What Are the Basics of Writing an Essay
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There will be an increasing number of essays you need to write as you move through school. Additionally, the essay requirements will increase in difficulty as you progress through your academic career. Effective essay writing is a skill that should be honed early on so that you can clearly convey your message and achieve your goals.
An essay is a piece of writing in which the author presents an argument and uses evidence to back it up. The standard essay has five paragraphs. However, this number can be increased or decreased as needed. There should be five paragraphs in your essay. The essay, on the other hand, has an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion.
Here, we will discuss the basics of an essay so you can know the dos and donts of the basics of writing an academic essay.
Essay Writing Preparation: Basics of an Essay
For those who are searching for the ‘basics of writing an essay for kids,’ here is your guide to essay writing.
Make sure you know exactly what you intend to say and how you want to say it before you put pen to paper. There are certain essential measures you can take to guarantee your readiness:
Know what you’re supposed to do
The purpose of this essay remains elusive. How long do I have to do the task, and when is it due? Is there anything you’d like to ask your professor or lecturer about?
Choose a topic
If you get to pick the subject, choose something you’re interested in and have some background knowledge in.
Read up on the topic
Read some primary and secondary materials, and make some notes, and that will help you figure out what you want to say and how to say it. This is the supporting evidence for your arguments.
Formulate your thesis
The thesis statement expresses the primary argument or claim of the paper. To keep your essay on track, you should constantly be returning to your thesis statement.
Develop the essay outline
Using an outline, sketch out the skeleton of your essay. If you have a plan before you start writing, it will be much simpler to get started, and you will be more likely to finish what you’ve started.
When you know exactly what you want to say, how you want to say it and have decided on the supporting evidence you will use, you may begin writing.
Layout of Your Essay
Each phrase in your essay should build on the one before it and provide proper signposts to direct the reader through your argument.
Generally, an essay will follow the following outline:
- The introduction
- Body: An Expansion on the Problems at
- A conclusion
- Provide a bibliography of the books, articles, and other materials you reviewed.
The Introduction
The purpose of the introduction is to present the topic, clarify your understanding of the question, and quickly outline your strategy for addressing it.
A good place to start is by offering some background information, whether it be a definition of keywords, a brief overview of relevant historical or personal context, or an explanation of why you find this topic intriguing or important.
Limit the introduction to no more than two paragraphs, and make sure those paragraphs are direct and to the point.
When beginning an essay, some students find it helpful to create a draft introduction first, which they may then revise after completing the first draft. When drafting a temporary introduction, consider what information the reader must have in order to understand what comes next.
Some students find it easier to write an introduction once the body of the essay is complete; do what works best for you.
Body: An Expansion on the Problem at Hands
Essays typically combine commentary with scholarly evidence (such as from supplementary reading).
Essays written by some students amount to little more than compilations of facts or synopses of the ideas, beliefs, and opinions of others.
However, some students go to the other extreme, providing solely subjective assessments supported by neither study nor citations from external sources. The key is finding a happy medium.
Depending on the topic and the type of question being asked, the proportion of other academics’ and writers’ analysis of the topic to your own commentary will change. In general, it is wise to back up the claims you make based on your own experience with evidence from other published studies and writing.
You probably have a reading list or required textbooks to complete. You should use these as a starting point for your study, but you should also strive to read as far as possible on the topic. Note down your references as you go along.
You will be expected to use citation styles such as footnotes and bibliographies, as well as to quote and paraphrase from the works of other authors. The most crucial condition is that the source(s) you use illustrate (or provide evidence for) your claim. The amount of proof you use in your essay should reflect its purpose.
Bring in no more than three examples to demonstrate the significance of a factual issue.
You shouldn’t utilize someone else’s words in place of your own quotes. Every quote needs an in-text explanation to illustrate why it’s relevant to your argument.
To properly cite another author’s work, you must include the author’s name, the date the work was published, and the page number. A complete citation should be included in the bibliography.
A Conclusion
To wrap up your argument or draw a conclusion from your comparison of perspectives, you should write a brief conclusion at the end of your essay.
To rephrase, please highlight the gains and successes. You should also use the conclusion to address any unanswered problems or other topics you are aware of but which are outside the scope of your essay.
If you try to sum up your entire argument in the conclusion or the introduction, you run the risk of creating another assignment that merely restates the point.
References
An appropriate bibliography or reference list should be included at the end of your paper.
One pitfall is falling prey to plagiarism charges because of inadequate citations. Direct quotations from another author’s work should be accompanied by a reference to that author’s work. You should also cite any supporting materials you’ve studied in order to back up your claims.
Essay Writing Basics for Beginners
If you are worried about essay format, here are some points to remember when writing your initial draft:
The Art of Paragraph Building
Paragraphs are an essential tool for organizing your essay and leading the reader logically through its arguments.
The transition from one major point to the next is denoted by a new paragraph. Paragraphs are groups of sentences that elaborate on one central idea. Each paragraph has its own theme that is introduced and elaborated upon in its body paragraphs.
The best essays are built from a series of clear arguments presented in a logical progression.
There should be a smooth progression from one sentence or paragraph to the next without making the reader work too hard. Always make these associations apparent to show where the debate or argument is going.
The questions I have are whether or not the ideas you are making can be put more plainly and simply or whether or not they seem obvious to you at this moment.
It’s important to remember that the person evaluating your work probably has a number of other assignments waiting to be graded that are quite similar to yours. Make an effort to make yours comprehensible and straightforward; make it memorable in a positive way.
Preliminary and Final Drafts
Editing thoroughly is a must for nearly every essay.
