Steps to Follow While Writing an English Essay

Every mid-school, college, and high school student is asked to write an essay at some point in their academic life. Today, essays are not only written for educational purposes. But, people write essays and have it published in magazines and famous blogs. Have you ever got an essay writing assignment? Or have you ever participated in essay writing competitions in high school? Well, only students who have written essays know the time and effort this piece of writing takes.

Whether you are writing an essay for scholarship or school assignment, crafting the best piece is one of the most challenging tasks for students. If you are finding it difficult to write a high-quality and concise essay, here we’ve come up with some interesting steps you can follow to craft an engaging paper. Let’s get started.

- Select a Topic

Your professor can either ask you to write on the given topic or submit an essay on your own topic. Either way, your job is to ensure that your essay stays unique and original. If your professor hasn’t assigned any topic, then you have to do some research to come up with a perfect essay topic. Luckily, you will get an opportunity to select a topic on your own. This allows you to pick the best topic that you are familiar with.

Once you have chosen the topic, decide if you want to craft an informative essay or a convincing one. If you are allowed to write an essay on your topic, you must choose something of your interest. Additionally, make sure that the topic you have chosen isn’t picked by your classmates. The last thing any student would want is to spend hours writing an essay only to discover that their friend has also written on the same topic.

- Prepare an Outline

Do not start writing before creating an outline of your essay. Take a rough paper and note down all the ideas you have in mind. What points do you want to highlight in the essay? What should the essay talk about? Does it have to be informative or persuading? What thesis statement should you focus on? What resources can you use to find evidence for the thesis? A brief outline helps students to highlight the necessary elements that they want in the essay.

You can even draw a diagram where you can highlight the essential points that can be presented as the introductory sentences for each paragraph. Also, add the supportive statements that you are going to mention under the introductory sentence of each paragraph.

- Write a Thesis Statement

Once you are done with the topic selection and the rough outline, it is time to craft a thesis statement. A thesis statement might be limited to 2-3 lines, but it has a great impact on your overall assignment. No one wants to read an essay with a casual and poor thesis statement.

For example: “Online marketing has evolved retail markets”. This is a poor thesis statement because there is no description of what exactly the readers are going to explore in your essay. You should, instead, make it stronger by writing something like “Online Marketing has revolutionized the retail stores, logistics, commerce, and small & large firms in 2019". This statement looks concise and complete. It tells the readers about the areas you have covered in the essay.

- Introduction

Just like any other write-up, the introduction is the crucial element of an academic essay. Your readers go through the introduction before deciding whether they want to read the entire write-up or leave the page.

If you want to catch the professor's or audience's attention, you must write an eye-catching and intriguing introduction. A good academic intro is the one that reveals only the important areas that you have covered in the essay and skipping the rest. If you reveal everything you have mentioned in the essay in the intro, your readers won't be intrigued to read the rest. If you want to draw the reader's attention, you must start the intro with a shocking sentence, a quote, dialogue, story, and anything that could captivate your readers to read the full essay.

- Write the Body

Once you are done with the thesis part, you are all set to get started with the body. The body of an academic essay contains the explanation, definition, evidence, and arguments. Basically, every main idea that you had outlined on the rough paper should be given a separate heading and a proper explanation with evidence.

You have to split the body into paragraphs. Each paragraph of an academic essay has the same format. You have to write an introductory sentence and write the supporting opinions in the sentence structure. Make sure that you leave some space (2-3 lines) between the introductory title and the explanation. This space will be filled with examples, quotations, statistics, and other such evidence.

- Craft a Perfect Conclusion

A conclusion is a must in academic writing. You need to sum up all your ideas into a short and engaging conclusion. Make sure that your conclusion supports the thesis statement. You don't have to mention new details and something informative in the last section of your essay. In fact, sum up all the main ideas of your academic write-up and present it nicely through the conclusion. The average length of a conclusion is 50 to 70 words.

- Proofread Your Essay

You never know how many mistakes you have committed you proofread the essay and have it checked by a professional. Fortunately, many online proofreading and grammar checking tools can be used to check the content thoroughly for grammar errors. These tools will help you correct the punctuation, writing style, grammar, sentence construction, and other such linguistic problems. If you are still not sure about online checking tools, have your essay checked by a professional.

So, why wait? Follow these steps and write a perfect academic essay. Amaze your professor with a strong academic assignment. Good Luck!