Essay tips

[Mighty Lighty]

As you read this I am currently stressing myself into ill health with exam stress, as I've noticed I am very poor at writing essays and making them flow in a appealing manner.
I have 2 politics exams next week (ideologies and Political issues)

So for the more literate of you on the escapist, do you have any tips for writing essays, e.g structure, signposting, fun phrases you use to make you appear fancier.

Much obliged.

(Edit: should have mentioned, I'm currently about to do the final exams in high school)

 

[Jonluw]

Alliteration is almost always appreciated.

As a rule, it's important to tie paragraphs together. That is, you need to tie each new paragraph to the last one somehow. Create a connection between the last sentence of the last and the first sentence of the next paragraph.

 

[370999]

Planning. Plan those fuckers out, especially to make sure that you can answer the question, and not go off on a tangent.

 

[IndomitableSam]

I make my students figure out:

Who: Who is the essay about? Famous author, athlete? Was it an idea/thing? Who made it or played a big part?

What: What is the object? What is the topic? What is the theme? What is the most important 'what' to your essay?

When: Does time play a role? An era? Or is there a deadline for the topic of the essay? What tense is the essay in? Is it history? Current? Or are you writing about future aspects/ideas/things?

Where: Is location important? Where does it take place? Where did the idea come from? Where did someone go? Where were other important people/aspects at certain times?

Why: Why is this idea important? Why did the person do/say/etc what they did? Why did events occur the way they did?

How: How was the idea brought to life? How did they collect the materials needed? How did the person survive? How did everyone react?

Once you can answer all these, which aspects are the most important for your theme? Go with those as your body paragraphs. And outline the aboves in your introduction. Conclude with your most important (why or how, probably).

 

[Jonluw]

Planning. Plan those fuckers out, especially to make sure that you can answer the question, and not go off on a tangent.

Ooh, yeah.
Make sure you plan stuff out. Shit gets nasty if you don't.

I turned in what was basically a <300 word poem for my final exam (5 hour exam) in Norwegian.

 

[KittensTiger]

Do a mindmap prior to the actual writing. Here's how to do it.

1. Take the topic you want to write about, bubble it, and put it in the middle of your page of scratch paper.
2. Write out points of information you have on the topic in their own bubbles around the topic bubble.
3. Decide using the points what your thesis is going to be, if it's a topic where you have to take a stand and support it, decide what stand you are going to make.
4. Once you decided your thesis, look at the points you have and figure out how you can use them to support your thesis. Write these into separate bubbles around the points that they apply to.
5. Look at the supporting ideas and see if any link together nicely, if you find a pair that do, draw a line connecting them.

Now that you're prepared time to actually write this SOB
Use your standard 5 paragraph style

Introduction paragraph: First sentence should be something catchy, making your professor care to read it. Next few sentences should be very very briefly summarizing the points you are going to use to make your point. Final sentence should be a concise statement of your thesis.

Body Paragraphs: Use each paragraph to give each point individually and give information supporting that point and convince the reader how it helps your thesis. Now, the trick to making it flow are those connecting lines you made in the mind map. Finish one body paragraph with a connecting sentence, one that references the next point/paragraph to tie them together.

Conclusion: Summarize your points again very very briefly but in a different way that references your supporting arguments. Final sentence should be a restatement of your concise thesis.

Good Luck with exams!

 

[mParadox]

The beginning and the end paragraphs are the hardest to do.

So I start with the middle, not exactly conventional but it helps, in my case anyway. I write out all the paragraphs with all the relevant points and expand on them. After that's done, it's a whole lot easier for me to the write the first and the end paragraph. Since now I'm very much aware of what I've written so I can outline it all efficiently. No problem.

Just leave a sufficient amount of space at the beginning. That'll save from the tension of not having enough space to write out your beginning. And that would not be nice.

 

[Scarim Coral]

It you going to quote stuff from website or book you better use them in the right way-
Make a statement of something
Type out the quotation with the " " and also type out the author or whoever wrote it and maybe the years when it was publish using brackets ( )
Explain the quotation into detail.

Example
Person A explain that junk food is bad "insert quotation from person A" (Person A 1990). Person reason were....

 

[Comocat]

The beginning and the end paragraphs are the hardest to do.

So I start with the middle, not exactly conventional but it helps, in my case anyway. I write out all the paragraphs with all the relevant points and expand on them. After that's done, it's a whole lot easier for me to the write the first and the end paragraph. Since now I'm very much aware of what I've written so I can outline it all efficiently. No problem.

Just leave a sufficient amount of space at the beginning. That'll save from the tension of not having enough space to write out your beginning. And that would not be nice.

I do the opposite. It makes more sense for me to clearly write out a conclusion because it gives my research focus and gives me a target to write to. Once I have written out the conclusion, I write the introduction. The middle is just fluff between the bookends. If you don't do this you can spend hours just randomly writing until you feel like you are done. By clearly defining what you want to say, it focuses your writing so you can get the job done faster with, IMO, greater clarity.

Many universities have writing labs, an example of a good online resource is from Purdue. I am not familiar with it, but was recommended to me in a thesis writing class I took. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/