You Too Can Write A Good Essay:

If you thought that the top notch students in your class, came with some kind of inborn skill for producing top quality essays, than certainly you are mistaking. Some of us are born with things, while the rest learn them along the way. You too can learn the ropes of essay writing by giving attention to the following points:
1. The Tilt of the Essay: Writing an accomplished academic essay isn't easy, as your observations in regard to the topics, wouldn't have much effect, if your way of expressing them isn't effective. An essay should have an argument, a tilt and a crux. You are not writing for the sake of writing, you are writing because you want to say something, to prove something. It should answer a question or a few related questions (see 2 below). It should try to prove something--develop a single 'thesis', a hypothesis, or a short set of closely related points--by virtue of reasoning and evidence, especially including apt examples and confirming citations from any particular text or sources that your argument involves. You should gather your evidence from sources that are credible and easily recognizable, so your teacher might not feel that you are fibbing or trying to pull her legs. Your effort should be such that it is coming out in the article itself, as a proof of your hard work.

2. Your Outline- the Mini Essay: When--as is usually the case--an assigned topic does not provide you with a ready-made outline, your first effort should be to formulate that. Do so by establishing as exactly as possible the question(s) you will seek to answer in your essay. Next, develop by virtue of thinking, reading, and jotting a provisional outline or hypothesis. Don't become obsessed or prematurely committed to this first answer. Pursue it, but test it--even to the point of consciously asking yourself what might be said against it--and be ready to revise or qualify it as your work progresses. (Sometimes a suggestive possible title one discovers early can serve in the same way.)

3. Organization: There are many ways in which any particular argument may be well presented, but an essay's organization--how it begins, develops, and ends--should be designed advantageously i.e to present your argument clearly and persuasively enough. (The order in which you discovered the parts of your argument is seldom an effective order for presenting it to a reader, as it is the pattern of your thoughts, and for writing, you have to organize it).


4. Learn From The Aces: Successful methods of composing an essay are various, but some practices of good writers are almost invariable:

o They start writing early, even before they think they are "ready" to write, because they use writing not simply to transcribe what they have already discovered but as a means of exploration and discovery.
o They don't try to write an essay from beginning to end, but rather write what seems readiest to be written, even if they're not sure whether or how it will fit in.
o Despite writing so freely, they keep the essay's overall purpose and organization in mind, amending them as drafting proceeds. Something like an "outline" constantly and consciously evolves, although it may never take any written form beyond scattered, sketchy reminders to oneself.
o They revise extensively. Rather than writing a single draft and then merely editing its sentences one by one, they attend to the whole essay and draft and redraft--rearranging the sequence of its larger parts, adding and deleting sections to take account of what they discover in the course of composition. Such revision often involves putting the essay aside for a few days, allowing the mind to work indirectly or subconsciously in the meantime and making it possible to see the work-in-progress more objectively when they return to it.
o Once they have a fairly complete and well-organized draft, they revise sentences, with special attention to transitions--that is, checking to be sure that a reader will be able to follow the sequences of ideas within sentences, from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to paragraph. Two other important considerations in revising sentences are diction (exactness and aptness of words) and economy (the fewest words without loss of clear expression and full thought). Lastly, they proofread the final copy.

The Author: Kelly Westfield is a high school teacher, who teaches writing skills course and English Language tutorials at various schools in California. She also is a free lance writer and contributes to various educational journals and weeklies.