How can I improve my writing skills for academic essays?

Question

Hi everyone,

I’m currently a college student, and I often struggle with writing clear and effective academic essays. I sometimes have trouble organizing my ideas, making strong arguments, and writing in a formal tone.

Could anyone recommend some practical tips or exercises to improve my essay writing skills? Are there any good resources (books, websites, videos) that you personally find helpful?

Also, is it worth working with a writing tutor, and what should I focus on during tutoring sessions to make the most progress?

Thank you in advance for your advice!

Answer 1

When I taught undergraduates at Emory University, I taught courses that usually had a paper or some kind of written assignment. I found the following really helped my students:

1. Relearn the basics of grammar. I recommend Strunk & White's book, Elements of Style
2. Write an outline. Even if you think you don't need one, write one. It organizes your thoughts and makes sure that all the content actually supports your argument or thesis.
3. Speaking of outlines, make sure it all speaks to each other. For example, you have an introduction section that ends with your main argument or thesis. Then a series of supporting paragraphs/sections. Each should start with the main point of the argument, go through supporting it, then connect it back directly to the thesis of the paper. This part can serve as a transition to your next paragraph.

Happy to further explain any of this!

Answer 2

Writing and communication at the college level is never easy, but a necessary skill. It takes time, so be patient. And yes, I do recommend having a tutor to help. It's best if you can have something written; even if it's not finished! The more you have written, the easier it will be for your tutor to help you make changes to the essay. And suggest new ideas.

So how to write your essay? This is my advice because these are things that helped me in the past when I was writing college essays.

1. Choose a topic you feel strongly about, so it's easier to make a strong argument. Choose something you care about. (If you can). Also think about both the positive/negative points. Imagine two people arguing. Write a short list of the positives/negatives. Use these points in your essay. Use these to support your main point/argument.

2. If it's hard to write. Organize your thoughts with a word bubble. You can find these online for free or make your own. Write about 1-5 words in each bubble. Write your main topic idea, your argument/point, 3 supporting points (evidence) to prove your main point is correct.

This will become a very rough outline for your essay.

3. Using the outline you made, you can begin adding more details to all of the points you listed. And finally, you can begin writing it.

4. Feeling overwhelmed? Don't write it all at once. Start weeks early. Write 1 sentence a day. If you can write more, write more. If not, try again tomorrow and add a 2nd sentence. You will find that once you have a few sentences... your brain will start giving you more ideas to write. It should get easier.

5. Grammar mistakes? Messy paper? Informal? It's all ok. Just write whatever you can. After it's finished, you can go back and change the grammar, write more formally, organize better, etc.

6. Finishing touches: Check a professional's academic paper on the internet. See how they wrote it. Mimic the experts. You can also bring in a tutor to help you with this. Make sure the essay meets MLA/APA etc. requirements. And you are finished.

This is the method I use for my essays, and it's always worked well for me. I hope it does for you too!

-Rachel~

Answer 3

Hi there! I'm going to answer your questions in reverse order, so thanks in advance for your patience!

I do believe it's worth it to work with a tutor, especially in matters of essay writing. Everyone has different skills and weaknesses, and it can be very helpful to have someone on hand, ready to evaluate your actual work in real time and tell you what will work best for you.

That said, for books/resources/websites, I find, personally, that the best help is an expert example! If you are writing an academic essay for, say, psychology, find a published academic essay in psychology and see what the experts are doing! How are they phrasing things, how are they organizing their thoughts, do they have abstracts at the beginning of their essays, etc. Obviously, avoid plagiarizing any exact work, but mimicking the experts is the best way to get a feel for how something is done successfully - just like with any other skill! - and is often a lot simpler to do than reading a resource that tells you "Write an engaging hook and clear thesis!" and leaves you wondering "Okay, but....how?"

Finally, regarding organization and tone and structure, these are skills that can be helped by the above advice as well, but logical structure specifically I find is easier to achieve if you imagine yourself as explaining your interior thoughts to someone out loud. Remember: your reader is not a mind-reader, just a word-reader! Your logical processes are completely alien to them. You will need to sit down and think "How exactly did I arrive at this answer" and then explain every step of that to your reader.

I hope that helps a little, and, if you choose to find one, that you find a great tutor to work with!