Welcome to your crash course on essay writing,
by the time you finish this series, you'll be all set to ace your essay! This is the first video of the playlist, in
which you'll learn the basics. In an academic essay, the goal is to persuade
readers of a position or perspective through informed arguments, supported with evidence
and analysis. There are 3 main stages to writing an essay:
Preparation Writing
Revision In this video, I will quickly go through all
the stages and steps with you. And in the next few videos in this playlist,
we’ll go more into detail for each stage with example sentences and paragraphs. Can't wait? Let's dive right in! Hi, I’m Jessica from Scribbr, here to help
you achieve your academic goals. In the preparation stage, you first need to
understand the assignment and choose a topic. Once you've chosen your topic, you should
come up with an initial thesis – this is the main point you want to make in the essay,
or the position you’re going to argue for. At this stage, it doesn’t have to be perfectly
phrased, but it’s important to start with a clear idea of what you want to say. Then you can start creating an outline and
planning your essay’s structure. This will kickstart your writing and keep
you on track! Preparation is done, and now we're moving
onto writing. Every essay starts off with an introduction. It’s important to grab the reader’s interest
right off the bat and inform them of what will be covered in the essay. Hook the reader in the first sentence, and
then give context that will help your reader understand your argument. This might involve providing brief background
information, giving an overview of important academic work or debates on the topic, and
explaining difficult terms. But don’t overdo it, just enough to give
the reader a taste, you know? Next, remember the thesis statement from before? Present it here – tell the reader the central
argument you’re going to make. The thesis statement is usually one or two
sentences long, and it drives the whole essay, so make sure to spend some time on this part! You can end your introduction section with
an overview of the essay. So basically signposting your essay’s structure. Moving onto the body section, this is the
longest part of your essay, usually around 60-80%. Here is where you make arguments supporting
your thesis, provide evidence, and develop your ideas. It’s easy to get lost in a big chunk of
text, to give your essay a clear structure, it is important to make use of paragraphs. Each paragraph should be centered around just
one argument or idea. Introduce the purpose of each paragraph using
topic sentences. A good topic sentence makes a transition from
the previous paragraph and introduces the argument to be made in this paragraph. We elaborate more on forming clear topic sentences
in this video! After the topic sentence, present evidence
by providing the reader with data, examples, or quotes. Be sure to interpret and explain the evidence,
and show how it helps develop your overall argument. Alright, the hard work is done, and you’ve
arrived at the last paragraph of your essay, the conclusion. Here are 3 things you should do:
Summarize and tie together the points you made in the essay’s body
Show the outcome of your arguments - what new insight have you provided? Emphasize why your argument matters After you're done writing, but before you
submit your hard work, it’s important to revise and polish your writing. Double check your arguments: have you said
everything you meant to say, or do some points need restructuring? Finally, make sure to check your grammar,
spelling, and formatting. And if you’ve cited sources in your paper,
also use a plagiarism checker to make sure everything is good to go! Once you’ve checked everything off this
checklist here, you’re ready to go! When you're ready, your next step should be
creating an outline for your essay! Click this to learn how to do so, see you
there.