WRITING AN ESSAY

WRITING AN ESSAY

Writing an essay isn't easy, but here are advice to help you improve your writing skills:
- Research about your topic (on the Internet, in the library, etc.) - your essay isn't going to be informative and persuasive without researching along with views from different perspectives.
- Take notes/brainstorm - it is essential that you write down some key points, ideas, examples. Mindmapping is recommended.

Mindmapping- www.info.examtime.com

- Plan your essay: you should include 3 parts of the writing - the opening paragraph, body & conclusion:

• Opening: - A brief paragraph that introduces what you're going to discuss in the essay (see tips below).
• Body: - A few paragraphs to show and explain your ideas along with examples to support them. For opinion essays and advantage/disadvantage essays, you should divide the paragraphs into at least two, each supporting an idea, separating the positive points from the negative points. For other types of essays, you should also try making your ideas easy to be identified.
• Conclusion: - One paragraph to conclude, to sum up your main points and give your opinions about in which ways your conclusion can be thought of in a larger sense..

*Tips:
           - Come up with a compelling topic & introduction to hook your reader (appealing to other people, make them want to read your essay) - then the teacher will read your essay with enthusiasm.
           - Avoid repeating ideas or words; cross out irrelevant ideas.
           - Stick to the point, don't go off-topic.

           - Try paraphrasing the topic sentence, not to copy and paste it.

           - Try using new or less common words. Use a synonym/thesaurus dictionary to help you. But you must be careful because some words have different levels of meaning (e.g. You cannot use "loathe" instead of "don't like").

           - Avoid forcing people to agree with you. Instead of saying "John is the best student", you can say "John is one of the best students in the class" since other people might not agree with you on this.
           - Analyze how your essay flows - make sentences and paragraphs flow smoothly and logically to the next ones.
           - Double-check your work afterwards.

Reference link: essay structure