The Top 5 Essay Writing Tips for Students
This article will explore five essential tips for writing great essays. These essay writing tips are both for great teachers and students to grasp to improve their writing skills regardless of the topic or genre of the essay.
At the end of the article, we will show you the best collection of essay writing prompts to put these into action.
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TIP # 1: KNOW YOUR ESSAY TYPE
Before a student begins to respond to an essay prompt, they must understand the broad features that characterize the various types of essay they may be asked to write, as this will shape their approach to writing an excellent essay.
Most essays fall into one of four genres. Let’s take a look at some of the main features of each of these:
● Narrative Essays
Essentially, a narrative essay is storytelling from a specific point of view, most often from the writers. Usually, the events will be based on real-life experiences. To effectively convey the inner and outer action of the narrative, students must create as vivid a telling as possible by packing their story with sensory detail.
As narrative essays typically focus on real-life events told from the writer’s own POV, they are usually written in the first person. The use of many first-person pronouns (I, me, my etc.) helps draw the reader into the experience recounted.
Though real life does not always lend itself to perfectly crafted plotlines, narrative essays should still work toward a well-crafted conclusion, often in the form of a personal statement.
Other characteristic features of a narrative essay may include the use of conflict and dialogue to drive the narrative.
● Descriptive Essays
A descriptive essay, true to its name, focuses on describing something, whether an experience, an event, a sensation, an emotion, a person, a place, an object etc.
While it has many things in common with a narrative essay, such as its focus on the personal and use of sensory detail, there are some fundamental differences. While narrative essays are concerned mainly with telling a story, descriptive essays are more akin to painting a picture in words.
Despite this preoccupation with description, essays of this type shouldn’t be clinical deconstructions of things into the adjectives that describe them. An excellent descriptive essay will be evocative and emotionally appeal to the reader.
While narrative essays are focused on action and tend to naturally organize themselves around a ‘plot’ of sorts, the descriptive essay demands a different means of organization than chronology.
Encourage students to think of a means of organization for their descriptive essays. Anything reasonable will do, such as organizing it from various perspectives or using different senses.
● Expository
The expository essay comes in many forms, such as the ‘How To’ essay, the Compare & Contrast’, and the ‘Cause and Effect’ essay. Though there are apparent differences between these types, all expository essays endeavor to provide the reader with a balanced analysis of a given subject.
Unlike the narrative and the descriptive essay, personal feelings don’t apply here. Expository essays are not generally written in the first person, and the writer doesn’t reveal their feelings on the topic.
This essay is used to explain a topic and often uses facts, statistics and examples to achieve this.
● Persuasive
Also known as an argumentative essay, the aim of this type of essay is to convince the reader of the validity of the writer’s point of view on a topic.
As with expository essays, the persuasive essay is also concerned with facts and logic, but usually as supporting evidence for the opinions of the writer.
When writing a persuasive essay, encourage students to present their arguments supported by evidence. Though they will be expressing an opinion in these essays, this does not mean they will ignore the other side of the argument.
These should be touched on too, but there should be no doubt left in the reader’s mind about the writer’s opinion on the matter and why they think that way.
Research is Essential
Research and understanding your topic are invaluable regardless of your essay type, purpose, or audience.
Be sure to look at our guide on effective research strategies for students to understand how to research your essay effectively and efficiently.
Tip: #2 Keep YOUR Essay Focused
Students must avoid the ‘essay vomit’ phenomenon. Be sure they understand that writing an essay is not about regurgitating everything they know about a topic.
Students must keep the essay focused on the specifics of the question or essay prompt. To help maintain that keen focus on the task at hand, students should be encouraged to:
- Read through the essay prompt several times before beginning
- Underline keywords and essential phrases
- Paraphrase the prompt to ensure complete comprehension
- Respond directly to the prompt
- Refer back to the prompt throughout the writing process
- Use transitions to connect points
After closely examining the essay prompt, it should be apparent which type of essay the student is being asked to compose.
Once the student has identified the correct genre (narrative, descriptive, expository, persuasive), they will need to accurately identify the question they are being asked. This will help determine the approach the student takes in their essay.
There are several types of essay questions, and students should learn to identify each of these in turn. In these different types of questions, students will be asked to:
- Analyze
- Compare and contrast
- Construct an argument
- Synthesize viewpoints
- Evaluate arguments
Students will need plenty of practice looking at various essay-type questions to determine first the essay genre and then the type of question being asked.
Sometimes it will be immediately apparent from reading the question which type of question it is, while at other times, things will be more nuanced. Remember: practice makes perfect!
Essay Writing Teaching Strategies!
A helpful exercise to allow students to practice is to gather up a list of essay questions covering a range of genres from past exam papers.
Then, divide students into groups and have them sort the questions into the categories above according to question type.
