Knowing how to improve essay writing isn’t easy but it’s one task that most of us will face at some point in our lives. How to write a college essay is a widely asked question and here, we will attempt to tackle that answer in simple, easy-to-follow steps.
What is an essay?
Nearly all of us will have been required to write an essay at some time in our lives, so what exactly is an essay?
An essay is a relatively short piece of writing on a specific subject with an aim of expressing an opinion or to propose or explore an argument. The writer usually presents their ideas using different techniques, for example in critique or commentary form. An essay may contain authoritative, researched pieces of information alongside the writer’s own opinions. Furthermore, quite often, an essay is less formal than a dissertation.
How to improve essay writing?
So where do you start? The two major components of essay writing are planning and structure. To know how to improve essay writing is to know that you must think ahead. So always start with your planning first. For some basic writing organisation tips, click here.
The most basic form of planning is creating a brainstorm. A brainstorm is a visual collection of ideas stemming from a labelled topic in the centre of your page like this.
This is where you can loosen your inhibitions and let your ideas run wild. You might use phrases, singular words, concepts, names, perspectives and other ideas to get the ball rolling on potential subject matter and perspectives to use later on. Another idea here would be to find synonyms of some of the words you have come up with as they could generate further ideas for you. Of course, knowing how to write a college essay isn’t dependent on you creating a brainstorm to plan, you can also plan using bullet points, paragraphs and venn diagrams.
After you have completed your initial plan, you will want to start working on trimming off the fat- meaning deciding which points you widely want to cover in your essay and others that might make minor points or that you might miss out on altogether. Once this is done and you are sure that you have included all of the points and perspectives that you want to cover, you will be ready to form the main body of your essay. If you want to know how to improve essay writing, in terms of structure read on:
Your essay structure should contain an:
1. Opening statement
This usually acts as the introduction of your essay where you will make a summative statement addressing the topic you are going to speak about. Here you will provide a brief piece of context. This informs your audience whilst anchoring your point.
For example: ‘Of Mice and Men is a fictional story which covers a number of characters who co-exist on a ranch during the Great Depression in America.’
2. Thesis statement for essay writing
Your thesis statement is your assertion, which is what you believe and the primary overarching point that you are trying to make in your essay throughout.
For example- ‘In this essay I will be discussing how the writer Steinbeck presents Crooks as a social outcast who has a secret desire to make friends with others on the ranch.’
Everything that comes after this statement will be you using a variety of points, persuasive techniques and evidence to try and argue this point to the reader.
We don’t actually know for sure that the writer wants to present the character as having this ‘secret desire’ as I have worded, however the technique I have used here is, opinion as fact and the rest of my essay will be using evidence from the text in the form of quotes, character analyses and the social backdrop of the text to persuade the reader of my argument.
Write an opening statement.
This usually acts as the introduction of your essay where you will make a summative statement addressing the topic you are going to speak about. Here you will provide a brief piece of context. This informs your audience whilst anchoring your point.
For example: ‘Of Mice and Men is a fictional story which covers a number of characters who co-exist on a ranch during the Great Depression in America.’
2. Thesis statement for essay writing
Your thesis statement is your assertion, which is what you believe and the primary overarching point that you are trying to make in your essay throughout. For the purpose of this article, I will use Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck as a model text.
For example- ‘In this essay I will be discussing how the writer Steinbeck presents Crooks as a social outcast who has a secret desire to make friends with others on the ranch.’
Everything that comes after this statement will be you using a variety of points, persuasive techniques and evidence to try and argue this point to the reader.
We don’t actually know for sure that the writer wants to present the character as having this ‘secret desire’ as I have worded, however the technique I have used here is, opinion as fact and the rest of my essay will be using evidence from the text in the form of quotes, character analyses and the social backdrop of the text to persuade the reader of my argument.
In essence, this is what an essay is: a persuasive piece backed by evidence from a number of sources. Of course how to write a college essay based on a piece of fictional literature often includes taking most, if not all evidence from the book itself rather than other sources that you might use when discussion non-fictional topics.
3. Body/Main part of essay writing
This is self-explanatory and where the fun begins. This part forms the meat of your discussion and where you really get to drive your points to the audience, whilst using evidence from the text. This section of your essay will consist of a series of paragraphs. Part of knowing how to perfect essay writing is understanding how the structure should work.
You will have a series of paragraphs:
Example-
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 3
Each paragraph should include:
Point: The statement you want to make.
Evidence: in the form of a quote or piece of solid evidence from the text e.g. the plot, a characters’ actions or a symbol which illustrates or highlights your point.
Analysis: This is where you explain and justify how the evidence validates your point.
Link: Here you link back to the original point to sum up the paragraph.
Below I have demonstrated how to write a college essay by structuring your paragraphs accordingly.
Example
Paragraph 1
Point: Crooks’ longing for companionship can be seen when he points out where the other men play cards. A place that he is forbidden from entering because of the colour of his skin.
Evidence: He states, ‘They play cards in there, but I can’t play because I’m black.’
Analysis: This quote shows that Crooks’ is aware that the colour of his skin is used as a barrier to social interaction with the other men on the ranch. However the fact that he points out the location of their social activity, a place from which he is excluded, shows his longing desire for companionship.
Link: Here it can be seen that the location where the other men play cards serves as a reminder and symbol of Crook’s marginalisation. He is physically on the outside looking in and the very fact that he is aware of their social activity and his exclusion from it on the basis of his skin colour adds to his sense of isolation and a secret desire for friendship with others.
Example
Paragraph 2
Point: Crooks has a number of books which are described as ‘a tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905,’ as well as ‘battered magazines and a few dirty books on a special shelf over his bunk.’
Evidence: The fact that Crooks is in possession of multiple books would suggest that he has some time on his hands on account of being isolated for most of the time. Furthermore, the fact that the condition of those books are described as being ‘mauled,’ ‘battered’ and ‘tattered’ suggests that he spends much of his time alone with his books.
Analysis: The fact that Crooks has read his books over and over to the extent that they are in a deteriorated condition shows us that he has no outlet for social interaction with others. In this way, his fixation with his books serves to ease his natural longing for companionship.
Link: Crooks’ possessions are a source of pride to him as well as entertainment which makes up for his lack of friendship. Escaping between the pages of books allows him to pass the time that he would have spent playing card games with the other men thus highlighting an unspoken want to be socially included.
You will continue to illustrate your points using this method for each paragraph perhaps going into even more intricate depth and the use of more quotes for your analysis segments.
4. Conclusion
Here you gather the points you made in the body of your essay and state how you believe you have successfully proven your original thesis statement at the beginning of the essay to be true through your chosen evidence.
Example
In conclusion, throughout this essay I have illustrated how glimpses of Crooks’ desire for friendship has presented itself in numerous ways in the text, Of Mice and Men. This being through the way in which he pointed out a location where the others played games signalling a painful awareness of his exclusion as well as the ‘battered’ books which kept him company in his little shed.
I have only provided a sample of a conclusion above however yours should briefly touch on each main point you made in the essay to prove your argument.
So now you know how to write a college essay and how to improve essay writing in general. Will you be using these techniques in the future? Or do you already employ some of these techniques? Let me know in the comments below!
