Main Things You Should Know Before Writing an Essay
No matter how tempted you may be to jump right into the writing process, there are a few things you should know before setting your ideas down on the page. Experts suggest you know these four things before starting the process of writing:
- Develop a Work Plan and Schedule
- Make Sure You Get the Assignment
- Conduct Ample Amount of Research
- Organize Your Research Material
Most assignment work plans and schedules can easily made in just a few minutes, but the upside is that they can save you lots of time and effort in the total work you have to put in to completing a top-notch paper assignment. Breaking up your assignment into several manageable tasks and creating a number of deadlines over the course of a several days (or weeks), can alleviate some of the overwhelming stress you might otherwise have experienced.
Develop your work plan and schedule the same day you learn about an assignment. Have a look at your final deadline and create milestones that need to be completed in the writing process. Incorporate buffer days – or days in which you can rest, work on other assignments, or do some catch-up work if you fall behind.
As obvious as this might sound, you would be surprised at how many students mistakenly start a writing assignment without fully understanding its requirements and wind up submitting something that is totally wrong and thus a wasted effort. Review the assignment prompt thoroughly within the first one or two days of receiving it, and always ask your instructor for clarification if you have any questions.
At one point or another you will have to work on something that is completely new to you, in which case you can probably get a sample from either a professional service or directly from your instructor. So, it’s absolutely important to make sure you thoroughly review the assignment early on.
There are two levels of research you should always do for any academic writing assignment: general and systematic. General searches can be done online where you can instantly find several resources that can provide you with background context, terminology, related issues, and more information that can help you become familiar about your topic in the broad sense. In-depth searches should be done at the library where you have access to reliable government and academic resources that you can cite in defense of your thesis statement.
Take accurate notes, quotes, data, and anything else you need to prove your argument and ensure your citation information is correct so that you don’t have to come back to copy this information down a second time around. Use notecards, notebooks, journals, or any other tools you can to keep this process as organized as possible.
Now that you have found source material and have factual information to support your argument, you are ready to organize your notes in a structured format to make the writing process much easier. The two most common techniques are to create an outline or a mind-map that you can use when writing the first draft. Arrange your material into related ideas and put them in an order that makes sense both to you and in anticipation of your reader. Set this aside for a couple of hours so that you can return to make slight revisions to it with a clear mind.