What is the most important element in your college writing assignments? No, writing in college is not only about a perfect grammar and wonderful descriptive skills. It is something deeper.
Interesting fact that many students don’t even realize what their teachers expect to see in their writing assignments. So many students consider grammar to be something they should be fully focused on. In fact, when you write an academic assignment you have to consider thinking critically and writing critically. We’re not talking about criticizing everything you’re discussing. Instead, you should be able to think objectively of what you’re writing and what your topic concerns. So, let’s have a look at what a top quality assignment is and how to prepare for writing at college correctly.
Writing Your College Assignment: Basic Steps
What do you need to do in order to get good grades in your writing assignments? We’re going to talk about the basic foundations, which you need to know in order to write well and correctly.
Let’s have a look at one of the most typical college assignments every student gets during his/her educational period – an essay. First of all, to write something well, you need to have a clear vision of its structure. In case of an essay, the structure is the core and matters a lot. A typical essay writing consists of:
- Introduction;
- Body;
- And conclusion.
The biggest part of any essay is a body part, which takes 80% of all writing. An introduction takes up to 10% and a conclusion is about 10% too. An introduction is about what you’re going to discuss in your essay and what you’re arguing in the body part. It shouldn’t contain any additional information, which reveals the discussion. This kind of information should be placed in a body part only. And the conclusion is like a reverse of the introduction. They both are almost of the same length and contain similar information. Contrary to the introductory part, the conclusion should sum up what you’ve talked about in the essay, what you’ve achieved with your argument, and what you think about everything you’ve discussed. Each of those three different parts should be logically connected with each other, leading a reader to a conclusion.
One of the common mistakes among students is that they think an academic writing is about terribly complicated English and academic vocabulary only. In fact, you don’t need to use some extraordinary words to make your essay better. What is more important is to be able to express your thoughts and ideas clearly and logically, being able to deliver your argument to a reader. How to achieve this? Plan everything. An essay without a plan is a bad essay.
Plan the structure of your essay, plan the topic, plan the argument, plan the sources, which you’re going to use, plan how to get all of that to work out together. Don’t write too long sentences. If a sentence consists of more than 30-40 words, it is considered to be a long one. Expressing your ideas in shorter sentences is so much better not only for you but also for the reader. The same way is with the number of sentences. If you can express your idea in two sentences, don’t write ten sentences only to make your essay look longer. Your writing should be concise and logical. This will help you to avoid confusing in your own thoughts.
Don’t repeat something that was already said in each paragraph. Your teacher won’t be impressed if you’re going to repeat the same idea without looking at it at a new angle in every paragraph. Instead, think about how to develop that idea from the beginning of the essay to the end of it. And the last but not the least is proofreading. Proofreading and editing are also the components of any academic writing process. In fact, proofreading takes 1/3 of the whole writing time. So, make sure you leave enough time for this step.
Essay writing is a skill that you have to develop during the whole educational period in college or university. It is not something you can obtain in one day only. So, practice a lot to get better and better.
