Many of you are probably familiar with the dread that accompanies the act of having an essay topic given to you. Nothing’s been written, nothing’s been looked at; all you need is a subject, a page that is blank while the instructions to “write.” As a former twelfth grade English teacher, I’m convinced the anxiety of not knowing what to write is the reason why so many of my students wait until the past possible minute to create an essay. Under pressure, no choice is had by you but to get going. But at that time, it’s too late to write the essay that is best you might’ve written.
The clear answer would be to soon start as as possible. Apply this five step prep process to any essay you write.
Free-write
Any writing is progress. Jot down anything concerning the topic you’ve been assigned, even if it’s just questions you have got about what the prompt means. Make note of anything. Don’t censor yourself; get your brain just firing. You can draw pictures, symbols, or a rudimentary mind map (more on that below) if you are visual,.
Exploratory Research
If you’re writing an investigation paper or anything requiring support to back up your points, do exploratory research. It will acquaint you utilizing the topic and perhaps reveal ideas you have gotn’t thought of yet.
On the computer, Google Scholar or Wikipedia are great places to get started. Simply seek out the topics and ideas mentioned into the prompt and spending some time doing some good internet surfing that is old-fashioned. If anything jumps out it down, add it to a word document, take a screenshot, or bookmark the page—you may want to use it later for your essay at you, jot. If you’re into old-fashioned research (or if your essay is about a specific book), head to the library, look up related topics into the catalog, and browse shelves associated with your subject. Whenever I wrote my dissertation, among the better resources i discovered came help in essay writing from trying to find a certain book after which stumbling upon two or three even more awesome ones in the shelf nearby.
The reason i recommend doing exploratory research before any sort of serious pre-writing or outlining is that nowadays you can quickly access info on the internet. In certain cases, you may desire to avoid letting the opinions of others taint yours. On the other hand, you may find the ideas of others to be valuable to your development process. It is up to you.
Now you can plan your essay that you’ve searched.
There are two main primary tried-and-true strategies for pre-writing: listing and clustering (also known as mind-mapping). If you choose the first, take note of topics in a group and list related topics. In the event that you choose the second, your prewriting will be much more visual. Write down the essay topic within the center, circle it, draw branches out then to many other ideas. Circle those basic ideas and keep branching out. The final result will seem like a web.
After pre-writing, you ought to have a more focused idea of what you will talk about. Now you’re willing to enter into some deeper research in the topics that are specific ideas you mapped call at pre-writing. The quantity of research you have to do might vary with respect to the scope associated with the topic or even the assignment. For instance, you’ll have to do more research for a master’s thesis than a blog post. Make notes and connect them in to the concepts in your pre-writing. Transfer your work to a pc, so you can easily shift headers and content if you haven’t already done so.
Finally, it is time for you to get organized. Based on your research and brainstorming, come up with your thesis (the focus of your essay). Start your central point to your outline, then list your supporting arguments underneath (they are likely to be the topics of one’s body paragraphs). Underneath each one of these arguments that are supporting list examples and reasoning to support them.
For the majority of students and a lot of assignments, i will suggest which you always get an initial structured outline down, but don’t agonize over which makes it perfect. Odds are, as you start writing, your thoughts might go in unexpected directions. So don’t devote too much time to an outline that could need to be changed.
You’ll find many sample essay prompts online, but a good resource to train with will be the new ACT writing prompts (even though you aren’t get yourself ready for the ACT). These persuasive writing prompts are superb practice at any level them to either do a quick pre-write and outline without conducting additional research (meaning you can practice these skills in just a few minutes), or you can flesh them out with additional research to practice for longer essays because you can use.
Writing could be intimidating, however the longer you place an essay task off, the more daunting it becomes. Get going early, by using this five-step process, and you may arrive at the conclusion line faster and with less agony.
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