How To Improve Your English Essay Writing: GuruLab’s 4 Top Tips
Image by Zen Chung
Students often struggle to understand why they’re tasked with essays. Essays take time, thought and research. Although an overwhelming task, learning how to improve our English essay writing will help us polish our ideas and express them well. A skill that’s useful across all walks of life.
We’re told to bury our heads in books and write essay after essay to get better. While this does help, essay writing can be broken down into simple steps and tackled like a math problem.
Read on for our favourite tips that make writing English essays easy!
How To Improve Your English Essay Tip 1: Make It Interesting
We often fall into the trap of writing what we think our teachers want to read. This leaves teachers reading (and grading) the same generic essays.
Instead, ask yourself, “What do I find interesting about this topic?” This might look like taking the opposing side of an issue or presenting an outrageous fact. Whatever it may be, you’ve now found your hook, enticing your reader to read on.
Your hook could be a variety of things; a statement, a question, a fact or even a story. For example, in this article, we made this bold statement:
“…essays can be broken down into simple steps and tackled like a math problem.”
Digging deeper won’t just help your essay stand out, but will also make the process of writing – dare we say – more fun? Ultimately, asking this one question is how you can improve your English writing beyond just essays.
How To Improve Your English Essay Tip 2: Find Structure
Image by cottonbro
Another approach to how you can improve your English essay writing is to always use an outline. Students often skip this to save time, but this is the key to organising your essay.
All your outline needs is five original sentences. Each sentence covers your main and most basic ideas.
The outline for an SPM essay topic on ‘The internet has more advantages than disadvantages’ might look like this:
Introduction: The internet has swept the world off its feet by redefining the way we live.
Body #1: We’re able to communicate virtually with people anytime, anywhere.
Body #2: A wealth of information is just one click away.
Body #3: The digital world has unlocked new roles and job opportunities for society.
Conclusion: Although the internet may have its negatives, using the internet for good can benefit mankind.
Once your outline is done, it’ll be much easier to fill in the paragraphs with smaller ideas that relate to your main idea.
How To Improve Your English Essay Tip 3: Enhance Your Vocabulary & Grammar
When we look at paintings, there is often a mix of colours, brush strokes and sizes – there is variety. Much like a painting, your essay should include a variety of words, sentence structures & lengths.
Use a mix of simple, compound and complex sentences
Example:
Simple: Wondering how to improve your English essays?
Complex: People often think essay writing is a difficult task, but it isn’t.
Compound: We’re told to read more to write better essays; and while this is true, our tips will help get you there quicker.
Write vivid sentences with adjectives and adverbs; words that describe.
Example:
‘Writing a good essay is like making a big, loaded burger. The intro and conclusion are the buns, with the juicy meat of your argument in between. The special condiments – like lettuce, tomatoes and onions – are the details you use to make your paragraph full.’
Use figurative language like idioms, metaphors and hyperbole.
Example:
Never beat around the bush when writing an essay (an idiom which means to get straight to the point).
Adding variety to your vocabulary and spicing up otherwise stale writing is another tip on how to improve your English essays.
How To Improve Your English Essay Tip 4: Edit Like Your Harshest Critic
Image by Green Chameleon
Proofreading and editing are important parts of the essay-writing process. As you’re reading, you’re looking to complete this checklist:
Have I answered the question?
Does my essay flow from one paragraph to the next?
Are there any grammatical or spelling errors?
You want to remain objective as you read through your essay, removing bits that aren’t relevant and editing out unnecessary words.
Tying ideas together creates clarity. When thinking about how to improve your English essay’s flow, include connecting words like ‘therefore’ or ‘in addition to this’ to communicate the relationships between connected ideas.
When checking for grammatical errors, it helps to read your essay out loud (or quietly in the exam hall!) and listen for moments in your essay where your writing sounds awkward.
The ability to be concise and self-edit is one sure way to improve both your English and your writing skills.