Essay Writing Tips - Creating a Compelling Introduction

When it comes to writing essays, many would argue that the introduction is the key to whether your essay is a success or failure. The introduction should serve to inform, inspire and potentially educate the reader, but this is only possible if the introduction is written in such a way that it can be deemed compelling. How you achieve this will obviously depend to some extent on the subject matter but there are some key points to consider, no matter what the subject, which could help you to achieve the compelling introduction to open your essay.

Firstly, remember that your introduction doesn't need to be, and indeed shouldn't be too lengthy. Using excess words or developing topics or themes too thoroughly at this stage will leave you struggling to write original content later on in your essay, when the arguments need to be powerful and thought provoking. If you explain all your theories and ideas in the first paragraph the reader will have no reason to read on. Furthermore, succinct writing, especially in the introduction allows for a clear background to your essay to be established.

Background information is essential for any sound essay, and the introduction is the point at which this information should be entered. Providing a background to your question, hypothesis and research will allow your essay to be set in context, making it a far more compelling read.

Once you have laid out the background, you should then briefly mention the key points of your essay, consider what you are trying to prove or disprove. If your argument is countered or supported by other research, state how your work will differ or show similarities to these schools of thought.

Having informed the reader about the background, and stated your key arguments you can then go on to explain exactly how your essay will be developed in terms of research techniques, literature reviews, experiments, and analysis. Again, be sure not to reveal all of the secrets of your essay in your introduction, just enough to inform, enlighten and encourage the reader to want to find out more.

Remember that if you're trying to get someone to want to read your work, it helps if you actually want to write it in the first place; therefore before you start any writing, make sure your essay is dealing with a topic that interests you. This will then come across in your writing and will help to make not only a compelling introduction but a compelling essay in its entirety.

IELTS Essay Writing Tips

One of the major problems students face while writing an essay is the lack of subject matter. They can't find anything to write about the subject. This is natural and can be remedied by reading extensively.

Bacon says: 'Reading maketh a full man.' People who read extensively fill their mind with a lot of facts, thoughts and general information. If you want to write good essays, you must cultivate the habit of reading. Don't just read for amusement. You must also read books of history, travel, biography and science. Fill your mind with fine thought and accurate information. Then you will have plenty to write about any given topic.

Observe

Keep your eyes and ears wide open and learn from the world around us. Practice writing short descriptions of what you see in everyday life. For example, try writing about the people you meet, beautiful scenery and interesting experiences. The more you write, the better you become at writing.

Understand the subject

While writing the essay, the first thing you need to do is to define the subject. It is important that you have a clear and accurate conception of the subject before you start writing. Some subjects are so simple that you can start writing right away. Others require careful analysis.

Collecting materials

Once you have got a clear idea of the subject, the next step is to think about what you can say about it. Essays asked on the IELTS test don't require you to do any extensive research on the subject. All that is required is a little reflection on the given subject. Do not attempt to write the essay, before you have collected sufficient materials. Some students start writing with the first thing that comes to their mind. This is not always a good idea, especially when you write your essay on a paper. This approach will require extensive editing because ideas are unlikely to flash through your mind in the order they should appear in your essay.

A good idea is to jot down your points first. Then arrange them in the proper order. Once you have done that you can start developing each point into one or more paragraphs.

Order

An essay should follow an ordered line of thought. If ideas are not presented in a logical order, it will not make much sense. Before you start writing, make an outline showing the order in which each sub-topic is going to be developed.

Brevity

Your essay should be neither too short nor too long. There is no strict rule regarding the size of an essay - it usually depends up on the nature of the subject. Express your ideas clearly and concisely. Don't add unnecessary words with the objective of making the essay long.

Style

The essay must be written in a dignified and literary style. Avoid using slang or colloquial expressions in your essay. At the same time, don't commit the mistake of writing the essay in a style that is nearly impossible to follow. Instead, use simple and direct language and sentence patterns.

The personal touch

An essay should reveal the personal opinions and feelings of the writer. It should have the writer's individuality in it. If this personal touch is lost, the essay will be colorless and devoid of individuality. Therefore do not be afraid to express your views and opinions in the essay.

