How to Teach Essay Writing Effectively

If you are new to teaching or have started teaching recently, you are aware of how complicated it is to help your students learn how to write a good essay. As you work to teach essay writing effectively, remember that it's similar to choosing the Best LLC Service for a business - both require a strategic approach, expert guidance, and persistence to achieve the desired outcome. There are a lot of types of essays and it is a basis of education and homework. Essays are a traditional way to teach students proper argumentation, logic, structured reasoning, and last but not least a proper research.

Essay writing skills are a basis for studying and research, and yet it is quite difficult to explain the process correctly without missing any point.

Still, it is a process that demands patience, time for research, and diving into the topic. How can a teacher make a student interested in essay writing skills? Is there any other way to explain an essay structure apart from a five-part hamburger that most of us have heard of in school?

Talk About Structure

In order to start teaching essay wiring, you need to explain a typical essay structure and give the first assignment. It is human to remember personal things better than some general topics, so in order to help your students get used to the essay structure, make the first topic a personal opinion essay. Students should tell in the right essay format their opinion on a popular and interesting personal topic, yet they should make proper research to introduce a polar or contradictory opinion.

This way your students will be able to grasp the general concept of an essay format.

Show Examples

Another way to introduce essay structure is by showing examples of good papers for students to familiarize themselves with it and write a similar one on another topic. In class make sure to analyze at least one good essay in detail, highlighting what makes a good paper. Each task after this lesson should be directed at the development of a certain essay writing skill that was discussed in the class. Pay attention to essay references and format, since it is a students’ least favorite part.

Types of Essays

Explain the main types of essays to your students, going through the general characteristic of each type like opinion essay, process essay, for and against essay, descriptive one, and so on. Stop on the type of paper you are going to assign first.

Let your students practice. Encourage them to write, to understand not only the structure of the essay but also a process of research and logically disclosing the topic step by step. Make them choose the topic and build the arguments properly. Writing from personal experience is easier. In addition, finding credible sources that share the same point of view as you is always interesting and encouraging.

Sources

Quoting and citing credible sources is also a huge part of great writing. As soon as students realize that quoting is a nice way to make their story richer, more logical, and credible, they will learn how to use it. At first, students tend to rely fully on the opinions of acclaimed writers and professionals. Though it is not bad for starters, the aim of an essay is to help a student express their own view on the topic, only supporting it with credible resources, not reciting it. Critical thinking development will help your students later on in personal life and career.

Parts: Introduction

Particular attention should be paid to writing each part of the essay. When writing an introduction, make sure to explain how to state the topic sentence, how to write a part that leads to a thesis statement. Due to different essay types, it can be a long process, so ensure that you have numerous examples to establish comprehension. Building a thesis statement is one of the most important and complicated steps in writing a quality paper because it defines the coherence of the rest of the paper.

Remind your students that a good paper is all about storytelling. Help them build an interesting, argumentative, and logical story. Telling a story is one of the essential skills people learn from essay writing.

Main Body

Logic and critical thinking are mostly applied in the main body. Each paragraph represents a new idea that supports a thesis statement and further leads the reader through the text. The structure implies an idea and its support with credible sources or stating a contrary point of view and analyzing it. Teaching students writing a correct main body part can actually help them set a proper, logical approach to reasoning and explaining in the future. Though indirectly, it develops communicative skills, so make an emphasis on the argument’s logic and support of the claim.

Final Part

The conclusion might seem to be the simplest part of the essay, but lots of students forget to restate the topic or include new ideas to the conclusion, so it is always a good idea to point out how to summarize their essay well, without repeating oneself. Proper articulation and language use will help students sum up the previous points into a brief, but the logical sequence of facts. Remind your students of linking words and synonyms.

Teaching students all the rules and tricks of a great paper is complicated, so you can always use amazing examples of works from online essay writing service just to give them an idea of a good well-rounded work where everything is on point and every detail is thought through.

The last but not least tip will be not to overwhelm students with all this information at once. The process of creating a good essay should be gradual, so a student stays mindful of each step, learning an indispensable writing skill that will help in many situations throughout their life.