Learn to Write Essays with the Following 8 Tips!

Writing essays is a common thing in language lessons, history, or when studying or even applying for scholarships, right? However, what exactly is an essay? According to the Harvard College Writing Center, writing an essay means creating a collection of ideas that are interrelated and easy to understand, to form an argument (explanation).

So, how is your writing experience so far? What makes you often feel confused about how to put the ideas in your head into writing? In order to further improve your ability to complete tasks, consider the following 8 tips first!

1. Start with a catchy start

One opening sentence that you write in an essay can be an interesting introduction for readers to enter into your presentation. Start with 5 interesting words that can inspire the reader’s thoughts or provide facts that many people generally don’t know. This will also  make it easier for you to continue with the next paragraph.

2. Incorporate conflict

What is meant by conflict in this point? Fighting with friends? No, bro. The term “conflict” here indicates that you must start your work with a difficulty. It doesn’t need to be complicated, really. Problems in essays can be things that happen every day, for example there is a lot of rubbish in the surrounding environment, or it feels hotter day by day, and many other problems.

So why introduce conflict? Of course, so that later the problem can be resolved properly and you can answer the solution to the problem. Do you want your essay to be useful and help other people? Why not, then why write?

3. Offer ideas that are understood

In an essay, basically the context of the story that is built must be linear/in accordance with the theme, you know. Then, it is formed so that you can offer an idea based on that theme. So, if the writer is unable to convey ideas and his sentences are considered unreasonable to readers, then the writing becomes a failed essay. Did you know that the success of writing an essay can be seen when it enters the reader’s mind and is understood by them. So, of course, when writing, you have to think again about the words you will use so that the idea can be conveyed well. Unless you are a Philosophy student, from the beginning of the semester there are no equivalent words that are easy to understand. Wait, yes.

4. Write with concise words

Try comparing the following two sentences. Which one do you feel is more appropriate to insert in an essay? Sentence 1: ” Trees in forest A have experienced illegal logging since 1999 by PT XYZ .” Meanwhile, sentence 2: ” Tall, green trees with some of them, some of the leaves are yellow and not close to each other, where several hunters often visit this area to look for male and large deer, therefore there has been wild flight. ”

Looks different, right? If you still choose to insert sentence number 2, it is for the reason that the essay writing character can be fulfilled. It’s better if you just write as many random sentences in your essay as possible. Then change the font color to white, and the character limit can also be met. But, of course that’s not the purpose of these tips, right? You have to make sentences effectively, aka to the point. Long-winded essays only waste the reader’s time in understanding them.

5. Raise questions

Elizabeth Abrams, a teacher at Harvard University, once said in her writing on the writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu site that a very helpful essay is one that can answer a series of questions that are in the reader’s head. However, that’s not all. The essay must also trigger the reader to ask questions again about the explanation that has been given. If there are no readers who question the arguments made by the essay writer, then the writing is actually just an observation of fact, not an opinion that can be debated. So, now try checking the essay that you have written again.

6. Give a conclusion

Essays that have been written for such a long time must be closed with a statement that summarizes the entire article well. Without a conclusion, the essay will be left hanging. Is this writing complete, or is there a sequel? the reader may wonder. Of course, as the author, you don’t want to infer anything like that. So, to avoid this, convey the conclusion in the last paragraph.

7. Include valid sources

These days, if we don’t read a presentation carefully, anyone can get caught in a hoax (fake news) , you know . The way to prevent this so that you don’t get tricked is by paying attention to who the author is, where he uploaded his explanation, and what reading references he included when writing the essay. Then, what about sources from the Wikipedia site? Many lecturers/teachers prohibit their students from referring to this information. As a result, people can easily edit the information on the site.

However, if you pay attention. Before referring to Wikipedia, you can research the background of the information/data written there. At the bottom of the page, several source links are included. You can search it to ensure that the data you have adapted from Wikipedia is valid or proven to be true.

8. Words to avoid

When writing essays, we cannot match the writing style in articles, personal blogs, let alone short messages. There are words that should be avoided, such as: “I”, “you”, “your”, “we”, “us”, “some”, “things”, and “will”. You can use a noun instead of a subject. Expressions that indicate amounts should also be explained in detail. Also avoid information that has not yet happened.