Academic essay writing is meant to assess a student’s abilities for gathering the necessary information on a subject and presenting it in a well-written form. This is an excellent way to demonstrate their depth of knowledge on that specific subject. In this guide, we are going to help you understand all the required skills of academic essay writing. We will also discuss its different types and formats.
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What Are Academic Essays?
Academic essays are essay papers written in a predefined format, intelligently structured. Whether it is school or college, academic essays are a significant part of the academic curriculum. An academic essay is meant to deliver an idea, or an argument by utilizing analysis, interpretation, and evidence in hand.
Such writing assignments are a wonderful way to evaluate a student’s creativity and knowledge of a subject. It also enhances the learning experience by motivating students to communicate their thoughts through writing.
Different Types Of Academic Essays
- Narrative Essay: This type of essay writing allows students to showcase their creativity by presenting a compelling copy. Narrative Essay includes storytelling which encourages the readers to visualize and open their doors of imagination. It has to be written in such a way that a clear message remains hidden in between, to propel the reader’s creativity.
- Descriptive Essay: It involves creatively describing a place, person, experience, emotion, etc. In this type of academic essay, you have to paint a vivid picture through perfectly crafted words. The aim is to induce certain emotions in the readers which enables them to connect with the subject.
- Expository Essay: Such essay types are all about evaluating or investigating the subject with the help of relevant evidence. You have to be careful and avoid citing your personal opinions while drafting an expository essay copy. The primary goal is to educate the readers using facts and logic.
- Persuasive Essay: As the name suggests, the aim is to persuade the readers into agreeing with your idea. The best way to write a Persuasive Essay is by doing proper background research and present your opinions using supporting claims, and data from authentic sources.
Best Academic Topics For Your Academic Essay Projects
Narrative Essay
- Write a story explaining the significance of technology in the modern era.
- Describe your survival story through the quarantine. Explain how it affected your life.
- Describe the most difficult decision you had to take in life.
- Explain your first experience where you felt a deep physical or emotional pain. What did you do to overcome it?
- Describe an experience when you had to do something that undermined your morality as a person.
- Describe the most embarrassing event of your life.
- Describe your first vacation away from your family.
- Share about your talents and how have you developed them?
- Explain the most frightening experience of your life.
- Describe the experience that helped you in overcoming your fears.
Descriptive Essay
- Describe a friend or family member who inspires you.
- Describe your favorite holiday destination that you have visited.
- Describe your dream destination that you plan to visit.
- Describe a piece of art that intrigued you with its depth and left an impact on your mind. Explain its most powerful traits.
- Describe the most important event from world history.
- Share about your favorite book that you enjoyed reading the most. What are its highlights?
- Describe your favorite sport. Why do you love it?
- Describe your first experience of riding a bicycle.
- Recall and describe your first hike to a mountain trail.
- Describe a happy memory from your childhood.
Expository Essay
- What are the measures we can take to control global warming, and reduce its effects?
- How does science contribute to our daily life?
- Explain the pros and cons of artificial intelligence?
- What is your personal code of ethics? How do they relate to your core values?
- What fascinates teenagers towards drugs and alcohol?
- Suggest some strategies that can help humanity is quickly recovering from the global pandemic.
- How does modern advertising pose a threat to our society?
- How has the internet positively affected the way today’s society communicates?
- Share some effective ways to deal with school life bullying.
- What are the reasons behind a rise in teen suicides?
Persuasive Essay
- Is the US academic grading system for colleges fair?
- Describe the pros and cons of drug testing at the workplace.
- What could be some valuable strategies to win in career and life?
- Benefits of buying products manufactured by your country.
- Should colleges ban digital devices in classrooms?
- What are the advantages of communism?
- Children should be prioritized in organ transplant programs.
- Mental health is an under-looked issue that has to be addressed by society.
- The government should invest resources in medical research rather than in entertainment.
- All animals deserve a bill of rights.
Benefits of Learning Academic Essay Writing Skills
Academic essay writing does not only improve a student’s writing skills, but it does a lot more than that. Here are some of the benefits of academic writing.
- Enhanced Knowledge & Analytical Skills: While writing your essays you are likely to spend a huge chunk of time on research and analytical work. This is a wonderful exercise to sharpen the skills while also adding up to your knowledge.
- Perseverance: This is a sure way to learn the essence of discipline at a young age, which could be achieved through academic essay writing tasks. How? The entire academic essay writing experience consists of researching a topic, analyzing it, writing, and then editing the paper. It enables the students to achieve their goals with complete focus.
- Improved Creativity: Academic essays require you to engage in creative thinking to make your essays unique, and interesting. It encourages students to develop unconventional ways for ensuring highly engaging write-ups.
