Jumat, 09 Desember 2011

Help With Academic Writing By Jolyon Dodgson

Everyone who attends college or university will need to do academic writing. Having you write essays and reports are two of the main ways that your teachers have to assess your development; they also act as important prompts to help you learn information by yourself. Especially if you're new at college writing an academic essay or report can seem to be a daunting prospect; in this article I'll give you some tips to help you successful produce academic writing.
Expert Author Jolyon Dodgson1) Read the Question
This might seem like a very simple thing but you'd be surprised by the number of students who either don't read the question fully or who decide to answer a slightly different question as they can write a better essay about that topic. If you've been set a specific question, answer it. There will be marks available for points you can make relating to the topic and none for any points which aren't related to the topic.
One of the important skills being tested in essay writing is your ability to write about a topic you might not know a lot about. You need to be able to do research about the topic and then from a well crafted argument.
2) Plan
Spend time thinking about the topic of the academic writing assignment. Write down what you know already, write down what you need to find out and then plan your overall argument for the essay.
By planning at the start it'll help you focus the time that you spend on researching and then writing the essay. You might need to do some research before you can fully plan the whole essay, but by doing some planning first it'll help you focus the research that you do so it'll add maximum value to your essay.
Once you've finished researching you can go and plan more before starting to write your essay.
3) Develop a Good Thesis Statement
A good essay needs a good, strong thesis statement. It helps set the tone for the essay so your readers know the position that you'll be writing the essay from, also it helps you to form your ideas and write a clear and concise essay.
A good thesis statement will include your main conclusion as the basis from which the rest of the essay will be argued. It should be written in a way that'll make someone want to discuss it with you; this means taking a side rather than writing a bland even thesis statement. Sometimes it can also help if you make your thesis statement slightly controversial so people will remember it and want to argue about it.
4) Proofread
Before finishing your essay you should proofread it to make sure that there aren't any mistakes to do with the grammar or spelling you've used. As part of the writing process you should have revised the information and contents of the academic writing; the proofreading stage is where you make sure that the language you've used is as clear as it can be.
You'll find more mistakes if you leave the essay for a day or two before going back and proofreading it. You should also print the essay and proofread the paper copy while using a ruler or another sheet of paper to obscure the rest of the page so you can concentrate on just the line that you're reading at that moment.
Conclusions
These four tips should hopefully enable you to write better academic essays and reports. Remember that if you're new at college you'll only get better if you practice, so work hard on each and every assignment as you'll be improving your academic writing skills with each one.
Copyright Jolyon Dodgson PhD. Jolyon, the author of this article, is a research scientist, qualified TEFL teacher (teaching English as a foreign language) and freelance proofreader specializing in scientific, academic, website, business and ESL proofreading. Much more useful information about writing and proofreading, written by him, can be found at his website http://www.excellent-proofreading-and-writing.com. The section about academic writing contains more information to help you with writing your own academic documents; this can be found at http://www.excellent-proofreading-and-writing.com/academic-writing.html. You can also submit your documents for his proofreading and copyediting service through the Excellent Proofreading and Writing website.


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