Writing is one of the most important skills that every student should have. Whether it’s writing an exam or a research paper, the key to improving student writing is a regular practice. Creating opportunities for your students to write regularly will go a long way in helping them achieve their academic goals. While putting in the time is essential, it is not enough by itself. The practice has to be meaningful.
When your students have an overview of how to structure different types of essays, they’ll easily focus on the small details. And these details will allow them to fine-tune their ideas. This article will help you understand how you can assist your students to develop their writing skills. Most of the tips that we are about to share with you can be easily integrated into lesson plans. When students use these simple tips repeatedly, they’ll enjoy the writing process and get good grades.
1. Planning
To succeed in writing, you have to prepare. The purpose of most academic papers is to allow you to present a logical argument and spend time organizing and structuring it. Since essays take different forms, and every student has a unique way of writing, it’s logical to conclude that no one approach works for all during the planning stage. However, there are lots of techniques that you can share with your students to help them come up with ideas easily. They include:
- Breaking down the question: Whether learners are working on an assignment in class or responding to a prompt in an exam, you should encourage them to get into the habit of looking at the task. They need to understand the meaning of the prompt or question for this to happen effectively. Students have to practice this in class by seeking assignment help, going through different questions, essay titles and prompts to gain experience. You should encourage tour students to work in groups to understand keywords and phrases. Understanding the nature of the task will help them plan accordingly.
- Brainstorm: When students understand what they are required to do, they should start thinking of what they know about the topic. And their feelings toward it. Essay writing is all about expressing your opinion on things. However, for students, things aren’t always obvious. Brainstorming will help them uncover not only what they know about the topic but also help them reveal other things about the topic. This is an important step because it will help them structure their papers better and get good grades.
2. Research
The planning stage helps learners understand the direction that the research process will take. Long gone are the days when students used to spend hours reading journals and encyclopedias in the school library. Thanks to the internet, learners can easily find what they are looking for in seconds. The information that they came up with in the previous stage should be used here. When researching, they should:
- Ensure that their sources are relevant to the task at hand
- Record the information that they’ll use in their papers
- Ask questions and challenge their biases to engage with the material
- Identify important points that need to be made in their papers
- Group ideas and opinions together
- Identify arguments that they’ll make in their papers
3. Writing the paper
There are a lot of ways that students can organize their points when preparing to write. They can use their notes, graphic organizers, and lots of writing apps. They should focus on ensuring that their points follow a logical order. The number of paragraphs that a paper will have depends on various factors such as time limits, word limits, and the complexity of the paper. Regardless of the length of the essay, students should read essay writing service papers and ensure that their essays have an intro, body, and conclusion. Every paragraph should focus on one idea that is expressed in a topic sentence. While most learners are familiar with the structure of essays, they need to invest time to ensure that they have a clear understanding of how each section works:
- Intro: Provides the context for the essay. It states the argument broadly and gives the reader a general perspective of the question.
- Body: This is the ‘meat’ of the paper. You need to lay out your arguments and support them with strong evidence.
- Conclusion: The conclusion will state the main argument and provide a summary of the supporting reasons before linking them back to the main question.
When writing, here are a few tips that you should keep in mind:
- Focus on one idea
- Ensure that the paragraphs follow a logical sequence
- Paragraphs should be uniformly denoted
- Transition phrases should be used to provide a bridge between the paragraphs.
Conclusion
After writing the essay, students should be encouraged to proofread them. Proofreading helps in eliminating spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. To find time to proofread, students have to start working on their essays early. In college, time management is everything. As you have seen, improving student writing is easy. All you need to do is encourage your students to follow the steps that we’ve discussed.