- Heightened Focus: Students often complain about losing their focus while study sessions. Since academic essay writing involves research and brainstorming of ideas it is a great way to strengthen your focusing abilities. It enables you to achieve better results without wasting your time.
Top 10 Tips To Improve Your Academic Essay Writing Skills
Here are 10 amazing yet basic tips that will help you to improve your academic writing skills. You can use these to complete your own assignments or just learn how it’s done:
Keep A Professional Approach
Be careful of your tone and writing style, It should not be informal. The academic document is usually read by a professional and therefore you don’t want to mess up with your first impression. Use a professional lingo and choose only scientific vocabulary.
Come Straight To The Point
You don’t have to cook stories to make your point. This is academic writing, not blog writing. You are supposed to talk straightforward forward i.e. what your work is about, what does your research says, and are able to make your point with enough reference and citations. The readers won’t like to read 150 words or so and have no clue what the document is about?
Do extensive research
Your academic write-up has to build up based on actual research. There are facts and figures that you need to put out there to make your point. So dig out information from all the possible sources you have access to. Make sure you read them thoroughly and list all the important points before you actually put them in your document. Also, relevancy is another factor that you must consider. Your thesis should not differ from the references you are presenting.
Provide Credible Reference
Once you will gain experience you will know where to look for literature. Not every source out there is credible or legit thus you have to work hard and search for peer-reviewed sites or databases that provide top-notch information. The only way your academic writing will get recognition is when you have solid supporting references.
Be Informative, Not Overwhelming
This is crucial. Don’t fill up too much unnecessary information when it’s not required. Your academic essay or research paper should be about educating the audience and not stress them with heavy information. Keep it simple and promising.
Avoid Fancy Vocabulary
What’s the use of using literature cliché? Your audience is interested in good writing with proper English and not some fancy outburst of high-end vocabulary. The academic document should use simple language and must be easy to read. You don’t want your audience looking up the dictionary to find the meaning of words and waste time.
Edit & Proofread
There is no way around this. Editing your paper is a road to perfection. You start by making an outline then fill up the gap with information. Then what? Take a day off and have a fresh set of mind and eyes to edit the same work. You will find unnecessary things that you can remove and piece of content that still needs an addition. For proofreading, you can make use of paid tools or ask your seniors to take a look.
Read Other’s Work
If you still think you don’t know how to begin, don’t lose hope. Yes, you can start small by reading how others have written. Slowly you can find yourself scribbling a few lines and eventually you will find a way to complete your document.
Know Your Audience
The more aware you will be the more you know about your audience. The random audience will not pick these academic documents. Only people in your subject area will be interested in it, could be professors, postgraduates, doctorates, etc. Thus, write according to your audience and you will see a better academic document.
Follow The Instructions Every Bit
Academic writing comes with rules and regulations. There is a defined format for writing specific documents. Hence you can slowly read them and absorb them to implement in your next academic work.
Correct Format For Academic Essay Writing
Let us introduce you to the academic essay format which will make it easier for you to work on your essay assignment tasks.
Frame An Outline: Creating an outline is important regardless of the type of academic writing assignment. Your outline helps you in sticking to the subject while following a proper structure. Your outline must consist of four major elements:
- A thesis statement
- Body points
- Connection or linking
- Summary
Introduction: It should include relevant information on the subject to hook the readers. You need to include all details with a detailed explanation to paint a clear picture of the topic. The introduction of your academic essay should end with a thesis statement.
Main Body: The body of your essay must be divided into various paragraphs, each demonstrating the subject with a specific example. Also, you must add evidence to clarify your idea and also utilize relevant data from genuine sources. Doing this will empower your essay copy. Also, there has to be a link between the last sentence of a paragraph and the first sentence of the paragraph following it.
Conclusion: The conclusion should summarize all the major points of your academic essay, and also try rephrasing the thesis. Leave some room for the reader’s imagination.
Final Words
You might feel stressed about writing academic papers but you can always learn how to do it. If you want to improve your academic writing skills start by practicing them. The best way is to take baby steps and learn small slowly building your way up. Academic writing is not tough just that the approach is different when compared to casual writing. Once you know the process you will not only gain speed and confidence but you can also avoid all the unnecessary stress that impacts your study overall.
So go ahead and read all the tips mentioned above and start implementing them to execute a perfect academic document. Hope this article helps you to improve your academic writing skills. If you feel that you don’t have the time or experience to write an academic document, you can contact us on writing my essay. We are the top-notch academic-writing service providers who can have a team of professionals to execute the academic work. For your next academic project, make an inquiry today.