Learn how to plan your essay effectively

2 mins read

There are processes and different stages involved in crafting an essay. This is a skill that takes practice, and investing of time and effort to improve and acquire. With the constructive feedback from your teachers and peers, you will start making progress and begin to feel confident.

As you navigate through the learning process of writing an essay, you will also be acquiring different skills along the way such as research skills, critical thinking, and doing additional reading, strategic and analytical thinking. All these skills enable you to present your knowledge and understanding of the particular topic.

The purpose of an essay or other academic writing can be considered as a learning activity that helps you stimulate your mind to generate ideas and then organise them and present them through your arguments and supporting evidence in order to convince your target audience,i.e. Your teachers who will be evaluating your essay and your writing skills.

Writing an essay helps you to organise your ideas and information, you will develop an approach to critically analyse the information you do not agree with or you are not certain about. These learning exercises will help you to polish your writing and research skills. You can refer to online paper writing services to get extra help for your college assignments.

Before we advance to the steps of planning an essay for your assignments, you need to know the elements or the areas your teacher or the person assessing your work will be looking for. These elements will show your essay writing skills are good or not

 

  • Adhering to the prompt question and using the relevant information to answer it
  • Your use of information in an organised and logical way
  • How you structured your essay
  • Your critical and analytical thinking you demonstrate in your arguments
  • Incorporating examples to support your theory
  • How convincing and persuasive you are
  • Quoting and citing other sources without plagiarism

Planning Your Essay

Essay planning is about filtering information and deciding what you want to include in your essay and how to structure it. It means that a well structured essay indicates that you are able to organise your ideas and thoughts, and you can express them rationally and with clarity, making it intelligible for the readers to understand your message easily.

Keeping in mind the type of essay assignments, plan your essay with the help of the following steps below:

  • Read the prompt question or statement carefully
  • Write the essay question again to make it more clear for you to understand
  • Brainstorm your ideas and knowledge about the topic
  • Note down your thoughts about the various aspects related to the topic that comes to your mind
  • Quickly jot down words and phrase that you intend to include in your essay
  • Write down the key points and the thesis statement that you think is more engaging and interesting
  • Expand your initial thoughts and ideas
  • Create an outline now
  • Build your argument logically
  • Note down reference of the quotes or research you will include in your essay