Tips on Essay Writing

Many people see this ominous letter when they get their marks back from the professor, all because they don’t know how to write an essay.

This article is addressing teenagers and students who are having trouble when the teacher says; “Alright everybody, you’ve got 3 days to write me a 1000 word essay on the Crusaders!”

I’m not the best at writing essays, but I do know how to change an F into an A.

First off you should always have a strong introduction, something that catches the readers mind right away. That is the job of the first sentence, which should be followed by a sentence that joins it to the third, usually only a few words long. That may not make sense now, but wait. The third sentence should tell the reader what the essay is about, you have to pretend that the reader is stupid, and has never heard of what you’re addressing. The forth sentence is the only sentence that should have the word “I” in it, because in an essay, you want to sound sure of what you are stating. After all, an essay is meant to persuade people, what’s more convincing? “I think that smoking is bad, and has health problems, but that’s just my opinion.” or “Smoking can lead to serious health problem, and is highly addictive. Any physician would agree that you should quit before it ruins your life!” well, back to the subject of the forth sentence. It is the closing sentence for your introduction and should go something like this. “In this essay I will put the spotlight on the topic of smoking, and why it is one of the most severe problems in the world.”

The second part of your essay is your body paragraphs, in most junior high classes you would only be expected to have 4-6 body paragraphs, but in university, its more like 30-40. They are the largest part of your essay, but should take you 5-10 minutes to write when you learn to use P.E.E.

It stands for Point. Example. Explanation.

Point. It is the first part of the body paragraph. When you make a point you are taking a fact, and adding your opinion to it. It works like this: In grade 8, our class had to write an essay on the 1980’s film “The Gods Must Be Crazy” which showed how just the simplest of objects could change the world view of someone who has lived the same for hundreds of years. In this particular movie, an African bushman named Xi is looking for food when a pop bottle falls from the sky and lands in front of him. Over the course of the film Xi discovers modern civilization and his world view changes dramatically. Anyways we had to take a fact from the movie and make it our own, for example: “Xi is angry when the pop bottle brings violence to his village.” That is a fact; we must now make it our own. We have to say how we know he is angry, by using something that isn’t a fact; “Xi is angry when the pop bottle brings violence to his village, it is obvious he is angry because he yells up at his gods and throws the bottle up in an attempt to return it to them.” many people might comment that this is a fact, but you see, it does not say that Xi is angry in a subtitle, and he does not say that he is angry. I am merely hypothesising that he is angry because of his actions. Now we move on to step 2. Example. In the example it is your job to tell what happened in the point. For the point used above, here is the example: “The idea of fighting and violence was started in Xi’s village when 2 boys couldn’t decide on whose turn it was to use the bottle, so the 1 boy hit the other on the head.” The example is similar to step 3; the explanation. In the explanation you’re supposed to explain why what happened did happen. For the point and example used above, your explanation should go something like this: “The main reason for Xi’s anger is because his village has never known anger, mostly because there was no ownership therefore, nothing to fight over. Xi overreacted to the harm caused to his village and rushed to conclusions that the bottle must be evil, and that he must take a 20-40 day journey to throw off the edge of the world.” That is really all you need to know about body paragraphs, and they shouldn’t take you that long to write.

The third and final part of your essay is your conclusion. Most people go crazy over the conclusion, under the impression that it’s really important, hard, and should be long. It really doesn’t need any work whatsoever, just sum up your essay in one small sentence. The conclusion used for the point, example, and explanation above is just; “So in conclusion, Xi’s world view changed dramatically, particularly in ownership, anger, and law.” It’s probably the easiest part of your essay.

Some helpful tips are:

• Keep your title simple and to the point, it’s not a 5th grade story so you don’t need to be ‘cute’.
• Always manually spell check your work, the computer doesn’t understand grammar. If you make a grammar mistake, but it’s spelt correct, the computer won’t know it’s wrong.
• If your unsure, ask your friends, have them proof-read it for you.

Well, I hope that this article has improved your essay-writing skills have improved, and are less worried when you have to do an essay. C’ya!