6 Steps to Write a Compelling Academic Essay
The word academic essay has been borrowed from French since the 16th century, when it originally meant “to try, trial, or weigh,” which is a beneficial understanding. In my lifetime, I have written tens of thousands of essays and evaluated tens of thousands more as an instructor;. Although at the same time, few of them resemble one another greatly, they are all bound together by the concept of trying out different ideas. Essays are exploratory missions.
“I write to discover what I know,” as American novelist and essayist Flannery O’Connor famously said.
The simplest way to debunk essays is to think of them as a process rather than a finished good.
Nevertheless, the essay has developed a precise and quantifiable meaning through tradition (rather than a definition). In an academic essay, our final result is presenting in-depth, reasoned, and thoroughly researched arguments regarding the topic we have been given. The method—exploring concepts on paper—five hundred years later remains the same.
Your final copy might be a solid, convincingly authoritative work, but you won’t get there without first researching your subject and putting your theories to the test.
Steps to writing an academic essay
Do you need help with academic essays?
It can be scary if you’ve never written an academic essay before or it has been a while since you have. However, you can create a topic and compose an essay without experiencing excessive tension or worry by following the six procedures outlined below. Also, you can hire professional essay writing help in the UK if you want.
Develop a topic
Choosing a topic and creating a thesis statement—a succinct declaration of your essay’s primary idea—are the initial steps in writing an academic essay (for instance, “Dogs are better than cats.”).
Your teacher may offer a specific topic or advise you to write about a particular thesis statement when giving you the assignment to write an academic essay. Your teacher might occasionally assign one of the following four kinds of essays:
- An event from the author’s life is the subject of narrative essays.
- Descriptive essays describe a subject, such as a place, a person, or a work of art.
- Information about a subject is presented in expository essays.
- The purpose of persuasive essays is to persuade the reader to agree with the writer’s point of view or to feel or believe a particular way.
If your instructor asks you to select your own topic, consider the subjects you are interested in. For example, have you been assigned to write a descriptive essay and you love movies? Describe the feelings you have after watching your favourite movie. Has a narrative essay assignment been given to you?
Write a story about events during a significant experience, such as your most memorable vacation. A reliable essay writer online can help you with that.
Conduct Research & take notes
It’s time to start your research if you need to after you’ve decided on your thesis statement. Research may not be required if your essay describes a personal experience or your thoughts on a particular subject. But for other kinds of essays, gathering data from reliable sources to support your claims or provide truthful facts is crucial.
Do not put off starting your research until the last minute while thinking about how to create an academic essay. You might discover that the data you require isn’t easily available online, in which case you might have to go to your neighbourhood library or carry out more in-depth searches online. It’s never a good idea to search for it the night before your essay is due, hoping to locate all the material you need right away, even while the employees at the library at your school are ready to help.
Discover the right sources
When looking for trustworthy sources, consider academic journals, newspapers, official government or organisation websites, or websites created by people who have knowledge and credentials in the subject matter you are researching. Wikipedia and other wiki sites generally contain unreliable information because anyone can edit them at any time. Finding trustworthy sources, however, can often be done by going to the websites linked at the bottom of the wiki pages.
Make an outline
Make a note of significant dates, numbers, names, etc., once you’ve gathered your data so that you have all you need when you start writing. Additionally, you can print off articles and web pages and underline the key details so that you can quickly locate them when you begin writing.
All your sources’ bibliographic information, including websites, must be record or save. The name of the author, the article or web page’s title, the page numbers (for printed materials), the date the source was publish, and the URL are all included in this information (for websites). You’ll probably need to refer to this material as you compose your essay and add it to the conclusion.
Write your essay
It’s time to fill out the material and begin writing your academic essay now that you have an outline. Describe yourself from the outset. Your thesis statement should be present here, along with some background information that explains it. The context in which you approached your study of the thesis, the background material for your argument and the structure of the other portions of your essay may all be found in this text.
You express your arguments, descriptions, or thoughts in the body paragraphs of your essay. To inform the reader of the paragraph’s primary topic, each of these paragraphs needs to start with an opening sentence. The following three to five sentences should provide more details on that concept. Here is where you will use your past studies. To support your point in each paragraph, you can use data, statistics, or the opinions of others. But you must always give credit where credit is due if you incorporate ideas or information from another essay writer online source. Failing to do so is consider plagiarism, and academic institutions have rigorous anti-plagiarism policies.
Edit your work
It’s crucial to edit your writing after you’ve finished the first draft. For example, writing an academic essay nearly always calls for multiple revisions. Therefore, when editing your work, you will look for a variety of things, such as the following:
- Verify that everything you write is correct in grammar, spelling, and punctuation (spell checking in word processing software can assist with this, but keep in mind that it doesn’t always catch everything!).
- When feasible, try to utilise active voice (such as “I will discuss”) rather than passive voice (such as “I shall be discussing”).
- Use proper English; stay away from slang and contractions.
- Stay away from sexist or discriminatory language.
- Avoid talking too much; instead, be brief.
Final Thoughts,
Additionally, make sure you haven’t present any inaccurate material (for instance, double-check dates and numbers for accuracy). And that all information you gleaned from other sources has been properly cite.
I’m complete now! You can produce a well-planned, well-organized academic essay by adhering to these instructions!