It’s the moment every parent dreads: as soon as your child sits there, glum-faced, looking at a blank little bit of paper in front of them. They’ve a rapidly-approaching deadline for their essay, and nothing, but nothing you do as a parent seems to simply help them get any closer to completion. What can you do to simply help? The answer is: a serious lot.
Creating a successful essay could be one of the very arduous parts of the schooling process, and yet, the necessity to write an essay is everywhere: from English literature, to economics, to physics, geography, classical studies, music, and history. To succeed, at senior school and in tertiary study you have to master essay writing.
Getting students over this barrier was one of the reasons I put pen to paper four years ago and produced a guide called Write That Essay! At that stage, I was a senior academic at Auckland University and a university examiner. For almost 20 years, in both course work and examinations, I had counselled everyone from 17-year-old ‘newbies’ to 40-year-old career changers making use of their essay writing. Often, the difference between students who might achieve a B-Grade and the A-Grade student was some well-placed advice and direction.
I then visited over 50 New Zealand High Schools and spoke with over 8000 kiwi kids about essay writing. These students reported the identical challenges as I had previously encountered, and more. The result has been two books and a DVD that have helped kids achieve some of the potential that sits inside all of us.
In this article I am going to manage some things you certainly can do as a parent to simply help your son or daughter succeed at essay writing. Because writing great essays is well within every child’s grasp.
Tips for essay writing success:
It’s an argument
Remember that the essay is an argument best essay writing service the task in an essay isn’t to publish a story or even to recount a plot. The teacher knows all this information. In an essay your child’s job is to provide a compelling argument-using specific evidence-for the purpose they want to make.
Write a plan: you’ll be pleased that you did
Get your son or daughter to publish a short list-plan of the topics that their essay needs to cover. Even a brief plan is preferable to no plan at all, and will begin to provide the writer a feeling that completing an essay on that topic is well of their grasp.
If your son or daughter is a visible learner, move from the desk and go to a neutral space. Grab a large sheet of blank A3 paper and some coloured pens, and brainstorm a head map or sketch plan of what the essay should contain. Using pictures, lines, circles, and arrows will all help the visual learner grasp the task at hand and help them see what they have to do.
Getting Started
A challenge many kids (and adults) face writing essays is getting started. Anyone sits there awaiting inspiration hitting them just like a lightening bolt and it never happens. What can you as a parent do to simply help?
Encourage them with the thought that great essays are never written the very first time over. Cause them to view essay writing as a three-part process. The first draft is only to have out the ideas and words in rough form. In the next and third effort, they will add with their essay where you will find blanks, clarify ideas, and give it one last polish. Realising that the essay isn’t allowed to be perfect the very first time you write it, really helps some people.
Having enough to say
If your son or daughter remains stuck, find out if they have read up enough on the topic. Some inertia with writing could be due to insufficient knowledge. They will find writing so much easier if they spend a later date or two reading more on the topic and gleaning some additional ideas.
Try utilizing a neutral sentence
Suggest starting the essay with a basic sentence: a phrase that merely states an interesting fact on the topic being written about. Here’s one: ‘Mozart was one of the most important Austrian composers of the eighteenth century.’ First sentences in essays don’t need to be stellar – you simply need to start!