After identifying the correct approach to their essay prompt, students should begin to plan their responses.
This will help them to ensure they cover all their main points while sticking closely to the question. It will also help them to complete their work within a given time limit where the essay is timed.
Tip: #3 KNOW your audience
Just as we identified the importance of genre and type of question before beginning to respond to an essay prompt, students must identify their audience before writing with that audience in mind.
To do this, students must know who their audience is, understand what it is they are looking for, and tailor their essays accordingly.
Students can begin the process of identifying their audience by asking the following questions:
- Who is the reader, and what is their perspective? Are they a peer, a teacher, an examiner, an employer or a potential employer?
- What level of knowledge do they have?
- What impression do you want to leave the reader with? what do you want the reader to take away?
Knowing who the intended audience greatly informs the writer’s approach to writing the essay.
For example, if the student is writing an essay for an examiner, then they are writing to demonstrate they have successfully learned the material in a particular course.
For example, writing an essay for a younger audience, such as their peers, may mean using simpler language and assuming a lack of prior knowledge of the topic by the reader.
Here, the focus may be on writing to inform rather than writing to ‘show off’, as with an examiner as the audience.
The audience that a student is writing for will have a significant impact on the essay’s tone too. For example, if the student is writing an essay for a teacher, they’ll want to adopt a more formal tone, usually avoiding things like contractions and slang.
Writing for an audience of peers usually demands a more casual, less formal approach. This is one of the most valuable essay writing tips for high school students to remember, as they often fail to consider their audience above their opinions.
Tip: #4 Get to the Point
Essay writing should be concise and to the point. Students should avoid using five words where two words will suffice.
It is a common mistake, primarily when engaged in long-form writing, to be needlessly long-winded.
Encourage your students to be direct and to the point. Challenge them to trim the fat in their writing by eliminating unnecessary words and phrases. This is important not just in the editing process but at the composition stage too.
Two other quick tips to help students make their point clearly and concisely:
● Use the Active Voice
The active voice is more direct and engages the reader more effectively than the passive voice. Encourage students to avoid using the helping verb. For example, instead of writing: ‘She is explaining the process’, students should write: ‘She explains the process’.
● Break Complex Ideas Down into Shorter Sentences
Students are particularly prone to straying off point when writing about complex ideas. A helpful rule here is that students should break it down into several short sentences when expressing a complex idea. This helps keep the writing direct, focused, and much clearer for the reader.
Tip: #5 Edit and Proofread
This article is about the fundamentals of essay writing, and nothing is more fundamental to good writing, essays or otherwise, than developing an effective editing and proofreading process.
Sometimes students are confused about the difference between editing and proofreading. While there are many types of editing, in this context, we are referring to revising an essay to check its structure and organization, readability, tone, content, and consistency.
When we refer to proofreading, we refer to a final quick check on the essay’s spelling, grammar, and typos.
The editing process may differ between individual writers as we all develop our preferences over the years. However, students should outline the essential common elements to include. They can later work these into a systematic, personalized approach to an editing process that works best for them.
The editing process offers student writers a final opportunity to ensure that they have adequately responded to the essay prompt. Revisiting the introduction and conclusion will allow the writer to check whether the core issues have been adequately addressed.
A scan through the body paragraphs will provide an opportunity to look more closely at the arguments’ content. Are they made coherently? Do the order of the arguments as presented in the essay follow a logical progression? Are the arguments supported by appropriate evidence?
When reading through their written text, students should keep a merciless eye out for superfluous words. This isn’t whimsical flights of purple prose we’re talking about here.
Essays should be laser-focused and lean as a greyhound. Empty words and hackneyed phrases must be ruthlessly eliminated.
Essay Writing Teaching Strategies!
Explain to students that one particularly effective way to edit and proofread is to read back their work aloud.
We read aloud much slower than we do when reading silently. This affords students the time and space to pay closer attention to what has been written.
Reading aloud also gives students the chance to ‘listen’ to how their sentences are punctuated, giving opportunities to correct mistakes.
USEFUL ESSAY WRITING VIDEO TUTORIALS
A Place for Practice
As we’ve seen, writing essays can be a very complex business. However, with focused practice on the fundamentals, any student writer can make significant progress in their writing ability.
As seen from the tips in this article and related articles on this site, technical skills are undoubtedly crucial for students to write well. However, creating a classroom culture that encourages students to experiment with their voice and style is paramount too.
Encourage students to take risks in their writing. They should understand that there is no failure here. There is only success or a learning opportunity.
This is the surest way to make progress in the craft of essay writing.
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ESSAY WRITING PROMPTS
These are just a sample of our complete collection of free essay writing prompts for teachers and students. Click the button below to view them all.
ESSAY WRITING CHECKLISTS AND RUBRICS FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
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