Words can be crossed out and replaced, sentences can be rearranged for better flow or emphasis, redundant material can be cut, and proper citations can be checked.
In a nutshell, you are your own first critic and editor, so be honest with yourself and use that feedback to improve your work. Proofreading your essay by reading it aloud might be a helpful exercise at times.
One helpful technique is to have a peer review of the essay. An objective third-party proofreader will be able to spot problems with coherence, lack of organization, grammatical faults, etc., that you may have missed.
Find a proofreader with a solid command of the English language and a passing familiarity with your topic.
No more than a couple of tweaks should be necessary. The wisest course of action is to avoid contributing to a chaotic proliferation of drafts. If you are unhappy with the organization of your rough copy of your essay, you may fix it by performing a new analysis of the question and creating a new, simpler strategy. Instead of freaking out in the middle of your essay, tearing it up, and starting over, rewrite it based on your new outline. In order to finish and then revise, you must do so. If you don’t, your essay can have a strong introduction and body paragraphs but a weak conclusion.
It is considerably more effective to receive constructive feedback and make necessary adjustments to your work rather than beginning from scratch.
Stop Fretting
Certain pupils may experience complete writer’s block when confronted with a writing task.
There could be a number of causes for this. The most common factor is that these pupils have unrealistically high expectations of themselves. Reasons for this include worrying about meeting others’ expectations and having unrealistically high standards for themselves.
Whatever the case may be, you need to stop worrying if you find yourself unable to compose an assignment. If this happens to you, it’s important not to let things sit and stew but instead to take immediate action. You can figure out why you’re stuck by talking to your instructor and/or classmates about your concerns or by writing them down.
Another strategy is to write what you think is a horrible essay in under two hours and turn it in or to try to complete the assignment with no research or notes and see what happens. The citations can be added at a later time.
It’s not uncommon for students to claim that the essay they wrote in haste and with the most casual tone earned a higher grade than the laboriously crafted piece they spent weeks on. This is because the former got right to the point. It could be beneficial to give this a try.
Essay Types Explained by Essay Basics Experts
Essays, like other forms of writing, can take several forms. In certain cases, like admissions essays, the instructor will specify the genre, while in others, the thesis statement will serve as the guiding principle. Whatever the case may be, it’s helpful to have some idea of the range of possible essay types, thus here are a few of the most typical ones explained by experts at Essay Basics:
Argumentative Essay
Persuasive or argumentative essays take a stand. Keep this in mind as you sit down to write your first college essay because it is the most popular sort of schoolwork.
Admissions Essay
Application essays are required by the majority of schools, and they often focus on the applicant’s reasons for choosing the specific institution.
Persuasive Essay
An essay written with the intention of convincing the reader is called a persuasive essay. Comparable to argumentative essays, persuasive writing also firmly supports an argument’s main thesis. However, while argumentative essays need just to explain their case, persuasive writing must also persuade the reader to adopt the author’s point of view.
Compare-and-contrast Essay
A compare and contrast essay is more appropriate than a persuasive or argumentative one, which tends to take a more biased stance when you want to give equivalent weight to two contrasting ideas.
Introspective Essay
Anecdotes, real-life experiences, and observations from the author’s life are commonplace in personal essays. The thesis is open to interpretation because these papers typically take a narrative form.
Expository Essay
An expository essay’s purpose is to increase the reader’s understanding of a certain subject through detailed explanation. Expository writing follows a similar structure to arguing and persuasive essays but lacks an inherent bias in its presentation.
Always Consider Who You’re Writing For
Your final thought should be about who will be reading your essay, whether it be a professor, an admissions officer, your classmates, the general public, or some combination of these.
The target readers of your writing should always guide your choice of words and phrases. The vocabulary, style and word choice used in an essay depends greatly on the intended audience.
The tone, or the overall mood, of your essay will also change depending on who you’re writing for.
Key Points to Remember for Essay Writing
You must be able to produce a wonderful essay by following the methods that have been explained above. Nevertheless, there are a few more helpful pointers that we would propose just to make certain that the process of essay writing goes as easily as is feasible.
- Get an early start on your essay. There is a good reason for this being the first piece of advice. If you want to create an excellent essay, doing so is one of the most significant things you can do. If you start working on it the night before, you won’t have enough time to do research, brainstorm or outline your work, and you definitely won’t have enough time to go through it all again.
- Do not attempt to write it all in a single session. It is fine to take pauses as needed or to spread out the writing over a few days. It is best to write it down in stages so that each time you return to it, you can do it with a clear head and be able to concentrate fully.
- Always keep the question of the essay in mind while you write. If you have been given a specific question to answer in your essay, you should make sure to keep it close by while you work on it so that you can ensure you are consistently addressing the subject.
- Make sure to include transitions between each of the paragraphs. Try your best to use transitions that are easy to follow from one paragraph to the next in order to make your essay easier to read. This entails making an effort to connect the closing of one paragraph with the opening of the following one so that the transition does not appear to be arbitrary.
- Integrate your research with careful consideration. Include quotes or citations from the sources you used for your research to substantiate and support your thesis and primary arguments. This will demonstrate that you have conducted the research necessary to support your thesis and that you have done so.
Takeaway
If you have a plan for how to tackle it, writing an essay doesn’t have to be an intimidating task. You will have a better understanding of how to write an essay after using our essay writing stages and guidelines, and you will be able to apply that knowledge to the next project you are given. After you have practiced this activity a few times, you will find that it comes more naturally to you, and you will find that the process of writing essays is able to become more streamlined and less difficult for you.