Many students have a tough time when it comes to the concept of writing an exceptional essay for a certain class. You may find yourself focusing entirely on a topic with little to no information, difficulty narrowing your thesis, or having a broad outlook of ideas that don't follow through with your argument. As an English major with a concentration in writing, I have had my fair share of disastrous papers that have helped me learned to better improve my writing all together. Here are some tips that you may find useful for further works to come.
For most essays you have a general topic to start with, it's basically your theme as a whole and what you want to work with. Professors sometimes give you topics to start off with or you may just develop one on your own. Many people get topic and thesis confused and believe they are the same thing. Let me tell you, they're not. The theme is the subject matter at hand, what you plan to discuss that will follow through with your thesis. A thesis is usually found towards the end of your introduction paragraph, it is the sentence that states the main idea of your writing assignment. It helps control the ideas that you point out throughout your paper, it reflects a sort of opinion or argument that is debatable (not an obvious fact that everyone knows is true). Be sure that your theme corresponds with your thesis, the focus can diverge from what you plan to talk about to a whole other idea that may leave your professor confused as to where you argument stands.
Usually it's developing the thesis that is the hardest part but I've read many assignments that had more difficulty with analyzing the argument. It is important to first know what points you're going to make that can back up your argument. Once you've found an idea that really fits the criteria, an analysis must be made in your own words. Think of it as an investigation and discovering points that can be brought to question.
To be honest analyzing is the best part of writing an essay because by doing so you really show that you did your reading and have put a lot of thought into your work. Professors really look at that and give a lot of points just for analyzing the text. It's important to understand what you read and many people have this habit of just paraphrasing or quoting because the professor needs to see that.
This is not the way to write an essay, simply paraphrasing or quoting a line or chapter to summarize a paragraph will do nothing for your cause but make your professor more confused as to what you are trying to argue. Here's the trick with this, first state your point and once you've made it known, prove that you found that idea within the text and then quote it. By quoting you are just proving that your idea was found in that specific part of the text.
Writing papers can be super easy and fun when you know what you're doing. Trust me, knowing your thesis, and doing a well thought out analysis, you will definitely ace your essays. If you're not so good at grammar or punctuation, seek a tutor that will help you proof read. Other than that good luck with future assignment for the semester to come.
