What is an essay and why have you been asked to write one? The word essay is from the French, essayer, meaning ‘to try’.For the purposes of writing, whether at school, college or university, the essay is an attempt to explain your opinion about an issue, namely the essay question that you have been set. Your lecturer wants to know that you have an opinion and see that you can express this clearly within the essay writing assignment.
Correct Essay Length?
A university essay can range from 1,200 to 1,500 words for an undergraduate course, up to 3,000 – 5,000 for a postgraduate one.
Essay Writing Motivation
Often students find it hard to feel motivated about essay writing. The tutor sets questions to test your knowledge and understanding of the subject, but if they don’t ask about the issues that interest you it can be hard to stay motivated to create your best essay
Best choice – the essay question
Don’t be put off by a long question. It may be easier to answer than the short ones.
Understand the question. Don’t just scan the question and then start writing something based on key words. If you understand the question first, you will save yourself time by being able to target your reading and note-taking to relevant material.
All good writing uses topic sentences. Make sure you understand topic sentences, then construct your paragraphs around them.
If the essay question is a statement or a quote, ask yourself, do you agree with it? Is it true? If you disagree with it, challenge the statement in your answer.
Preparing to write the essay
Write an essay plan. An essay that has been planned has better structure and is easier to follow than one that has been written down in a scattered way.
Brainstorm an essay plan before doing any reading. It may sound strange to try this before you have done any reading at all, but experiment by writing essay plans for subjects you know nothing about. You will be surprised by how much you can come up with.
As part of this brainstorming, write down arguments for and against your main point. It is important to display this awareness of the two sides of an issue. It shows that you are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of your opinion.
Essay skills – Read widely
Although you need to read enough to answer the essay question, apparently, tutors find that a common mistake is that students go on reading long after they have enough material.
Argue your case clearly
Make good use of sources that provide evidence for your point of view. Test each argument against evidence.
Your writing has to be clear. You can’t just collect every bit of information on the subject and then dump all the facts on the page. Organize the material.
If you consistently receive comments on your grammar, punctuation or a general lack of clarity in your essays, look around for an academic writing course at your university. If you have any particular essay issues you would like to discuss, get in contact with our livechat.
