Writing essays can be a difficult and daunting task, especially when trying to improve your writing skills. Any student has experienced that feeling: sitting behind a blank Word document with the teacher’s instructions opened and no thought of what to write about. Sounds familiar? Frustration is one of the reasons why students postpone writing essays for the last hours before the deadline. When you don’t know how to approach a big and embarrassing assignment, the best thing you can do is to manage it from several approaches. We will tell you how to overcome the fear of an empty list and start writing essays more efficiently in the text below.
Try freewriting strategy
The freewriting method is beneficial when you constantly experience the feeling of an empty list and the absence of thoughts. This practice is about writing everything that comes to your mind. You don’t need to worry about spelling, logical flow, and editing.
The main idea is to focus your mind on producing ideas that you can transform into plain text in the future. Write down every single word your brain produces while thinking. You can use several freewriting approaches: writing concentrating strictly on the chosen topic, trying out word association, writing for a limited amount of time, and writing until you will have nothing to write about at all. Relax and keep on writing.
Ask for help
Whether you need assistance to kick-start your essay or physically can’t handle your paper before the deadline, a writing service can be a savior. Such services like https://essayshark.com/ can help with essay writing at any time. Every piece follows provided instructions, so you can see how the author approaches your topic, structures ideas, and provides supporting evidence.
One of the most positive effects of writing services is that you can learn from the samples provided by professional writers. You will better understand the style, structure, and grammar needed to create an effective essay.
Practice intuitive research
What does it mean? In fact, it’s old-fashioned internet surfing over the internet. Doing preliminary research will help you explore the topic and find essential information on which to base your essay. For the first brief search, it will be enough to visit several sources:
- Use Google Scholar or your college library database. Just input the keywords from your essay topic into the search bar to research your case and see what kind of sources are available. Try out synonyms and related phrases to find more information on your topic.
- Visit Wikipedia if you know nothing about the topic, but wish to have a quick glance at what it means. Also, look through the references list on the Wikipedia page to learn the primary sources.
- Use online encyclopedias and specialized dictionaries. They help find synonyms and related terms, which can help broaden a search and include different variations of a word or phrase.
- Search for online daily news. Reading online daily news is a great way to stay informed about current events and to spark ideas for essays related to your topic.
Also, we recommend you to use a worksheet to indicate the essential concepts more quickly and guide your research effectively. Regularly using such a worksheet will help you develop a research strategy that you can easily apply every time you write any academic paper.
Use mind mapping method
Mind mapping is one of the effective ways to organize your ideas and thoughts while brainstorming. Mind mapping helps to bring ideas together in an organized manner, allowing you to create connections between them and gain new perspectives on the essay topic. Moreover, if you are a visual learner and better understand the matter through images, creating a mind map will help you make the topic clear to you. Follow these four steps to create a mind map:
- Use a pencil and a piece of paper or use online mind map editors: Coggle, Canva, MindMeister, etc.
- Write down the essay topic in the center and write ideas around it.
- When all concepts are written, organize them into main categories that will become future essay paragraphs.
- Rewrite ideas if necessary to fit them into the categories.
Develop an essay plan
Whether you are writing a one-page essay or a more lengthy one, you need a plan. Many students skip this stage and rush into writing the first draft. And as a result, they typically get a poorly-structured text with logical inconsistency. If you strive to write your essays better, take some time to plan your paper.
If you have done a short research and used mind mapping, you already have the list of issues to discuss in your essay. Picking the most impactful points and deciding where to place them in the text are the only things left to accomplish. Also, consider the number of paragraphs you need for your essay. For example, you will need 6 to 8 paragraphs for a 1,600-word essay.
Take a writing course
Consider enrolling in a writing course if you wish to polish your essay writing and writing style. Some colleges and universities, like the University of North Carolina, have writing centers that provide writing classes and appointments for those who want to improve their writing skills. uch courses can help with writing academic papers, applying specific paper formatting and style, and learning about the peculiarities of writing for particular fields.
If your educational institution doesn’t provide such an option, you can take a writing course at Coursera, Udemy, edX, etc. Try to define which skills you need to develop and pick the course accordingly. You can start with learning the basics of writing for English learners, how to conduct research for essay writing, and take an editing course to learn how to polish your grammar and text.
Wrapping Up
Learning is a constant process; the same goes for learning to write better. If you wish to become a better writer, practice is an essential part of the path to creating better essays. Experiment with different writing techniques, use in-depth research, focus on writing, take a writing course, and strive to use correct grammar and punctuation.
