Writing is a top necessity when it comes to high school, college, or even university education. Even if you are a technician or a programming specialist, you will still have to face the necessity to write papers all the time. There are students who are good at it, there are even students who actually enjoy academic writing, but there are many more students who simply can’t stand academic writing in any form. No matter in which category you are now, there is always room for improvement. You can always become better in academic writing, strengthen your essay writing skills, write faster and more efficiently, receive better grades, and, maybe, even help your peers with their assignments.
7 Tips for Improving Essay Writing Skills in One Semester
We would love to write an article that would promise you that you can significantly improve your essay writing skills within one week, but we don’t want to lie to our readers. You need time to implement all these tips, and if you do it gradually, within one semester, you will see good, stable results. Make it your focus, sacrifice some time from binge-watching and social activities, procrastinate a bit less, and soon you will write better and faster, receiving top grades in your class.
- Work on building your vocabulary. No matter whether you are an ESL or ENL writer, you may often feel like you just don’t have enough words to describe what you want to say, to express your ideas. You should read more, watch movies and programs that normally would seem “above your pay grade”, subscribe to serious journals, and read even those articles that are not too interesting for you.
- Start writing way before the deadline. Students make the same mistake over and over again. They start writing essays just before the deadline. When the deadline is approaching, you cannot focus on grammar, style, topic, research, you just want to finish everything on time. You make mistakes and receive worse grades than you might have received. Please, start writing immediately after receiving your task.
- Use time management techniques and tools. You are missing out on some great discipline and organizational opportunities when not using time management techniques. Use the Pomodoro technique to plan your writing and study rest balance. Install Toggl to track your research, writing, and other activities. This way you will be able to plan time for new assignments in advance with zero mistakes. It also helps to decrease distractions. Time management makes you much more concentrated and it helps to deal with assignments faster and at a higher quality level.
- Never forget to write at least a brief outline. Outline is your friend, not just something that takes time to complete and can be ignored. Writing an outline will give you great support through completing the paper. The time will come when you feel too tired, or distracted, forget about the creative approach, you may even forget the key idea of your text. The outline you write in the beginning has the magic power to bring you back to writing.
- Сonsider addressing an essay writing company for help. Let’s face it, sometimes, you just don’t have enough time to deal with the assignments in question. You are snowed under the pile of writing tasks and you also have some other aspects of your life to tend to, we are sure. Delegate your assignment online to a professional essay writing company e.g. Smart Writing Service and give yourself some rest. It is normal not to be able to deal with everything at once, and looking for academic writing assistance is not a sin — everybody does that at some point. Make sure to choose a custom writing company with a proven reputation and check on guarantees that are offered.
- Analyze, save and categorize your previous writing works. You need to learn from your mistakes, as it is the most efficient way to learn. When you receive a paper graded by your professor, you may feel like the best decision is just to forget about it. Finally, there is no need to revise it, you already have a grade. It is a grave mistake! Read it thoroughly and note down the most common mistakes. Three-four papers later you will have a complete understanding of your weakest grammar and style points. Eliminating just them, you will start writing much better. You don’t need to learn the grammar and style rules all over again! You need to focus on what doesn’t work for you now and fix it for good.
- Always allocate enough time for revision and proofreading. It may sound like the most boring advice ever, however, the question is, how many times have you actually done that? Most students just hurry and submit a paper written minutes ago — no proofreading, no extra grammar check, nothing. Doing so, you just neglect all your writing work, as you won’t receive the grade your paper would be worth with some proofreading done.
Why Is It So Difficult to Strengthen Essay Writing Skills?
It is always difficult to do something that you haven’t done before. It is difficult to pay more attention to something if previously it wasn’t your priority. In the end, you don’t have enough time, you are not sitting staring at the wall thinking, well, what could I do, what could I do. You have your entire life to deal with, and now, above all that, you need to study extra to improve your writing skills. So, you have to be prepared that it will be a bumpy ride that requires quite a few sacrifices. Another reason is being trapped in the illusion that willing to do something or reading about how to do something equals doing something. Well, it doesn’t. You need to take these tips and try to implement them into your daily life right away. Only this way will you be able to achieve your goals and become better at essay writing. One thing we can promise you for sure — once you see at least any result, you will be inspired to work and try for more.
