Challenges of Essay Writing
Introduction
Essay writing is a mandatory rite of passage in school whether in high school or in college. As long as you go to school, at some time, you will be expected to write an essay. There are several types of essay such as; descriptive, reflective, persuasive, compare and contrast, and argumentative. An essay is a piece of writing which consists of several paragraphs about one particular topic based on the student’s reading. The purpose of the essay is to express your own thoughts regarding a particular topic or to present ideas learned in class. It is all about working with other people’s ideas but using one’s own words and voice to take a stand or relay information regarding the topic. Students are faced with several challenges when trying to relay their information through essay writing and this article will evaluate the various challenges the students face as well as the key aspects of essay writing.
Key aspects of essay writing
Essay planning
When writing an essay, it is important to plan everything in order to avoid leaving out the important details. Planning gives best results when it is accompanied by reading, thinking and writing. While planning, the student is supposed to analyze the topic of the essay first and to point out the areas of focus. Then the student has to evaluate the knowledge regarding the topic and should start generating the ideas using additional sources to find relevant information. The plan should be able to give a clear indication of the areas that are supposed to be covered, their importance and how effective the topic of the essay is. The detailed explanation of how the argument is going to be presented is of utmost importance.
Essay planning challenges
Most students find essay planning tedious, messy and time-consuming. To create a plan, you have to go to the library or do a thorough search in the Internet to get the essay content. Most people find such process very monotonous and give up, therefore, it results into poor essays. It is of great importance that students do not to rush to go to libraries after reading the topic, but instead think and plan around the topic so as to know exactly what the requirements are. In this way, the student will get sense of how to shape the essay and will be able to develop his or her ideas based on the plan.
Essay Structure
Essay structure deals with how the essay parts are arranged. It is important to understand which parts of the essay fit together and how they relate to each other. Most of the essays are structured in a way that they have an introduction, the body and the conclusion. Therefore, it is very important to know what ideas should be presented in each part of the essay. The most important part of the essay is the last sentence of the introduction. It is called thesis statement. The main task of the essay is to present coherent ideas.
Challenges with Essay Structure
There are students who have difficulties in essay writing and they spend most of their time worrying on how to produce polished phrases. They are more concentrated on grammar, spelling and punctuation while the most crucial is to follow the structure of the essay.
Plagiarism
First of all, plagiarism is considered to be a crime. It means to present thoughts and ideas that do not belong to you. There are many ways to find the works of somebody else and to pretend that it is your own. The most popular are the online resources. However, sometimes, plagiarism can be done unintentionally especially when the student is not aware of what plagiarism exactly constitutes. There is also the obvious plagiarism when the student paraphrases the thoughts of somebody else and fails to acknowledge that they actually faced with plagiarism.
Challenges
Plagiarism has become one of the leading challenges that students face while writing essays. Most of the challenges that the students experience are dealing with the lack of verified sources they use to derive information from. Inappropriate citations may result to plagiarism report. Another common challenge is the reliance by students on sources that are not accurate for the reference styles. Additionally, the students sometimes misunderstand the reference rules which result into plagiarism. All the above challenges mostly stem out of the primary challenge of poor essay writing skills. For the students it is of much importance to pay enough attention in class to the instructions in order to avoid being charged with plagiarism especially with the unintended plagiarism.
Paragraphing
Proper paragraphing is the key to good essay writing, it provides a level of focus for the students and enable them to make their ideas coherent without conflicting themselves when writing.
Challenges
Most students shift their focus on the word usage, style and sentences and forget to arrange the paragraphs coherently and clearly. When students understand the nature of good paragraph construction, it helps them become good essay writers.
Understanding Titles
The title of the essay is the most significant in the essay writing process, without it one is not able to know what exactly to research. Therefore, it is very important that the student comprehends the title in order to avoid being irrelevant. It is vital to look at the subject of the title, to understand what one is supposed to do and finally draw out questions from the title so as to enable good analysis of the topic.
Challenges That Face Title of an Essay
Sometimes students may go off the track when writing their essays and hence it sounds totally irrelevant. It may happen when the student failed to understand the topic and what was expected from him/her. Even if the essay is well written, the irrelevance will cost the student a lot since his/her essay will be disqualified. Therefore, it is very important to dissect the title to get the root of the essay.
Research Content
Most of the students use the Internet and the library to look for the information for their research when writing an essay. The development of new technologies has enabled students to have more than one data base to get the information.
Referencing
Referencing is indicating the works which the student has read and analyzed to write a successful essay. It is important to reference one’s work since it shows how widely one has read on the subject, to acknowledge other pieces with the same research topic and to allow others to have access of the materials used.
However, students have a major problem when it comes to referencing without proper referencing, there could be unintentional plagiarism. Sometimes students fail to cite quotations according to reference styles. To learn the proper reference styles will be a key to excellent essay.
Conclusion
Essay writing is an engaging exercise for most students and it is crucial to pay attention to the main aspects of the writing process. There are various challenges that students may experience while writing essays, however, they should take into consideration these issues to improve their writing skills.
