How to write essays in English

How to write essays in English

Writing an essay is part of the program of the most famous international exams for knowledge of English, such as TOEFL and CPE. Take advantage of our tips and tricks!

The ability to write essays involves a fairly high level of language proficiency. And they own this art a few. We will give you some very useful tips on writing an essay or essay in English, which will not only be useful to you in life.

Preparation

It's difficult, but - start in advance. The sooner you begin to think about the subject of the essay, the more time you have time to collect the material. When your brain is set to think about a question, information as if it gets to your eyes.

The same thing happens when you learn a new word: it begins to appear that it occurs more often in the text. The thing is that you become more receptive to a particular type of information, paying more attention to it.

To begin with, it's best to make outlines of what you know about the essay topic: perhaps you know even more than you thought. This will give you ideas on which direction to move further. To act purposefully, make a plan and formulate a preliminary set of questions. When you begin to study the material, you will have new, more specific questions, and you will be able to search for answers already on them.

How to overcome "fear of a blank sheet"

Even the most experienced writer at the beginning of work on a new work sometimes visits feelings of indecision and fear. But, as they say, the main thing - not in desire and not in the ability: just start writing. It does not matter where you begin: the main thing - do not stop writing and until the time do not worry about style and spelling. Make preliminary sketches of the main thoughts of the narrative, and after that, go to the design of the structure of your future creation.

If you write on a computer, it will not be difficult for you to change places of fragments written, differently grouping them. If you prefer paper and pen, leave space in one or two lines between the theses so that you can add something later.

You can even take the scissors and cut the sheet into strips to simplify this process. Try to compile the future essay in the way of development of the basic idea. If, as a result, you get the "golden trio": the beginning (introduction), the middle (the main part of the essay) and the ending (conclusion), then you did everything right.

General structure of the essay

Introduction

The introduction should contain some commentary on the subject of the essay - perhaps definitions of key concepts or an explanation as you understand the question. Also, in this section you need to list what aspects of the topic you will be considering and why.

Remember that the essay is not a novel, so you need to select only a few basic arguments that reveal the subject. The introduction should give a clear idea of ​​what will be discussed later, and the instructor should see that you answer a specific set of questions raised.

So a good introduction should:

show your intention to answer the question;

show that you understand the topic;

outline the structure of your answer and the main aspects that you will consider (your plan);

confirm that you have conducted a study and refer to one of your sources;

fully conform to the topic;

be laconic and occupy about 8-9% of the total volume of the text (for example, 120 words in a work of 1500 words).

Note: For those who are easier to navigate not in number of words, but in the number of characters, the following formula will be useful: one English word is taken on average 6 characters (including spaces), that is, a volume of 500 words contains approximately 3000 characters with spaces.

Start an essay with a key phrase that will indicate the direction of your answer. For example:

This essay deals with ... ("This essay is dedicated ...")

This assignment will examine ... ("This paper deals with ...")

This report will analyse ... ("This report is an analysis ...")

Use the same or similar wording as the essay topic. If the question sounds like "Discuss recent developments in communication technology", then in the introduction you can write: "In this The essay will cover contemporary developments in the field of communication technology ... "). More certainty: do not leave the reader a place to doubt.

You can also use these words and expressions that will highlight the plan of your work, for example:

The essay is divided into four sections ... ("This essay consists of four parts ...")

It will first consider ... ("First reviewed ...")

It will then continue to describe ... ("After that we will continue to describe ...")

The third part compares ... ("The third part is a comparison ...")

Finally, some conclusions will be drawn as to ... ("And finally, some conclusions will be made regarding ...")