If you have ever did some writing you will probably agree that it is not possible to write any good thing spontaneously. Thus, writing a paper will appear to be a time and effort consuming work. In order to develop strong arguments for your position you will need to perform a proper pre-writing work and be able to structure your paper correctly. Our brief guide will provide you with basic tips on writing college essays.
- 1. Reading before writing.
- Before beginning writing the essay you will need to read some articles, books or any other necessary materials. Some types of paper will require you to summarize, analyze, synthesize or criticize the information you read.
- Even if you need to read a small part of some article or book we recommend you to skim or get familiar with the whole source. Sometimes introduction, conclusion, footnotes, appendices can give you a significant information.
- Find out what the genre of your reading piece is, why it was written and what its intended audience is.
- Pay attention to the book’s or article’s author. Learn about the sources of information and methods that he used researching his topic.
- Think why this particular reading was assigned to your by the instructor. Is it connected with your class work, other readings or research purpose? If you know that this source contains an answer to the particular questions posed by instructor – keep them in mind.
- Be an active reader. Take notes; write down your reactions and questions to what you read.
- 2. Finding the topic.
- Finding the topic requires narrowing your ideas – find your path in one big mess. There are several methods you can use for this purpose:
- Freewriting – writing down your stream of consciousness. This way is beneficial as it helps to release from pressure of writing a perfect paper in the first try and gives an opportunity to free your thoughts and find precious ideas among them.
- Making a list. This type will let you express your thoughts and connections among them in the organized manner.
- Consider 6 basic questions for identifying your topic: who, what, when, where, how and why.
- 3. Writing a draft.
- Once you are ready for writing - take one more minute to think about your audience. Who will be reading your paper and what is his aim? Probably, if you are writing an essay for college the instructor will check it with an aim to evaluate your understanding the task, ability to imply your knowledge received in class and your writing skills.
- Remember that your arguments must be reasoned and logical as well the structure of the paper. In order to achieve good results try to avoid these common mistakes:
- Providing invalid or unsupported assumptions. The kind of statement which cannot be proved as true should not be one of your arguments or pieces of evidence.
- Giving prejudiced statements. Proper arguments cannot be influenced by any stereotypes or prejudices. Make sure that you present an unbiased objective position.
- Emotional writing. Sometimes you will have to defend the position which contradicts to yours or write about ambiguous topic that causes a strong emotional reaction from your side. In any case, you must present the concrete facts for your claim.