Your professor will expect you to submit A-grade content on every task. No pressure, right? Well, you’d be surprised to find out that writing regardless of the topic is intimidating even for top scoring students. However, with the right skills, anyone can write an excellent essay. Here are 8 tips you can use to improve your writing skills.
8 effective ways to quickly improve your essay writing skills
Knowing how to write a high scoring essay is a must-have skill for every student. This is because as a student, you will have to write various essays on different topics and of different lengths.
Recommended articles
Start With the Basics
The first step to becoming a better writer is to use the foundation that’s already there and to know the basic principles of writing. Start with grasping the basics of spelling and grammar. Have a dictionary for checking words that you are not sure about their meanings or spellings. Be on the lookout for repetitive words that you like including in your essay. You can also use synonyms to substitute repeated words. This strategy will help you learn new words quickly. You can also download apps that give you a word of the day, its meaning and how to use it in a sentence.
Practice Makes Perfect
The practice mentioned makes perfect and applies to the writing as well. The most effective way to become a better writer is to keep in mind that you cannot become an expert essay writer overnight. So be patient with yourself and embrace the mistakes that you will be making along the way as they are part of the process.
Banish idioms and clichés
While some clichés are allowed in blog posts when it comes to writing an essay or any other formal academic assignments that meet academic standards its best to avoid such words. To improve your writing skills, you need to eliminate the need to include clichés in your content. Being straight to the point will not only help remove such phrases but also ensure that your writing is free of fluff.
Develop a Habit of Reading
In this regard, we are not talking about reading texts or messages from chats but reading academic content related to your field of study. Expert writers are both keen readers and editors. When it comes to getting better at writing, be your own best critic. When reading pay attention to sentence structure, the flow of content and word choice. You also need to read diverse content so that you can be able to differentiate high-quality texts from low quality.
Use Samples
Do you have your writing heroes or writers you look up to? Your chances of becoming a better writer quickly are pretty high if you use samples or examples of writing from an expert. Reading samples of excellent essays will help you understand what is expected of you. Samples can also act as a form of inspiration for your next piece of writing. If you feel stuck even after reading various samples, then you can also enroll in a night class or workshop that specializes specifically on improving writing skills.
Always Edit Your Work
Having grammar, typos and punctuation errors reduces the credibility of your academic paper. An essay with too many mistakes is difficult to understand which translates to a poor score. It would be a shame if you spent days writing a lengthy essay only for it to be rejected because of poor grammar. To weed out any common errors, you can use grammar checking software then afterward reread your paper. Additionally, the common mistake that students make is reading their paper straight away after completing it. Leaving it for a few hours will give you a fresh look on the assignment. You can also ask an editor to be your fresh pair of eyes.
Follow the Five Ws and One H Questions
Most professionals do not consider written work to be excellent unless the five Ws have been addressed. The five W's and one H questions are: who, what, when, where, why and how. To be a good writer, your content should be able to answer the reader's questions.
Use Credible Sources
The number one reason an essay can get rejected is due to plagiarism. To be a better essay writer, you must know the different citation styles and how to cite various sources. To avoid plagiarism, support your main points using references and paraphrase your work. Be it MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard or any other reference style you must always use the proper format.
Becoming a better writer is not rocket science. With the right tips and a habit of reading and practicing anyone can be an excellent essay writer.
This is a featured post
JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!
Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:
Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng