How to write a great essay

essay writing

Before you graduate from high school or college, you will be required to write quite a number of essays.

Most students dread the thought of writing essays but as you will see from this article, writing an essay is easy. As an essay writing service, Grade Miners has developed a stepwise approach that we recommend students to use when working on their academic papers.

Here are the steps.

Unpack the essay question

The first step in writing an essay is deciphering what the question is. If you do not understand what your professor is looking for, you will not get a good grade on the essay. Once you understand the question, structure your essay to respond to it — even if you think the question is silly.

An essay question typically has some direction words that can help you know what is required of you. Look for words like describe, argue, explain, etc. When asked to describe, focus on the facts, the event or the process. If asked to argue, systematically reject or support the question statement by providing evidence. If you are required to explain, take time to analyze rather than merely summarizing.

Read the marking rubric

Before embarking on answering the essay question, take time to read through and understand the marking rubric provided by your professor. Different universities have different marking rubrics, and even in the same university, different lecturers have different rubrics.

This is vital because it will tell you where you need to put most of your focus when writing the essay. For instance, if the lecturer says he will award 25 points for critical thinking and 5 points for text organization, then you want to convince him that you did think through the essay.

Brainstorm

The next step is brainstorming the essay topic. You can begin from what you already know about the topic before you start doing more research. You can develop a brainstorm map in your mind but for best results, write down the thoughts you develop on a piece of paper.

Ask questions like, why is this topic important? What factors contribute to this phenomenon? Such questions can form the basis of your research, and you can also use the notes you make at this stage to come up with a thesis statement.

Write the essay

You can now embark on writing the essay. Start by formulating a thesis statement which you should clearly communicate in the first paragraph. The rest of the essay should focus on answering the essay question.

Use the structure of introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction paragraph is where the thesis statement goes, and the body section is where the paragraphs answering the question go. Finalize the essay by wrapping up everything nicely with a conclusion paragraph. The conclusion shouldn’t add new information but rather summarize the main idea of the essay.

For most students, the trickiest part of the essay is referencing. If this is also a major concern for you, just go with an essay writing service that knows what they are doing.