How to Write a Great Essay | Effective Essay Writing

that is really freaking cute right now so let's talk about essay writing most of us dread essay writing because essay writing is a type of writing which we're not familiar with we don't grow up with reading essays we grow up with reading novels with reading articles with reading magazines essays no we don't read any essays until we've come to the age where we need to start writing essays which means writing an essay is really freaking terrifying for the first time and it doesn't matter how good at writing you are there is a huge difference between

being a good writer and being an effective writer you can have excellent prose weaving skills and with perfect grammar and a phenomenal vocabulary but if you cannot communicate your ideas in a clear and comprehensible way your essay won't perform as well as you deserve it to on the best tidbits of advice that lecturer ever gave me was telling me that I should write every essay as though I'm writing a letter to a dear friend who has no bloody idea what I'm talking about but I'm really passionately excited to tell them all about my research and

I think that's a really nice way to get ahead of the essay writing game it's something that needs to be formal but not too formal be entertaining be a bit interesting so before we get into the essay writing techniques let's talk about research and that's a major important factor in this but I've already done a whole video about how to research effectively which I will leave in the I cards here so you may want to watch that before you carry on with this video so now we've done our research let's talk about why we need

to write an essay the point of an essay or any research paper is to go beyond regurgitation of research and demonstrates the reader ie your marker that you were capable of engaging critically with a subject or material at hand the first challenge that most students have to face when they're dealing with an essay is choosing what they want to write about there are obviously two kinds of scenarios the first is when the essay titles are already suggested by a lecturer and the student has to pick from alyssa is demonstrated for them normally the norm for

undergraduates are the first few years and obviously exam situations and then there's the other kind of essay where you get to pick from free range your own subject your own title etc the self conceptualized essay isn't something that you normally face in your first few years of undergraduate but even then after years of writing essays most you will find the idea of formulating their own essay title quite intimidating so let's start with the basics let's talk with about premeditated essay titles when it comes to picking from a list it is really obvious and important that

you go with what you're familiar with ever there is also a usually important factor that most people overlook when it comes to picking the essays looking at the interrogate ifs ie whether the question is a why how a wat etc so take for example a literature student in there exactly faced with three questions one about Oliver Twist one about Jane Eyre and one about withering Heights our student in this example read all of the books however they freakin loved Jane Eyre so they jump on the opportunity to write about Jane Eyre however the student didn't

consider the integrative of the question when it comes to writing an essay the interrogator of the question is more important focus on than the subject matter at hand because the interrogators dictate the writing approach of your essay they determine whether or not the marker is looking for an analytical a theoretical or an explanatory response to the question and it's unlikely despite how much you love your subject matter that you've researched all different approaches to a subject matter so our student could have studied everything to do with Jane Eyre in terms of imagery and context but

they didn't study the linguistic tools and techniques employed by Bronte which means they aren't able to effectively in successfully answer a question when asked how the author achieved some interrogate if therefore are incredibly important when you're in charge of formulating your own essay titles so think about whether or not your research has been based on theoretical analytical contextual or evaluative readings and choose the interrogate 'iv which is best suited to your research interests under that nobody can tell you what you want to write about only you know what has been interesting you whilst you've been

researching and studying this for the past few months or even potentially years so choose something which you know you'll enjoy exploring but please don't put pressure on yourself to be original I'll say it again if you're an undergraduate nobody expects you to be the newest prodigy who creates groundbreaking theories and opens up a whole new field of research and by time you do your masters you should know what interests you so stay true to you and write an essay that you know you would love to read so next let's talk about the essay plans because

obviously you should be planning or essay before you go into writing it however I will tip on this later in the video so there's a little estimation point that I'll come back to so stay tuned for that it comes to writing a plan there is no point in writing a detailed plan because then you might as well have written your blooming essay the plans should be broken down into five core areas one your introduction to the research supporting your position three the research against your position for defending and explaining your argument and five conclusion so

let's break down all of these points one introduction everyone hates writing an introduction because nobody taught us how significant introductions are and why mean by that is that most of us actually over glorified introductions I think they're more significant than they are therefore write introductions that go beyond what they need to be introductions are important but they don't need to be complicated and they're not this kind of magical mystical but groundbreaking thing keep it nice and simple because that's what the market is looking for your introduction is where you explain to your reader what you're

