It’s the minute every parent dreads: as soon as your child sits there, glum-faced, considering a blank little bit of paper facing them. They have a rapidly-approaching deadline due to their essay, and nothing, but nothing you do as a parent seems to help them get any nearer to completion. What can you do to help? The solution is: a serious lot.
Making a successful essay may be one of the very most arduous elements of the schooling process, and yet, the requirement to write an essay is everywhere: from English literature, to economics, to physics, geography, classical studies, music, and history. To succeed, at high school and in tertiary study you have to master essay writing.
Getting students over this barrier was among the reasons I put pen to paper four years ago and produced a book called Write That Essay! At that stage, I was a senior academic at Auckland University and a university examiner. For pretty much 20 years, in both course work and examinations, I’d counselled everyone from 17-year-old ‘newbies’ to 40-year-old career changers using their essay writing. Often, the difference between students who might achieve a B-Grade and the A-Grade student was just some well-placed advice and direction.
I then visited over 50 New Zealand High Schools and spoke with over 8000 kiwi kids about essay writing. These students reported the same challenges as I’d previously encountered, and more. The end result has been two books and a DVD which have helped kids achieve some of the potential that sits inside most of us.
In this informative article I am going to cope with some things you certainly can do as a parent to help your youngster succeed at essay writing. Because writing great essays is well within every child’s grasp.
Tips for essay writing success:
It’s an argument
Remember that the essay is an argument best essay writing service the duty in an essay isn’t to write a tale or even to recount a plot. The teacher knows this information. In an essay your child’s job is presenting a compelling argument-using specific evidence-for the point they want to make.
Write a plan: you’ll be pleased that you did
Get your youngster to write a short list-plan of the topics that their essay needs to cover. Even a brief plan is preferable to no plan at all, and will quickly provide the writer a sense that completing an essay on that topic is well of their grasp.
If your youngster is a visible learner, move from the desk and go to a neutral space. Grab a big sheet of blank A3 paper and some coloured pens, and brainstorm a mind map or sketch plan of what the essay should contain. Using pictures, lines, circles, and arrows will all help the visual learner grasp the duty at hand and help them see what they have to do.
Getting Started
A challenge many kids (and adults) face writing essays gets started. Anyone sits there looking forward to inspiration going to them such as for instance a lightening bolt and it never happens. What can you as a parent do to help?
Encourage them with the idea that great essays are never written the first time over. Encourage them to view essay writing as a three-part process. The very first draft is to obtain out the ideas and words in rough form. In the 2nd and third effort, they will add for their essay where you can find blanks, clarify ideas, and give it a final polish. Realising that the essay isn’t said to be perfect the first time you write it, really helps some people.
Having enough to state
If your youngster is still stuck, discover if they have read up enough on the topic. Some inertia with writing may be as a result of insufficient knowledge. They will find writing so much easier if they spend a later date or two reading more on the topic and gleaning some additional ideas.
Try using a neutral sentence
Suggest starting the essay with a simple sentence: a sentence that merely states a fascinating fact on the topic being written about. Here’s one: ‘Mozart was certainly one of the most crucial Austrian composers of the eighteenth century.’ First sentences in essays don’t have to be stellar – you just need to start!