Are you one of those college students that writes every one of his or her essays the morning they’re due? If so, you may have discovered that, well, college professors don’t like that. They can almost always tell when you rush through an essay, and they will give you a low grade on it as a result. You can’t do well in an online degree program if you lack the discipline to write an essay the way you need to.
The tips below should help you set a timeline for your writing so you can write the best essays possible. Day 1 – Brainstorm Before you can do any research or writing of any kind, you need to have a logical plan for your essay. This may purely involve developing a thesis to play on, or it may involve actually writing an outline to follow as you write. That all depends on how you like to write and what helps you the most. Sit down to create a game plan for your writing before you just tackle an essay blindly. Day 2 – Gather Resource Material Even though I called this part “day 2,” you may spend weeks gathering the resource materials for an essay. Keep that in mind because this is one of the most important parts of the timeline. Get whatever references you need for the essay, whether that involves books from the library, articles from the web, newspaper clippings, or other resources along those lines. When you know what you have to work with, you will have a much easier time formulating a cohesive essay from it. Day 3 – Write the Rough Draft The first draft of your essay needs to be written all at once. It may be total rubbish with no facts backing it whatsoever, but it could provide the foundation for something great. Write the essay all the way through without worrying about citing your examples or anything like that. You can do all of that in future drafts. In this step, you just want to get your thoughts down on paper. The reason why I recommend writing all the way through instead of stopping to gather examples is so you can have the best possible flow in your essay. You will naturally tie your thoughts with one another when you write everything at once, and that is the hardest part of writing in general. When you have proper fluidity to your essay, the facts will automatically fit into place. Then you will have a strong essay to be proud of. Day 4 – Read and Edit Take a break after your rough draft so you can come back to it with a fresh mindset. This will allow you to catch your errors easier, and it will help you see concepts from a new perspective. In essence, you will detach yourself from your essay enough to strengthen it as you edit. This is the time when you can go through to add in all the citations, direct quotes from the text, and other formatting points that you may have skipped over in your rough draft phase. Make sure that you break your essay into paragraphs as needed because you might not have done that when you wrote the first time. Having a fresh perspective will help you do this a lot easier. Day 5 – Final Draft Take another break so you can have yet another fresh perspective on your work. You can read over the essay now and pick it through with a fine tooth comb. Watch for small punctuation and grammar errors you may have missed before. Once you’ve gone over everything, you can print off the final draft to turn in. You may modify the schedule above to suit your personal writing style, but it should give you a good foundation to follow. If you actually take the time to write a proper essay, you should see much better grades from your professors. A good college student knows the value of thoroughness, especially when it comes to writing. You should take note of that for the future.
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Paragraphs make writing much more readable. Without them, most people just see a blob of text that they don’t want to read through. If you read other articles on my bog, you’ll notice that I almost always use small paragraphs and subheadings to make my writing easier to read. You may not be able to use subheadings when writing for online college courses, but you can still take the principles of small paragraphs to heart. Here are a few tips to help you paragraph your writing so it is easier to read.
Number of Sentences The number of sentences that you use in your paragraphs will vary based on what you are writing and who you are writing for. On average, your paragraphs should have four to six sentences in them. If you like to write choppy, short sentences, you may need more in a paragraph to complete a thought. That is the overall goal with every paragraph: to complete a thought. If you need a couple extra sentences to make that happen, use them. The main thing you need to remember when writing college papers is to avoid super short paragraphs. Two sentence paragraphs like this one won’t fly with your professors, and they may cause you to receive a poor grade on a paper. Intros and Conclusions Every paragraph you writing should have its own implied intro and conclusion. You don’t necessarily need a literal intro and conclusion sentence for every paragraph, but the paragraphs themselves should seem like separate entities that can work well together. If you have a paragraph that randomly ends without any conclusion at all, you will make your reader assume that you forgot to finish a thought. That will not do much for your writing, and it will… (Gotcha) Lists and Examples If you are making a list or using a set of examples in an essay, each point should be in its own paragraph. You should be able to put mental subheadings in the essay with ease. That ensures that everything you are writing has a conclusive and solid feeling to it, rather than just rambling from one paragraph to the next about the same subjects. Elaborate enough about each item to make a substantial paragraph, and that will greatly enhance your writing. Transitions Even though each paragraph in your writing should be its own entity, it needs to tie in with other paragraphs in the essay. You need to make sure that everything flows together, rather than tackling each paragraph as if it’s its own essay. You can do this by using transition sentences, or by writing all your thoughts down at one time. You can go back over your work and elaborate on specific points, but you should have some built in fluidity if you write everything at once. The Easy Solution If you just can’t figure out how to paragraph your work naturally, write everything as one huge paragraph and then go back to separate it when you’re done. Any time you come across a point where you feel that you’ve started discussing a new thought, make a new paragraph. You should find that you writing in paragraph formation anyway. You just might not know it as you’re writing. Take the time to edit your work, and you should easily be able to paragraph like a pro. Every good piece of writing in existence has some kind of flow to it. This fluidity is somewhat hard to master, but once you do, your writing can become much stronger and easier to understand. Some people claim that flow only comes to people with a gift for writing, similar to the way freestyling comes to people who naturally rap well. That is not the case. Anyone can learn how to achieve fluidity in his or her writing. It’s just a matter of picking up on some tricks.
The information below should give you just a few of those tricks so you can make your writing better in the future for your online courses. Use Proper Transitions One of the easiest ways to establish flow in an essay is to have some sort of transition between every paragraph. Even though paragraphs are their own entities, they still need to somewhat fit together. It is your job to tie each paragraph together so that you end up with a cohesive chain of paragraphs when you are finished writing. You could do this in many ways, but most people will try repeating part of the information from one paragraph at the beginning of the one that follows. An example of repeating parts of the preceding paragraph in an article would be, well, what I just did. See how I hinted at the above topic at the beginning of this paragraph? You have to do something similar to that in your own writing. You can also use transition phrases, like: • For example, • In other words, • To put it simply, • Therefore, • In addition to that, • Thus… You get the idea. Transition phrases can do wonders for flow, especially if you have a ton of choppy sentences back to back. Try sprinkling a few of them into your next essay and see what happens. Combine Sentences Try not to make every sentence in your essay its own identity. You can join the sentences together with conjunctions (and, or, but, yet, so). By using conjunctions like this, you can make your thoughts seem more in line with one another. This will create depth within your work, which will always make you look like a better writer. You can get the same effect by using “if, then” sentences, or by using one of these phrases: ,which; ,where; ,rather; ,who; ,that. You’ll notice that I use those sentence components a lot in my writing, so you should have plenty of examples to choose from. Reiterate Your Thesis Every professional essay has a thesis, or an overall problem it is trying to explain or solve. If you only use your thesis in your intro and conclusion, your essay will seem a little haphazard. You need to remind the reader about your thesis every once and awhile so your work can have a cohesive feeling altogether. Notice that I keep mentioning flow and cohesion in this simple article. I’m doing that to remind you what the heck I’m writing all this about. See, you didn’t even notice because my flow is so awesome. You can pay me for that subliminal learning lesson later on. Write It All at Once Write your essay all the way through before you go back to edit and enhance it. By doing this, you will keep your general train of thought, which will translate into genuine fluidity in your writing. If you stop writing an then start back, you may be on a completely different wavelength than the one you started on. Just get all of your thoughts out on paper, and then you can go back to make those thoughts sound like actual statements of intelligence. |
AuthorRichard Chan is author and founder of the Edu Blog. He decided to create this blog, because he knows how it is difficult to study without help. In his free time Richard has rest with friends, skating, swimming and weightlifting. ArchivesCategories |