TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: English Writing Lesson: 10 Tips for Essay Writing Success - How to Write an Essay you are Proud of

Hi everyone, its Nicole here and I've got a great question to answer today. It's about essay writing.

So, for those of you who are studying at University, or doing a course anywhere else, and you need to do a lot of writing, most of the time it's an essay, but it could be a report, it could be a document, a presentation, the tips that I'm going to give you today about essay writing, and the steps you should follow will help you for the other types of writing as well.

So, I've got 10 tips I'd like to share with you for essay writing so that you have a little bit of a structure, a little bit of a framework to follow, and you can follow each of them step by step so that it's a little bit easier for you, it's not as stressful writing that essay, and you know where to start, if you get stuck, you can obviously look at this list and go ‘ah, that's what I need to do’ and it will make your life a lot lot easier.

So, let's begin. Step number one for essay writing is you really need to understand the question, you know, it's so important to understand the question and to take the time to think about it carefully, you don't want to misunderstand it and to go off on a tangent only to write an essay which is not answering that question, and then you fail, or you do badly. So, take your time reading and understanding the question is one of the most important steps because you want to do the right thing, so, underline the words, think about it carefully, take your time, analyse it, talk to other people about how they would interpret the question, really take your time to think about it, digest it, understand it, and brainstorm your ideas, write them down.

Step number two is, now that you understand the question, and you have an idea of what it's about, before you go and do any research or anything, I want you to briefly brainstorm a few points that you think you'd like to include in this essay. They can just be general ideas, ok, you don't need the specific details yet, but just general ideas of what comes to mind that you think you should include in the essay.

Now that you've understood what the question is, and what they're asking you to do, number three, I want you now to write a few notes about the research that you need to do, about the type of article that you need to find and read more about so that you are able to answer that essay question, so that you are able to show that you are well-read, and you understand the main concept, and you're able to solve that problem. So, just a few notes about the type of research you need to do, and then when you do start researching, it will be a lot easier for you because it's very specific about what you're looking for. Then, obviously, as you start reading and start researching, you can add your notes about what you've read to help you in writing that essay.

Number four, I always tell my students to write down a few expressions that you'd like to include in the essay, expressions that you think are relevant to the topic, whether it's just words, just vocabulary, or full expressions, full sentences, it's completely up to you, but expressions that you'd like to use, and also linking words, a reminder to use particular linking words to make your essay more advanced, more formal, you know, you could have really simple vocabulary, but the minute you use a really impressive advanced linking word, it lifts your essay to another level, so, yeah, expressions that you would like to use, and then when you start that writing process, it's a lot easier. You've got the content in front of you, you've got the expressions in front of you, you just start writing.

Number five, once you've done all that research and background and you know what it's all about, that is when you come back and you write a plan, a proper plan for your essay so that you have some structure, you know, you don't want to start writing that essay without the structure first. So, you could write it in bubble format where you've got a bubble with the main idea, and you've got the lines coming out with all the subtopics and sub ideas that you want to cover, you can call that a bubble, brainstorm, a spider if you want, or even the sun because it's a sun with the rays. So, um, yeah, use that structure to write your plan, brainstorm what you think is relevant to that topic, now that you have researched and read about it, and now that you understand the question and where it's going. You might not include everything that you've put in your plan, however, it's a really good starting point, and it might allow you to focus and see I need to look at this in more detail, I shouldn't really talk about that, it's not as relevant. So, planning, and that planning will help you with the structure of that essay.

Number six, write an introduction. You can write an introduction even before you write the essay, you know, if you've got a plan, and you know what your essay is about, and what you're going to say, you can almost write that introduction with your eyes closed. So, write that introduction using your plan, using the question, and more importantly, come back and refine it, improve it once you've started writing, or once you’ve finished the writing process, until you're super duper happy with it.

Number seven, we need to write different sections of your essay, you know, it's not just one long piece of writing, there have to be particular sections of your essay, focussing on particular topics, or particular areas. So, obviously, it depends on the length of your essay as to how many sections you will have, but why I'm saying this is you don't have to write the whole essay at once, you can just focus on writing one section at a time, that's a really good sense of achievement there, and it will also allow you to focus better, instead of thinking about what happens next, you just focus on writing that one section, and finishing that one part, and then you'll get better results, and I promise, your writing will be even better.

Next, you want to go back and read your essay, edit your essay, you know, leave it for a day or two and then read it again with fresh eyes, even get someone else to read it, if you trust them, you know, looking at your essay again and again and again after you've written it is not the best idea because you've still got those ideas, that writing, in your head. But, if you come back with fresh eyes, then you'll see oh, this is not so clear, oh, I need to change this, oh, I've repeated this a few times, and yeah, asking someone else to look at it for you, they can identify those things for you much more easily.

Look, then it's time, number nine, to write the conclusion, don't write the conclusion at the beginning, or in the middle of the essay, you have to write it at the very end, the last thing you do, because it's a summary of what you've done. So, you're going to print out your essay, and find the most important points, and then include them in that conclusion again.

Finally, number ten, the last tip I have for you, for your essay writing, is check the word limit, adjust the word limit accordingly, you know, you might have written an essay double the length of what it should be, so that's telling you you need to condense it, go and have a look what is relevant, what is not relevant, have I repeated something, really work towards that word limit at the end, and, yeah, include the references in this section as well. Don't worry so much about having it perfect when you're actually writing the essay, come back at the end and do it then.

So, anyway, they’re my tips for essay writing. I hope they really helped, and for the next essay you write, please follow those ten steps, and your life will be so much easier, and writing that essay will be much more enjoyable. Anyway, good luck. Thanks for listening today. Bye.