English Composition: many students associate English composition courses with quandary and dawdling. Students waste hours on noting the integrity, clarification, proper transitions, and essay structure trying to learn the rules of ideal writing. Nevertheless, you may end up with a big fat “F” for your paper even though your writing is completely free from grammar and spelling mistakes. How could this happen? What secret criteria are used for evaluation? And, finally, how to find out what the professor wants to see to get an “A” for your work?
Rubrics: Opening the Secrets
You may be surprised by the news that your professor does not assess your paper based on personal preferences. Contrary to this, your instructor evaluates your paper using the general requirements approved at your college. Usually, those requirements are organized in a form of rubrics that contains some components. Those parts evaluate how well you define the audience and satisfy the purpose of the topic, the logical flow of your paper, and the efficiency of the language use. Of course, the mentioned components are very vast categories that cannot answer your direct question “what is college-level writing?” However, right now we are going to discuss the peculiarities of each category and provide effective writing tips for college students.
Tips on Writing a College Essay: Purpose and Audience
Defining the audience and the purpose of the paper is the key starting point of your writing. You need to read carefully the instructions of your professor and make sure you do understand each word. Writing the commencement ceremony speech is not the same as writing a science research paper. The audience of the paper is entirely different. So is the style. Or, if you are assigned to write the compare and contrast paper, you have to make sure you concentrate on the comparison of two or more issues rather than the narration of something. If you write a narrative essay that depicts the issues, you will never score high, because the initial purpose is to provide a comparison. So, make sure you define the correct purpose and audience of your writing.
College Essay Writing Tips: Effective Structure
Even if you have a complete understanding of the requirements, purpose, and audience, you may lack the important skills of organizing content into a comprehensive structure. Every sentence you use should be placed in proper order. First, you need to provide the claim, Further, the claim should be supported by the relevant evidence. Moreover, you have to show how your evidence supports the claim. Remember, the things and ideas that are obvious to you are not necessarily evident to other people. Every paper has to follow clear logic and have the introductory part, the main part where the analysis is presented, and the conclusive part.
Tips on Writing College Essays: Effective Development
While the excellent structure is a significant feature of a good paper, it is not sufficient. One has to make sure that the ideas and evidence used in the analytical part are strong enough to convince the reader. We cannot treat claims on the matter of “it is what it is” or “it is so because I think this is a correct idea”. People need a credible and logical explanation, which consists of reliable sources and authoritative ideas. Most tips for writing papers in college suggest that one needs to be armed with strong arguments and good supportive evidence. The evidence could be in a form of examples, research findings, your analysis, or a literature review. One needs to remember that all ideas in the text should be eloquent, coherent, and logically proved.
Tips for Writing a College Paper: Employing Effective Language
When you are well equipped with excellent purpose and audience, structure and development, still some features may lack. Many superior ideas may be shrouded by inappropriate language usage. Most college writing prompts are associated with major mistakes in grammar, poor vocabulary use, or improper sentences. Your task is to get rid of those misfortunes. All words should be used on purpose. All sentences should have excellent structure – not too short and not too long. Our college writing tips suggest revising! Before you submit your paper, revise, revise and revise once more! Play with the text. Make your writing sound clear and fluent. Get a read of any flows in logic and structure. Then, it is time to edit! Do not throw away this important step. Editing is vital! You know, at this point even the smallest mistake may end up in a tragedy. The spelling mistake may spoil the good impression and slightly decrease your grade. You surely do not want your reader to concentrate on mistakes. You want your reader to focus on your bright ideas and prompt evidence. If you think that any of the mentioned stages could be omitted, you are mistaken! Your professor definitely would pay attention to all of those components. And your ultimate goal is to score in each category. This is a mystery of writing and the formula of writing success!
Writing tips for College Students: Work on Improving Your Writing!
Once your paper is ready, you may use the benefits of the writing process for college students. Specifically, you can get a piece of advice from your tutor or college writing center. Some colleges have specialized units – the writing center, writing support team, or writing lab. You can go there and ask for some help or attend writing lessons. Do not reject the assistance. Sometimes, professional advice may save your writing from failure. Writing centers in their courses usually concentrate on common mistakes and punctuation use. You will learn the proper use of commas and semicolons, the spelling and meaning of homonyms, and the purpose of transitions.
Tips for Writing College Papers: Learn the Rules of Your Academic Institution and its Dishonesty Policy
We don’t want you to be expelled from the university or fail the entire course just because you did not use the proper citations and the text was treated as plagiarism. It does not matter whether you have an oral speech or submit a written paper, all used sources should be attributed correctly. Otherwise, you risk being accused of plagiarism and dishonesty. We are sure you do not want to cope with this issue. And remember one of the most important college paper writing tips nowadays – do not even think of using the paper of another student; sometimes it is better to use the help of writing websites for college students to save your time and be confident about the quality of your paper.
Tips for Writing College Essays: don’t Forget About e-mail Etiquette!
When you need to ask something or send your paper to any staff member, you have to be polite and respectful. You do not have a right to use a person’s first name if you are not acquainted with him/her in person. Instead, use the title (Dr., Professor, Dean, associate). If you are not sure about the title, go to the college website and check this information as you do not want to make a floater. On top of all, never use all CAPS. It is rude, unprofessional, and disrespectful. It takes less than a second to switch the keyboard. Do not be lazy!
The Promising Option: Consider the Help of College Writing Services!
Of course, many will say that using college writing services is academic dishonesty that is equal to cheating. Moreover, essay writing services decrease the skills and responsibility of students that affect our educational system as a whole. However, nothing is perfect! Our life is full of negative experiences, dishonesty, and misfortunes. The responsibility of using writing assistance lies with students. In some cases, using external help may be justified. Those cases include illness of the student, unexpected events in the family, or even lack of time when students have to work to finance their studies. Fair, or not, sometimes college writing services are the only option for students!