Help with Academic Essay Writing | Study Coach UK
How can I improve my academic essay writing skills? This is a question that many students will usually ask. The answer is that it takes practise and more practise to fine-tune essay writing skills, therefore students should exercise patience and also set aside time to read and improve overall Study Skills. Writing a good assignment can be a challenge, particularly if you’re returning to formal education after a long absence away from the classroom.
Students’ should however take heart that writing can be very rewarding and that all students will find their essay writing skills will develop significantly during the time spent at University or College. In order to improve academic essay writing skills students should note that writing skills are interrelated to other academic skills such as: research, planning, reflection, critiquing skills and goal setting skills.
GUIDE to ESSAY WRITING
In order to support you whilst you develop your own individual academic writing style, this Study Coach Blog will provide you and other learners with a guide to tackling essay writing. Please note that your specific academic subject might determine the style of essay writing to adopt so do keep this in mind and treat the ideas in this blog as a guide.
BRAINSTORM THE ESSAY TASK
Firstly, when you receive the assignment brief you need to find out what is required of you before you start to do any research. Read the assignment guidance notes carefully and ensure that you understand the title of the essay. Read the Learning Outcomes and seek understanding. Brainstorm and write a statement to summarise what you understand from the essay title and start to make notes of what you need to find out.
Once you have an understanding of the assignment task students should then proceed to collecting relevant data. It is advisable to write a series of questions based on the essay task, these questions should then guide you when collecting data, as you will be looking for answers to the questions posed. Do bear in mind that you should not exceed the word count for the essay. You should therefore limit the number of questions in view of the allowed word count, a 3,000 word assignment will allow you to raise more questions compared to a 2,000 word essay.
SECONDARY SOURCES
When sourcing material keep focused on the essay title and your series of questions. It is usually useful to source factual information, for example you could gather data providing government statistics on crime or statistics on smoking, depending on the essay topic. Factual information is useful to provide background knowledge. Depending on the nature of the essay you will need to locate relevant theories and ideas to evidence your potential academic arguments. Once again when deciding on the best evidence to use for the essay, keep in mind the essay title and your series of questions and ask yourself whether the evidence you have found will help you to answer the questions. If the evidence found in the secondary sources (books, journals, reports, articles) is deemed irrelevant to your essay then simply discard the evidence. You might therefore find the information in books, journals, articles interesting, but if it has no relevance to your work then it is pointless using the information in your essay.
For example, if you were asked to write an essay on teenage boys smoking habits and you found some amazing data about women smoking during pregnancy, then quite clearly the data about pregnant women smoking will not be relevant to your essay. The data might be an eyeopener but it must be discarded, since your focus should be on teenage boys and smoking habits.
RECORDING INFORMATION & REFERENCING
During the process of collecting data, it is important to record the information in order to have accurate references for the essay. You should therefore record names, dates, title of research, including place published and publishers. Quotes, page number and examples should be accurately recorded in your notes. Don’t make the mistake of reading a book and returning the book to the shelf without recording the details for referencing. Once you believe that you have collected sufficient relevant data then it is time to reflect on what you have found and your understanding of the essay task should become clearer. The next step is to progress to making an outline plan and writing the first draft. Study Coach UK will provide you with a guide to making a first draft in a future blog.
CONTACT: If you have a question about Essay Writing, do get in touch with Study Coach UK. Email: Morel Benard info@studycoach.uk.com
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