Written by Harry Croose
"Write like it matters; and it will."
Hey all, I hope you are well. Today, we will be talking about the importance of preparing and planning your academic essays. At the time, I am writing this – I have just completed my second year. Over my time at University I have become very adept in time management and planning for essays. Here is 5 tips to help you become better at planning for essays, and in turn it may skyrocket your grades.
1. Write the Assignments due-in dates (a day before they are due)
This one in itself has allowed me to do so much better! Many of us, if we are truly honest with ourselves to do like to write essays quite close to the deadline. But this in turn due to the stress of time, has made our essay writing and content, not our best standard. Setting a mindset to complete the essay as if the day before was the assignment due date. Gives you the necessary breathing room to give you time to proof-read and can cure procrastination, and last-minute essay writing.
This has worked wonders and has made my essays better because it improves your psychological wellbeing – during the writing process.
2. Analysis the question / Assessment Criteria
Analysing the question is a great way of articulating a framework not just for your essay but for your understanding of the actual question.
The assessment criteria with giving you much more specific insight, into what the lecturer wants to be included in your essays.
Try to touch upon all of these points, and perhaps use similar words, to make sure you are hitting each of the points.
So for example, if the essay question was…
‘To what extent is apples awesome in England.’
You can take into consideration ‘to what extent’ meaning you could structure the essay into good and bad representations of apples, and go into if your sources have a particular bias, so on and so forth. ‘Awesome’ what do you as an emrging academic, deem as an awesome representation of apples.
Also what ‘apples’, are you going to foucs on a particular type of apple, or are you going to look at apples in literature, again it dependa on what subject and what your assessment criteria is.
A long story, short with that crazy example, you do have free-realm with how you wirite the essay and create and formulate the ideas. But remember, it will be marked on how it meets the question as well as the assessment criteria.
3. Use Secondary Sources
Secondary sources are incredibly important because it gives the impression that you have read widely to the lecturer. Also including other academics names to assist your argument, makes your own conclusions and own individual theory much more creditable. Also, reading up on these individuals can help you in future essays, by knowing their opinions and quotes. Secondary sources are almost vital to get above a 2:1. However, make sure that these sources are relevant to the narrative of the essay.
4. Quote-filtering
Depending on the question, it is important for you to find relevant quotes and to filter the best ones to use for your essay question and argument. Using indexes is a very good way to filter quotes. If your essay was on apples looking up the keyword ‘apple’ will be a good start! I personally would then recommend writing the quotes with the page numbers in a Microsoft word document, then you are able to paste them into your essay.
5. Ask for help
Self-educating yourself on how to plan essays, whether through blog posts such as this, or YouTube videos, books and other courses – can help you significantly. Also if you are at University, you could ask an academic adviser to help you. Or in fact your own lecturer! Many tend to offer tutorials.
Also, many of your peers may be able to potentially help you and in turrn, you could help them!
Bonus Point. Stay positive, and try your best.
Be positive, anything is possible. Try and enjoy the essay writing process and if possible do not leave the essay writing last minute. 🙂
Until the Next Blog Post! Take Care and Look after yourself!!
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