Writing Tutorials

Essay Writing

By Ted Neilson
This site has been reproduced with the kind permission of Ted Neilson. His original site can be found at www.write-an-essay.com

Show your Analytical Skills

Unlike the compositions you wrote at school, you are no longer just presenting information. Most college essays are argumentative essays and you must show your analytical skills. In order to write a persuasive essay you still need to collect and present your information. But you must also work out implications, assess its relevance, judge the results, evaluate the evidence, criticize and debate the essay topic. You’ll find you need to critically research propositions to decide if the evidence justifies the conclusions or if you need to question the assumptions underlying a new theory. In other words, you must show that you can think clearly and reason logically.

In most subjects, your tutors are not looking for the correct answer. If you are discussing an issue or describing an historical event, there’s no one way of answering or one line of reasoning to follow. You may even disagree with the conventionally accepted view on a subject — although in doing so, you should assess and deal with opposing views.

Your tutors may agree or disagree with the views you present, but they should not mark you down for taking a standpoint. Disagreement will not result in a poor grade, writing a bad essay will. Whatever line you argue, you will gain a good grade if you back it up with firm evidence, logical reasoning and sound arguments.

Write in a Clear Style

Many students fall into the trap of writing in an unnatural style. They mistakenly feel they should adopt an academic air, resulting in a dull, long-winded and boring essay. They write to impress the tutor with a learned tone that’s old-fashioned and full of stylistic problems.

Does this sound like your first experience writing a college essay? You look at the question set, go to the library a photocopy sheets of material on the subject, spend hours anguishing over the subject, write a formal, academic-sounding essay to impress the tutor with your newly gained knowledge. You count your words and find you’ve only drafted 2,200 of the required 3,000-word minimum. So you go over your paper, adding some quotations, expanding your points and padding out your style to get to the all-important word count. The result is a C-grade at best. Why? Because you have fallen into the classic errors of most students.

Mistake: You are writing to impress the tutor rather than express your information and ideas.

Mistake: You think academic-sounding prose means good marks.

Mistake: You are confusing length with quality.

Your tutor wants a clear and concise style so he or she can concentrate on the facts and arguments. Here is the difference between the styles:

academic style

The experiments were conducted in order to determine the lowest possible temperature at which a reaction could occur. It was shown that 30 degrees Fahrenheit was the lowest ambient temperature necessary for the chemical to change from a solid to a liquid state.

clear style

The experiments show heating the chemical to 30 degrees Fahrenheit consistently caused it to melt.

academic style

The preliminary analysis of the results that were first gathered showed to a certain degree there was a propensity of consumers’ expenditure to decrease by a greater percentage than the increase in price differentials. Subsequent research of data collected over a significant time period lessened the consistency of this finding unless there were exceptional circumstances.

clear style

The first two surveys showed consumers cut spending by an average of 12 percent for every 10 percent rise in prices. Six follow-up surveys found that unless there was scarcity or rationing, consumers continued to be price sensitive.

academic style

In considering the factors contributing to a decline in the propensity to vote for the major political parties, it is apparent that family voting patterns have been historically significant. However, in recent times, the influence of parental voting patterns has lessened due to population demographic factors.

clear style

Between 1900 and 1950, if both your parents voted Democratic or Republican, there was a 85 percent likelihood you would also vote for that party. Since 1950, higher divorce rates, wider college education, and better news coverage and analysis mean the influence of your parents’ political choice is lessening.

The best writing style shows the author is on top of the subject, understands its meaning and writes about it with confidence. The best writing does not need ways to dress up ideas in a complicated or abstract style. Good writers use short sentences, active verbs, specific information and a natural language. They use examples and analogies to make writing varied, interesting and memorable. They cut out every redundant word and replace complex words with simpler words to produce a clear, concise and readable document.

Next: Essay writing guidelines

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