essay writing

Essay writing time: Time to take control

As you move away from school and into a university environment, the way you study and your essay writing changes. You are now seen as an adult, and it’s up to you to make sure that you succeed in your studies. To effectively study, make sure you can deal with these points:-

Solitude – During the course of your university career, you will have to spend a lot of time on your own studying. Some people love studying alone, but for others you may feel a complete lack of motivation. Work out how you feel about solitary writing time and how you can best deal with it.

Making yourself understood: Essay sentences

Badly written sentences can lead to all sorts of misunderstandings – from poor grades for essay writing through to upsetting someone with the wrong tone in an email. Here are some pointers to help you tackle sentence construction.

Writing incomplete sentences is becoming common. The informal nature of written communication on the internet means that there are many times when you can construct an incomplete sentence and yet – in context – it makes sense. However, in an essay, informal writing can damage your grade.

Essay Writing Tips – Using ‘signals’ in essays

As you write essays, you need to be very clear about where you are going next with your argument. Using signalling words tells the reader what you intend to do, where you have been with your argument so far and where you intend to take it next.

To get a better understanding of any of the signalling words for essay writing, you can look at the essay examples from the Oxbridge Essays website.

Writing essays: Why bother with essay plans?

What is an essay plan and why bother writing one? Isn’t it a waste of time when you could be getting on with actual essay writing? Here are some reasons why taking the time to write a plan is a better bet in the long run:-

Focus on the question. What are you being asked for? What does it mean? Take the question apart on paper and identify the key words. A common mistake amongst students is to just write everything they know on the topic. But how often have you seen an essay question that asks you to “Write down everything you know about… enzymes (or Elizabeth I or existentialism or Italo Calvino”? Never, right? It’s time to start paying attention to what the examiner really wants. Essays and exams are not just a test of memory.

Preparing to Write Essays in Exams

Writing an essay in an exam is a different experience to producing one over the course of a term. You might have a three hour exam with four essay questions to answer and preparing for it needs some skill in effective preparation and good revision sheets. Here are some tips to help you prepare and then stay calm once you’re into the exam hall:-

Esssay Writing: 5 Tips for Online Research

When you are running out of time to write your essay or prepare your masters dissertation and you have been struggling to find the books you need for research. At times like this, the internet can seem like a sensible place to search. However, much of the time when you scan hurriedly through the internet for valuable and focused study material, it is hard to find anything relevant. How do you overcome this problem?

Essay writing skills: What is brainstorming?

We’re often asked to ‘brainstorm’ before we start on an essay writing task or other assignment, but what exactly does this mean?

Brainstorming is a creative technique for coming up with a solution to a problem. It became popular in the 1940s and is now commonly used in academic and work environments. If you’re not sure what should go into your essay, you would write down your ideas on paper or maybe straight into a Word file if you prefer working on a computer. It’s a way of gathering all your ideas and working out what you already know about that subject. You will often find you know more than you think.

Essay Writing Hints: Signposting

Take a look at the following passage. It demonstrates what happens when you ignore the importance of signposting:-

Professor Jo Carter is a renowned expert on forensic science, however, she is better known for her crime writing mysteries. She first began writing in the ‘Whodunnit?’ genre when she was studying for her PhD, but it wasn’t until her fourth novel, and the introduction of the popular Chief Inspector Matthius that she sprang to fame.