Do your prof a favour: write better!
Profs across the country plead for better written essays, and offer tips to help you get there
Be prepared to write several drafts of your paper. This means starting work on it well in advance of your deadline, which is a foreign concept to many students, but the difference it makes in your mark will be worth the discipline it requires. Oftentimes, the best thing you can do with a piece of writing is to put it away for a day and then come back to it; mistakes and awkward phrasings you couldn’t see the day before suddenly become apparent after a night’s sleep.
Finally, you’ll have to print your paper and turn it in. If your professor has specified a format she would like to receive the paper, follow the format. At the very least, make sure the paper is neat, organized, presented in a readable font, and turned in on time. Grading papers is a subjective affair, and you can’t afford to waste any of your prof’s goodwill on avoidable sloppiness. Make sure all of your sources are properly cited and that your bibliography is complete, and you’ll avoid any academic misconduct hearings.
Conclusions are important as well, and sometimes surprisingly difficult to write.
Err…
Therefore, you should follow the above advice to become an excellent essay writer.
(Whew! Writing about how to write; what a way to make a writer self-conscious.)
Telling someone to write better is like saying study harder and you will get higher marks.
Learned skill is involved in both cases and unfortunately the teachers of the students preparing them for post secondary – or even pre secondary – education do not have the skills or daily work time to provide the training.
Couple that with the shorthand texting lingo and you have a “perfect storm” (What is the word that describes this over used phrase that is used so often to describe ultimate events?) that produces a dumbing-down of literacy.
What may be lost is the politics of language. You speak – I make a judgement. That judgement may involve employment, promotion, or other valued opportunities!!!
It pays to be carefully taught.
From a former procrastinating student, teacher of procrastinating students (in English), and now (embarrassingly) currently-procrastinating graduate student:
Outline. Can’t stress this enough.
Assemble your ideas in points and sub-points. Find the evidence to prove those points – but don’t over do it, as it’s YOUR paper, containing YOUR ideas. Start expanding on them in sentence form, making connections between paragraphs and your thesis statement. Write an introduction which will lead the reader into those points. Come up with a clever conclusion which sums them up and say something profound.
Voila! Easy as …
… oh, and read aloud at least once through – you shouldn’t trust the spell checker!
I agree