How to Write an Essay in English ? 5 Effective Tips

Posted by Jessica Gross on May 10th, 2018

To help you face this challenge, we leave you with a series of tips that you can use when writing an academic essay in English, either for the institute, the university or for any other purpose.

1. The more you ask, the better it is

Before writing your essay, make a brief list of questions beginning with the thesis on which the essay will focus. If you do not have a chosen theme yet, think about a topic that you could try since it is important to have a thesis and a position to be able to leave.

Now write down the following questions that you should be answering throughout the essay based on the thesis or topic you have chosen: how, when, what or which, who or whose or whom, why, and where.

These questions will allow you to make the development of your writing much more fluid, structured and with a better order of ideas. If, for example, you have to do a historical essay, answer and explain a little who was there, how the events happened and what was the reason for them to happen.

Remember: no matter what topic you chose, your essay should give answers to these questions and arguments that lead to the thesis.

2 Have a list of vocabulary words in hand

As well as having questions to answer in your essay, a list of related words regarding the subject you chose can be very useful when writing in English. For example, supposing that the thesis you chose is " Eating more than 3 times a day makes you grow bigger ".

The next thing that would correspond would be to make the first list of words directly related to the topic. Following the previous example, one of the words could be "nutrients", "meals", "height", "growth", "diet", "intervals".

Now with this list, you can search and make another one with related words like "lunch", "healthy meals", "snacks between meals", "home cooked", "food habits". This second list will allow you to better link ideas and not make words look so repetitive.

Likewise, it is advisable to have at hand a dictionary in English where you could find synonyms and/or antonyms that can fit better in the context of your writing and that will also help you cultivate your vocabulary.

3. Study the two sides of the coin

If your essay is about a somewhat deep or complex topic, one way to develop it is to evaluate different opinions and points of view. This will help you to compare the side that you took in your thesis (points for or against it) as well as knowing about other aspects that you could address throughout the writing.

Continuing with the example of the thesis "Eating more than 3 times a day makes you grow bigger", do not just focus on finding information that corroborates or supports that statement. Go further and study the opposite case. What studies support this information? What should people who suffer from overweight do? What effects would this have on a person whose metabolism is accelerated?

Look for information not only in books but also in forums, research papers, reports, consult your friends if they know about the topic. In short, there are millions of written and audiovisual sources to consult.

4. Read your writing form the end

One of the best ways to know if your essay in English has a syntax or grammatical error is with a reading in the opposite direction, that is, starting from the last word of the sentence until the first.

Why is this technique effective? In the English language, we are sometimes fooled a little by the sound of words when you have them in your mind while you write. We think that they fit well but when they are read in contradiction, we are able to realize if really the sentences are well structured or if there is a misspelt word.

Check grammar, take care of nouns in both singular and plural.

5. Short and concise sentences

At the time of writing, there must be a balance. It is advisable to not use very long sentences, but not very short sentences either. On an average, a paragraph should not have more than 3 or 4 lines.

If you have extended a sentence a lot, break it into smaller sentences making correct use of punctuation marks such as the comma, the semicolon or the period as necessary, because,in English, a phrase that is too long or too elaborate can make reading difficult.

Let's continue with the example of our thesis on the 3 daily meals and their relationship with growth. If you eat three times per day, as you've done today, you can reach the average growth height. But, if you start to eat three meals plus some snacks between them, your metabolism can improve faster than other people, making you grow more than average country's height.

These sentences can be united and make the most concrete idea in the following way:

Eating three times daily, you can reach an average height in our country. But, if you start to eat some healthy snacks between meals, you can surpass that height ratio soon.

While it is important that you develop grammar, and writing skills in English, we know that writing in a new language can be difficult. Therefore, a final recommendation is that you consult our experts who can carry out editing and proofreading to check that the entire structure of your essay is correct.

You can even get your essay written from our experts if you are not sure about your writing skills. This way you can make sure that you get the best quality writing and an error-free paper.