Effective academic writing is one of the trickiest things students have to do in college. Unlike high school-level assignments, college essays demand more finesse in terms of research and analysis. Your professor will expect original formulations in your arguments.
At the same time, you will be expected to use credible evidence and examples to support your assertions. Most students find college projects overwhelming, given the amount of research and reasoning involved.
Tasks at this level also require strict adherence to formatting, spelling, and citation rules. Have you been asked to write an argumentative project for college and you have no clue how to start? Here are a few tips to help you impress your professor.
Read and Understand the Requirements
The start of any academic project for college is familiarizing oneself with the task requirements. Each task you will be assigned as part of the requirements for completing your course will vary in terms of requirements and expectations. Some tasks will be more complex and lengthier than others.
Make sure you clearly understand what your professor wants you to accomplish. How many pages are you expected to write?
What is the research question? What style should be used to cite the sources and organize the writing?
Break down those seemingly lengthy and complex instructions into smaller and easily comprehensible parts. This will make it easier to get started on the task and avoid procrastination. Make sure you understand precisely what the professor is asking you to do.
Define key terms and phrases in the prompt and ask your instructor to clarify seemingly ambiguous components of the instructions.
If you feel stuck, you could approach a professional online with the request, will you do my essay for me?
Choose an Interesting Topic
The topic you choose for writing your academic paper will largely determine your degree of success. Choosing a good topic for your research paper may be the most crucial step in the writing process as it determines the remaining stages.
For instance, the topic you design will control your thesis statement, the sources you engage in, and the approach you use to organize your material. In other words, it makes perfect sense to choose a strong and engaging topic.
In some instances, students are assigned specific topics to work on with the hope of guiding their research and analyses. When this is the case, your work is to focus on your research on answering the assignment question.
Your resulting essay must be relevant and interesting, keeping the audience engaged throughout the text.
That said, most students prefer being given room to choose their topics. The instructor provides general guidelines on a prompt and students use the information to choose interesting and flexible topics for their essays.
When allowed room to choose your topic, make sure you adhere to the guidelines in the prompt and make your selection relevant. Your topic must answer the assignment question.
Also, consider the scope and length of your assignment and choose something that you can comprehensively cover. Make your choice concise and narrow enough to be completed within the length of your essay.
You don’t want to end up with too much information that you can not comprehensively cover the discussion. Consider a college essay service if you are unsure how to proceed with writing your assignment.
Create a Thesis Statement
The thesis statement is an important element of successful college essay writing. Most readers scan essays looking for one or two sentences at the end of the introduction that condense the entire argument and signpost the analysis to follow.
A good thesis statement tests your ideas and distills them into one or two sentences. It allows you to better organize your research and develop your argument.
The thesis statement also offers readers a guide to your argument and tells them what to expect from the argument.
Think of your thesis as the answer to the question you are exploring. Remember, most college assignments can be summarized into one single question. As such, your first step to generating a good thesis statement is to distill the project into a question.
Once you have picked the question your analysis will answer, compose one or two complete sentences to answer the question. Remember that a good thesis statement takes on a subject using a scope with which reasonable people could disagree.
Your thesis statement should be arguable and should express one main idea.
Start creating your thesis statement by brainstorming on the topic. Narrow down your central argument and take a position on the topic. Your formulation will start with a working thesis but will develop further to a more refined and arguable position that sums up everything you discuss in the paper.
Remember a strong thesis statement takes some form of stand and shows your conclusions on the subject.
Create an Outline
Outlining is another important step in writing great academic essays. Successful students know how to use outlining to generate ideas.
Understand that an outline is a roadmap to your essay and shows what information each section or paragraph of your essay will contain and their order of progression.
Outlining is a tool students can use to organize their ideas and visualize the potential of their papers’ structure, a good outline can help you further flesh out and develop points.
Don’t ignore the outlining session as it helps you connect information to support your thesis statement. It offers you a chance to consider your ideas easily without having to write complete sentences or paragraphs.
Before creating your outline, you need to generate a thesis or central argument. After that, organize ideas through brainstorming and preliminary research.
You can use bullet points or Roman numerals to list your points and flesh them out.
Writing a great essay requires careful planning and effective time management. The points highlighted here should help you create coherent and interesting papers.
Beat the writer’s block by reading and understanding the instructions before creating a thesis statement and starting your research. An outline will also help you organize your ideas and simplify the writing process.
