Showing posts with label topic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label topic. Show all posts

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Top Three Ways an Essay Writing Coach Can Help Students Write Better Essays

If you are a university, college or high school student, you have probably benefited at some point in your life from having a coach - either as a member of a sports team, or as a participant in an individual sport.

No one questions the value of coaching in the world of sports, whether it is at the peewee level, or in the professional ranks. Athletic skills are developed and refined through coaching.

But what about writing skills? How are writing skills developed and refined?

If you are a student at the university, college or high school level, you may be asking yourself the same question.

How do you develop essay writing skills?

Just as with athletic skills, having an Essay Writing Coach can accelerate your development.

Here are three key ways in which an Essay Writing Coach can help you write good essays:

1) 1) Choosing an Essay Topic

Choosing an interesting, original and manageable essay topic is one of the most crucial steps in writing a successful essay. Choosing a topic that is either too broad to be covered within the parameters of your essay, or too narrow, resulting in the need to "pad" your content to achieve the required length, will doom your essay project before you have even begun. Your essay topic should not only be of interest to a reader (and your teacher or instructor) but also sufficiently focused to allow you to cover the topic adequately. An Essay Writing Coach can help you refine your essay topic so that it can be managed effectively.

2) Structuring Your Essay

One of the reasons that teachers and instructors continue to assign essays is to challenge students to think their way through a sustained presentation or argument in a logical way. Learning how to "structure" an essay is one of the most important skills that you can acquire, and also one of the most difficult. If you get your structure right, your essay will almost write itself, whereas if you get it wrong, you are almost certain to struggle. Before you begin to "write" your essay, your Essay Writing Coach can help you create a structure for your essay, which is very much like having a road map before you embark upon a journey. Knowing your destination before you begin is one of the best ways to ensure that you will arrive there.

3) Voice

Many students who don't have trouble expressing themselves aloud, freeze when it comes to writing an essay, and, as a result, their writing appears tentative and unnatural. The ability to write in a natural, confident "voice" is one of the most important skills that you can develop as a student, and one which will pay huge dividends throughout your academic career and beyond. A good Essay Writing Coach can help you develop a comfortable, consistent and natural writing style or "voice", which can be applied to any topic or subject matter. Just as in life, a confident writing style can go a long way towards achieving success.

Having an Essay Writing Coach can help you develop and refine your writing skills, which will be of enormous value, regardless of your chosen career path.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Great College Essay Writing Tips

One of the most challenging tasks college students face is essay writing. Many students dread hearing the words and immediately freeze when they do. College essay writing is actually not that difficult. The problem is probably more psychological for students. This article will introduce a few college essay writing tips and hopefully show that essay writing needn't be such a traumatic experience.

Let's look at the layout of the essay. Let's make it as easy as possible by dividing the essay into three parts:

The first part is the introduction. Make it pretty simple and simply introduce the reader to your plans for the essay. Tell the reader what you are going to talk about in the essay and your own opinion statement, if applicable.

The next part of the essay will be the paragraphs that talk about what you said you'd talk about in the introduction. If you made an opinion statement, you will also use these paragraphs to show evidence, statistics, etc. to support your claims.

Finally, close the essay with a paragraph or two that recap what you just finished telling them. It will be similar to your introductory paragraph and your last words on the matter.

College Essay Writing Tips

Prior to writing your essay, you should make an outline of what you will be talking about. An outline will help you layout and organize your thoughts. Many people like to do outlines on paper. I prefer to use an app I found for my iPad which allows me to rearrange the different parts of my planned essay.

My favorite college essay writing tip is using free flow writing. Sometimes I get really "plugged" in the head and am not sure what to write about. I find that if I start typing anything that pops into my head, the road block is cleared and soon words related to the essay are flowing nicely.

The essay writing process is a much worse if you are writing about a topic that you have little or no interest in. In cases like these, one of my favorite college essay writing tips is to look to the internet to research my topic. I try to read about the background of the topic with the hope of finding an aspect of the topic that interests me. When I find something interesting about the topic, I zero in on that and focus my essay writing on that aspect. It does help to make the process a bit less painful.

The best thing to do, however, is to try to approach writing with an open mind and not see it as a nightmare. You'll soon find different aspects and topics of writing that are enjoyable to you and the pain of writing a college essay will fade away.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Essay Writing Tips - 6 Steps to Writing a Great Essay

If writing an essay seems like a daunting experience, then learning how to break the process down into a number of easy steps will give you the confidence you need to produce an interesting, high quality piece of work. This article provides 6 essay writing tips that will take you from an initial idea through to the finished product.

1. Select your topic carefully

If your topic has many different aspects, then a very useful essay writing tip is to narrow it down to one specific area, and make sure you explain this in your introduction. This will make for better reading than if you try to cover everything, and will definitely improve the quality of your work. If you get to choose your own topic, make it something you are interested in. This way the research will become much easier and your enthusiasm will 'rub off' on your readers.

2. Do Your Research

Another useful essay writing tip is to make sure you spend sufficient time looking into all the aspects of your chosen topic. Read as much relevant material as possible, and make notes along the way so you don't forget anything. Also note down where you have got your ideas from; i.e. author name, book or article title and page number.

3. Write Down the Main Arguments

Once you've researched your subject, summarise the main arguments and ideas you have read. Do not copy other people's words, just choose the important points and summarise these in your own words. This is a highly important essay writing tip - whatever you do, make sure you don't plagiarise another author's work.

Prepare the basic structure of the essay in dot point headings, using only a few words to describe each main point. Play around with the structure until you feel that the sequence is right. Put the most important point first, followed by the next most important point, and so on.

Then paste your research summaries under each heading (you can delete these later).

4. Fill Out the Body of the Essay

This is where you discuss in detail your thoughts and ideas on the chosen topic, and 'fill out' the summaries you wrote earlier. Under each main point, introduce the evidence supporting your theories, together with arguments and any other points you wish to make. A good essay writing tip is to make sure these are thought provoking and interesting, as well as informative.

End each paragraph or section with some type of conclusion, or 'lead in' sentence to the next paragraph.

Now that you have written the main body of the essay, you can go back to writing the 'Introduction', followed by the essay 'Conclusion'.

5. Write Your Introduction

In some ways this is the most important part of your essay. One of the best essay writing tips is to use the introduction to grab the reader's attention and give them a 'taste' of the information to come that will make them want to keep on reading.

Describe briefly what the essay is about, and your research sources, and explain what the reader will get out of reading the essay. Finish the introduction with a clear explanation of your point of view, or of the main essay idea.

6. Write Your Conclusions

Start this section by briefly summarising the results and conclusions of your research. Tell the reader what your main conclusion is, and why. Make sure you have also checked and formatted your references that will go at the end of the essay.

A great essay writing tip is to end the essay with a memorable, thought provoking statement that in some way 'sums up' your findings.

These essay writing tips will help you to produce a well structured essay, but don't forget to edit and proof read your work thoroughly to ensure there are no spelling, grammatical or punctuation errors.