trying to convince them to believe and how you intend to convince them to believe that tell your reader what you are going to prove the stages you are going to take the reader through and the conclusions you are going to draw at the end yes you give your spoiler alerts however don't unravel your argument in the introduction or give away your best analysis but give a clinical lowdown on what your essay is going to be about what the argument will conclude what theories techniques and methods you're going to employ and what process you're going to

go through as succinctly as possible so in effect your introduction should say here is the argument I am going to make I am going to justify my argument by taking on these three or four arguments drawing upon these theorists who say these things and I will conclude some thoughts on this discussion and how it might clarify our understanding as a subject as a whole moving on from introduction we need to talk about arguments posed for and against your piece now I won't go over well-trodden ground here because sections 2 & 3 depend largely on the

research you couldn't and obviously I covered how to find arguments for and against your position in my research video however what I should emphasize here again but I do in the other video is don't include everything you've ever found on your subject matter and topic ever heap to what is incredibly interesting and relevant to your discussion and you don't have to agree with the research you reference in this section including the research that may actually align with your overall conclusion and keep two and three quite professional and educational making your attention in these sections to

share your knowledge educate and enlighten your reader on what you've come across in your research because now step four is interesting because that's your time to shine defending and explaining your argument should take up the majority of your essay and this is where you employ a range of approaches including analyzing critiquing adding to and defending the arguments you've discussed in sections 2 & 3 close text analysis in your field of research which demonstrates your independent thought to the marker elaboration on your theories and approaches which are unique to you whilst using further evidence to support

your claims which may include contextual information and external references which extend beyond the localized theme of the primary and secondary resources and to hit really high marks critique your own arguments show the reader that you have self-awareness of your own phalli ability and weaknesses and highlight the potential holes in your argument trust me they'll love that another core part of section 4 is ensuring that you know how to use quotes correctly there may be dozens of quotes which support your essay beautifully but they are utterly wasted if you don't employed the P method point evidence

and explain in other words introduce your quote give your quotes and then explain your quote all quotes in this section should be managed this way they shouldn't be dropped into an essay for the sake of adding poetic bulk to your word count and finally the second most hated part of an essay the conclusion the conclusion is where you summarize and synthesize the claims that you've made in your essay remind your reader what you proved in your essay how you proved it and discuss the implications of your argument ie why we should care about your claims

that you've made in your argument and how your position on the subject may actually alter the field of study conclusion is not and I repeat not a place to insert a new argument or perspective if you're adding a new argument of perspective into your conclusion it ceases to be a conclusion once you've written your conclusion make sure that your introduction is in sync with it by rereading or introduction to ensure it makes sense in the same grand scheme because sometimes as you're writing things alter and by time you've written your conclusion your introduction may be

a little bit out of date so you have to make sure that air in sync and they don't astray from the approaches that you've ended up using throughout your essay then is the joy of rereading your entire essay as a whole proofreading it and editing it along the way say this with the confidence that you've written your first draft a week before it is due to hand in because trust me if you worked in this time scale you'll thank yourself later and yes it can be done because as exactly how I did throught my under

browse we went with a job it can be done however if you're doing your masters I think of respectable timeframe for proofreading is in the early hours the night before that is due in because that's fine good luck well done oh here's the exclamation point that I mentioned earlier on which comes to the actual writing process because there are two approaches some broher to research independently before sitting down to writing the essay whilst others prefer to write as they research now these approaches depend on the individual and the confidence level that they have in their

argument in my undergraduate degree I took the first approach I used to research separately and then right afterwards however with the Masters timescale I ended up writing as I research and this can be done quite easily if you make sure that all your citations are in check as you're writing through so say that you're researching about something and you really like this particular quote you think is relevant to your topic but you haven't got much of your essay written down but you know you'd like to add your two cents on to this introduce your quote

use the quote cite it correctly and an add your two cents afterwards helps you slot in little sections of your essay all together quite neatly quite compactly and you can add to it and go along it's a complicated method bail works for many people I think more people need to talk about it it requires practice it requires patience but you're on a short time scale it's a really effective way to write an essay provided you are neat and tidy and organized as an individual because it requires a lot of organization to get right but it

can be done so if you're somebody who's never tried writing your essay as you research it I highly recommend giving it to go because you may as you find this as a skill that you can develop to help speed up your writing process as a whole so that concludes my how to write an essay video I hope you enjoyed the second part of the two part series if there are anything else that you'd like me to elaborate on a different video about essay writing please let me know in the comments below if you like this

video please consider giving it a thumbs up and consider please sharing it with anyone who may need some help with their essay writing right now until next time book save lives so keep reading