Essay Writing Tips - How to Close With a Good Conclusion

Academic writing, unlike creative writing, generally follows a set formula, allowing for a clear structure to an essay to act as the backdrop to your argument(s). Often, your course guidelines or essay title will define this structure but it will generally involve an introduction, some background to the main arguments, perhaps through a literature review, some analysis and then a conclusion. Although all of these elements are important in their own right, many would consider that a good conclusion is the mark of a good essay. The reason for this is that all of the earlier elements such as the introduction, hypothesis and analysis, are all reiterated within the conclusion, making the conclusion the summary of all of your research, theorising and review.

In order to create a good conclusion therefore the first rule is to ensure that all of the contributing elements are sound. Structuring your conclusion around weak evidence or research will mean that you will not be able to conclude anything with any real conviction. Secondly, a good conclusion must be relatively succinct. It is not necessary to totally re-write earlier sections of your essay or dissertation, you should merely draw out the key facts, pulling them all together into a sensible order. And finally, your conclusion should definitely summarise something, even if that is just to say that from the work you have carried out to date it is impossible to conclude in favour of one theory or another. This type of uncertain conclusion should not be considered a weak conclusion, providing that all of the contributing evidence suggests that your conclusion is in fact the right one.

It is very often the case that with lower level academia, or early research pieces, academics will identify gaps in their research that would need to be addressed in further study thus leading to an 'inconclusive conclusion'. In the same way the author may identify flaws in the practical execution of data analysis, perhaps realising biased interview questions, or closed interview questions that do not allow for the appropriate responses to be obtained. If this is the case then results may be skewed or the writer may be unable to draw any sensible conclusions. As long as you are able to convey all of this information then your conclusion can still be classed as a good one. Clearly, however, the ideal situation is that all of your work leading up to the conclusion is robust enough to allow you to draw an evidence-based, definite conclusion that leans one way or another.

Once you have written your conclusion then you should check your entire essay for spelling and grammar mistakes, and that you have followed the required style and referencing guidelines throughout. And most importantly double-check that your conclusion really does conclude something!

Essay Writing - Using Reasoning to Support the Thesis

Reasoning satisfies the human need for justification and a sense of 'rightness' that all intelligent communication needs, especially in an essay.

What is "reasoning," anyway? When talking about the meaning of reasoning, we can get into confusing philosophical issues much too quickly. So let's start with a down-to-earth definition of reasoning as a process---

Reasoning involves a conscious attempt to discover what is true and what is best. Reasoning thought follows a chain of cause and effect, and the word reason can be a synonym for cause.

By this definition, reasoning involves cause-and-effect relationships, whether it be a single cause-and-effect relationship or a chain of cause- and-effect relationships. But what is a cause-and-effect relationship?

Cause and effect is a relationship in which one thing, called the cause, makes something else happen, and that "something else," that result, is called the effect. For example, a boy hits a ball with a bat and the ball goes through a window, breaking it. In this instance, the cause is the boy hitting the ball, and the effect is breaking the window.

Cause-and-effect reasoning is something we all use every day, whether we're particularly conscious of it or not. So I'm sure you'll recognize these common, informal rules of cause and effect:

1. Sequence--- The cause comes first, and the effect follows after.

2. Present--- When the cause is present, the effect is always present.

3. Absent--- When the cause is absent, the effect is always absent.

Now, here's a true, commonly accepted, yet typically loose, example of those rules being applied to an historical situation---

For centuries in Europe, only white swans were ever seen. All sightings, records, and information on swans in Europe showed that they were always white. So it was okay to assert as a truth that, "All swans are white." (Another way to put it: "If it's a swan, it's white.")

The cause in this instance is this: Ever since Europeans had kept and tracked records---anecdotes, diaries, family hand-me-down stories, histories, journals, legends (local, regional, cultural), memoirs, myths, oral history storytelling---they had known swans as only white. No other color of swan had ever been known in Europe, and no world traveler had ever brought word from their travels to Europe that there was ever a swan of any other color than white.

Because of all that experience and evidence, the effect was that Europeans believed that all swans everywhere in the world were white. It was good reasoning, based on centuries of accumulated evidence throughout an extensive geographical region and across varied cultures.

