essay
Once you are through with your high school academic phase, you feel relieved and free from any academic stress. You want explore your life, often, ready to experience a sense of adulthood, so to speak. Among your many choices, joining college or university is the next viable priority. A time comes when you are in, ready to further what you got in high school. You make a serious schedule for the task ahead as well as being your own time manager. Within no time, you lecturer hits with your first academic essay writing assignment. You say to yourself ‘This is just normal’. For your information, it is not. Academic writing in college is a whole different thing. Much of the expectations that pertain to it may not have been availed to you. So you will have to go the extra mile of understanding what college writing is all about.
Tips on how to write academic essays
- What you need to understand first is that academic writing follows a given format which not many students are fond of. On the same note, it is good to consider that if you want to be a successful college essay writer, you have to fathom the expectations.
- First things first, your essay should have its line of argument. This is the basis of you answering a few questions that are somehow related. It should have a strong introductory paragraph that states your thesis. With regard to the introductory paragraph, it should have at least several elements. One it should have a hook. This is for the purposes of compelling the reader to go into details. The next element should be the lead-in which should highlight what the essay is all about. This is then followed by a thesis which happens to be a clear statement of what the essay purposes to do.
- Then in every essay, there is the text body. This is where you often discuss your argument in details. This uses examples and evidence that you have collected with respect to the topic at hand. What you need to know is that any information that you have borrowed from elsewhere should be duly acknowledged. This step demands you to read broadly and extensively so that you can get to know what information best fit your line of argument. It is your duty as the author to make sure that you validate your argument. By using citations, you easily achieve this; you can also use quotations from experts in the said topic as well as giving real life analogies. This will not only make your argument real, but it will also prevent the audience from taking your work at face value.
- Remember that writing an academic essay is about how well you present your idea, that is, from the beginning to how it develops and ends. The essay should be designed in such a manner that presents the argument in a clear and persuasive way.
- On the same note, have your audience in mind. This is very important to every essay writer because in the first place, you are not writing for yourself. Your idea and its argument are targeted towards some audience. So while you are formulating everything, know that your audience will pay attention to every detail that is in your text.
- You can also use an academic essay example and see how everything is done. This will help you have more insight into how one originates a convincing piece of work. It will also help you know the best academic essay format that you can employ.
- Have in mind how you are going to conclude your idea. The conclusion should not leave your audience hanging with unanswered questions. It should be structured in such a manner that it encapsulates all the main and relevant point of the whole academic writing essay. On the same note, it should be short and should focus on bringing the argument to rest. Remember that it is the last impression that you leave on your audience’s mind.
Methods of writing academic essays
- You ought to start early enough. This is not for the purposes of early completion and submission. On the contrary, you can see this step as a means to explore and discover.
- Academic essay writing should not necessarily be done from start to the end. It should write in such a manner that you just scribble down what is ready to be written, even if you are not sure enough of how it will fit in.
- As you go along, you can revise extensively. This might include drafting and redrafting of everything, often doing away with some parts as well as rearranging them in a manner that you feel best fits the essay.
- Once you have a well organized draft, you will now pay attention to the flow. The transition is which your ideas cues the other. This is to ensure that your reader will be in a position to follow your idea from a sentence to the other, paragraph to the next.
- Another thing you ought to understand is that this step will help you revise your diction as well as presenting your idea in the fewest words possible without losing the original intent.
- The last step will involve proof reading. You will go through your work to see if you have omitted any information that could be relevant to your essays. On the same note, it will help you see if you have your idea intact, that is, from the start to the end.
So however daunting writing an essay may seem, with a clear thought, it should not be that hard. On the contrary, if you have really understood what is expected of you every time you are given such assignments, then there is no way that you will have a hard time. You only need to arrange your thoughts in order make early preparations, source for relevant information and hit the road running. There is nothing that you can not do in this context.