How to Write the Best - Essay Example

?Writing Assignment - College Essays Attending college can be both an excited and stressful time in a young person’s life for many reasons. Some major challenges can include social challenges, such as trying to fit in, make new friends, and not be swayed by peer pressure, and psychological challenges, such as taking drugs or engaging in sex. Although all these issues can be a huge problem for the average college student, writing essays for lecturers can be one of the hardest tasks in college academic life. Very few students actually understand what their professors are looking for in an academic paper. Some students find it very easy to just sit down and knock out a multiple page paper, but for most it can be a stressful time. The key to this is to break up an essay into small, manageable parts so that it does not seem too overwhelming. In order to produce a high-quality research paper at the college level, forming an outline and conducting research, writing a draft, and double checking for any spelling errors, grammar mistakes, or incorrect facts are three steps that every essay must go through. Before an essay can be written, it must go through what is known as the pre-writing stage. This stage involves many tasks, such as deciding on a topic if required, making an outline, and finding appropriate sources. If a lecturer already has a subject that he or she wants the essay to be written on, then this step can be shortened somewhat. If, on the other hand, the choice of topic is up to the student, then they will need to find a suitable topic that conforms to all the essay requirements. When choosing a topic, students need to make sure that the topic is narrow enough to be able to form a definitive thesis, but also have enough content out there to be able to write a well-polished paper. Once a topic has been selected, a rough outline of the subject can be made. The structure of an essay depends on what type of essay it is, but most essays follow a general pattern that includes an introduction, two or three main body paragraphs, and then a conclusion to wrap everything up. The outline does not need to be very detailed because it only provides a guide for how the essay will look when finished. Each paragraph in the essay should only have a couple of sentences to explain the key points and supporting evidence, if any. Part of the process of forming an outline usually involves some kind of research. There are many sources available for students to find information about their topic. Many students make the fatal mistake of including information from sites such as Wikipedia. The vast majority of lecturers do not approve of the use of such sources because they are not reliable. Any Internet user can change a Wikipedia page, so the information contained on a Wikipedia page may be untrustworthy. The types of sources that should be used in an essay must be reliable sources. This means that the information should invariably come from a book, a peer-review journal, or newspaper article. Any source that has been professionally published by an expert in a particular field of study counts as a legitimate source. The next step in producing a high-quality research paper is to write a rough draft. This stage is all about getting down thoughts on paper rather than trying to come up with the perfect essay. If an outline has already been completed, then this stage can be concluded at a faster pace than without one. The introduction of an essay should be designed to introduce the reader to the topic without giving too much key information away. The most common way to do this is through the use of a hook, which is designed to catch the reader’s attention. After the hook, a thesis statement should tell the reader what the student’s view on a particular issue is. This part is extremely important because it will set the tone for the rest of the paper. It will also tell the reader what reasons the student is giving for justifying their position on a topic. Depending on how many points are made in the thesis statement (usually two or three), the body of the paper will be broken down into paragraphs that correspond with the thesis statement. Once again the outline of the essay can be used to form the main points, which should be expanded upon during this stage of the writing process. Also, signal phrases should be used to give relevance to the citation that will follow when introducing a quote or referencing a source. This is often overlooked by students who are too eager to include a source without introducing it properly. Quotes that standalone do not have the same effect on a reader compared to when some background information is provided beforehand. Once the body paragraphs have been written, the conclusion should be the next step. The purpose of a conclusion is simply to wrap up the main ideas of the paper by referring to each point made. The thesis statement can also be included again just to remind the reader of the purpose of the essay, although sometimes the thesis statement can be omitted in the conclusion. Once a rough draft of an essay has been completed, it needs to be checked a second time to make sure that it is up to scratch. There are many ways to do this. Some people prefer to read their essay out loud so that they will catch any misspellings or grammatical errors. However, an even better way to do this is to have someone else read the essay. The reason for this is because they have a different set of eyes and so will be able to spot any mistakes that the student may have skipped. Apart from spelling and grammar, fact checking must take place to ensure that no false claims are made. This is surprisingly quite a common mistake where either the statistics provided do not relate to the topic of the paper or the facts are simply wrong. Not only does it make the student look bad, but it is also unprofessional. Another area that is frequently overlooked is the citation style used to reference any quotes. Depending on the citation style used, each source must be referenced in a certain way and must correspond to an entry in the reference list. Also, the list of references should be in alphabetical order and conform to the citation style of choice. Once all of these steps have been completed, then the essay is ready to be turned into the professor. There are many steps involved when it comes to writing a college paper. Students quite often fail because they either failed to make a plan of action or do not understand the subject matter. To remedy this, help can be sought from the teacher who assigned the essay. A lecturer will never write an essay for a student, but they are available to provide some pointers about how to proceed. This is also helpful because the person who will eventually grade the paper will be the student’s professor, so it does not hurt to get some advice before starting to write the paper. Producing a high-quality research paper in college can be difficult, but preparing an outline and carrying out research, forming a draft, and fixing up any spelling, grammar, or factual errors can go a long way to writing the best essay possible. Read More