But guess what? A Dutch explorer, Willem de Vlamingh, discovered a black swan in Australia in 1697, undoing centuries of European observation, experience, and thought involving the color of swans.

One lesson from the black swan incident is that reasoning does work most of the time, but not always, because we cannot actually examine all the world on any particular question or fact (at least, not yet; but the world's sciences and technologies do keep advancing, however... ). And that's what it takes to authoritatively say, "always present" or "always absent." Of course, in the absence of having all knowledge, all of us will continue using reasoning to help fill in our gaps of knowledge, and that's why it's so important to understand the proper use of reasoning in essays.

Let's look at three popular essays to see how they use cause-and-effect reasoning rules to support their original ideas, or new view thesis statements. Let's start with the simplest essay, George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" (you can bring up free Internet copies of each of these essays by putting quotes around their titles in Google).

In his essay, George Orwell presents his new view of a reverse cause and effect in his second paragraph:

If one gets rid of these [bad language] habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

Let's break that down into a series of causes and effects:

CAUSE: If one gets rid of these [bad language] habits

EFFECT: one can think more clearly,

CAUSE: and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards

EFFECT: political regeneration

We should add this, too, to clearly establish the old view---

CAUSE: political regeneration is a necessary step towards

EFFECT: reversing the decadence and collapse of civilization

..................(reverse of the accepted old view that language must degenerate and collapse, along with civilization)

As you can see, that first EFFECT becomes the second CAUSE, and that second EFFECT becomes the third CAUSE, which forms a short chain of cause-and-effect reasoning.

Now let's see how well Orwell fulfills the rules of cause and effect to support the new view in his thesis:

Sequence--- first, get rid of bad language habits

........................(WEAKLY SHOWN by two small examples)

........................after, think clearly and reverse civilization's decadence

........................(NOT SHOWN by any story or example; merely asserted as true)

Present--- when good political language usage is present,

...................clear thinking and improving civilization is always present

...................(NOT SHOWN by any story or example; asserted as true)

Absent--- when good political language usage is absent,

..................clear thinking is always absent

..................(many old view examples show clear thinking as always absent)

Did you notice that I entered "WEAKLY SHOWN" for the first part of the Sequence rule, based on Orwell's following two brief examples of getting "rid of bad language habits"--

Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists.

As far as showing how those two examples had the effect of helping politicians "think clearly and reverse civilization's decadence" for the after part of the Sequence rule, that's definitely "NOT SHOWN." No stories or examples or reasoning is provided to support that effect.

And "NOT SHOWN" for the Present rule? Whoa! Orwell does not use any stories or examples or specific speculations to show that what he is proposing actually works or will work-or even has worked at any time or place in history.

And, although Orwell shares his 6-item formula for getting rid of bad language usage towards the end, he supplies no story or example or specific speculation to show any of those suggestions really working or actually having some sort of positive effect.

Wow! How does he get away with that? Why don't we notice that when we're reading his essay?

After much thought, I think I discovered the reason-it's the amount of time Orwell spends propping up his old view with all those examples of poor language usage by politicians.

We can see what he is saying is true about each one of those examples. But there are so many of them that it's-well, it's very much like a slick salesman who bends our ear with such a torrent of words that we get mentally tired trying to follow what he's saying. And then we're just grateful to get to the end of all the talk, without mentally filtering all the reasoning of what's being said.

I think that's it. However, I honestly don't think Orwell was trying to put anything over on us. He just didn't have examples of the effects of his new view thesis to share with us because what he was suggesting hadn't been implemented by a large group of people yet, so there were no effects to see. And maybe, just maybe, all his examples tired him out, too!

What Orwell should have done is supply some examples of specific effects that he predicts would happen, as well as how they would progressively, logically happen, if his six suggestions were followed. That would have done the trick, I think.

Interesting, don't you agree?

Teachers and publishers, in general, seem to love Orwell's essay despite its faults-why? Because of the important new insight, the new view, that Orwell provides, that's why. Orwell's principle of 'good language makes for good thinking' rings true to all of us, even though his reasoning support for it is rather weak and he provides no new view examples.

Just goes to show you what a truly great new view thesis-plus an overwhelming number of solid old view examples-can do for you, right? (Please see my next article to finish this discussion with the analysis of two more published essays.)