Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Essay Writing Importance - Breaking Student's Delusion

Essay writing remains to be one of the hardest and complicated tasks that the marvel of modern technology has yet to make easier for man. Everything nowadays is simply keystrokes away, but the process of assembling thoughts into an engaging written piece still proceeds at an old fashioned pace.

Since the days of paper and pencil, essay writing has never really changed a lot. It still entails tons of hard work, in-depth research, logical organization of thoughts, and sophisticated style of writing. As a lot of students continue to hate this writing activity thinking it's just a time-consuming worthless activity, there are four good reasons why writing essays is to be considered as more beneficial than burdensome. Here are some important purposes of essay writing:

* knowledge internalization

* intellectual development

* feedback generation

* good practice

Barely listening to a lecture or simply reading is not an assurance of knowledge internalization. Knowledge has been really internalized if it has been taken by someone as his own. Knowledge possession is best achieved through writing. Essay writing is a good way to internalize the facts that has been heard or read. Eventually, writing activity stimulates the intellect and leads to intellectual development. Aside from that, writing essays is a healthy way to improve writing skills. It is a good practice for future written exams.

Essays are essential for development and evaluation of students' skills - writing and reading skills, analytical and critical thinking skills, research skills, and the ability to write under time pressure. All these skills are assessed in the entire essay writing process.

Therefore, essays are tools to gauge students' level of knowledge and skills that greatly affect their grades and academic performance.

Essay writing remains to be a big challenge to students and even to the most consummate writers. However, essays affect too many things in a student's academic life: grades, reputation, admissions, and abilities. Essays produced by students serve as reflection of their thinking skills.

Students find essay writing to be a burdensome activity. There is a great need to let students understand the importance and benefits that the writing essay brings - that it is intrinsically valuable to their academic growth.

As many students think that the essay writing experience is just a waste of time and simply another great means to add burdens in their academic life, appreciating the skills and knowledge it offers breaks this futile delusion.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Great College Essay Writing Tips

One of the most challenging tasks college students face is essay writing. Many students dread hearing the words and immediately freeze when they do. College essay writing is actually not that difficult. The problem is probably more psychological for students. This article will introduce a few college essay writing tips and hopefully show that essay writing needn't be such a traumatic experience.

Let's look at the layout of the essay. Let's make it as easy as possible by dividing the essay into three parts:

The first part is the introduction. Make it pretty simple and simply introduce the reader to your plans for the essay. Tell the reader what you are going to talk about in the essay and your own opinion statement, if applicable.

The next part of the essay will be the paragraphs that talk about what you said you'd talk about in the introduction. If you made an opinion statement, you will also use these paragraphs to show evidence, statistics, etc. to support your claims.

Finally, close the essay with a paragraph or two that recap what you just finished telling them. It will be similar to your introductory paragraph and your last words on the matter.

College Essay Writing Tips

Prior to writing your essay, you should make an outline of what you will be talking about. An outline will help you layout and organize your thoughts. Many people like to do outlines on paper. I prefer to use an app I found for my iPad which allows me to rearrange the different parts of my planned essay.

My favorite college essay writing tip is using free flow writing. Sometimes I get really "plugged" in the head and am not sure what to write about. I find that if I start typing anything that pops into my head, the road block is cleared and soon words related to the essay are flowing nicely.

The essay writing process is a much worse if you are writing about a topic that you have little or no interest in. In cases like these, one of my favorite college essay writing tips is to look to the internet to research my topic. I try to read about the background of the topic with the hope of finding an aspect of the topic that interests me. When I find something interesting about the topic, I zero in on that and focus my essay writing on that aspect. It does help to make the process a bit less painful.

The best thing to do, however, is to try to approach writing with an open mind and not see it as a nightmare. You'll soon find different aspects and topics of writing that are enjoyable to you and the pain of writing a college essay will fade away.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Creative Writing Prompts - Give Your Writing The Green Light For GO Using Creative Writing Prompts

Have you been frustrated lately that your creative writing has seemed repetitive or stale, that you seem to have become some kind of writing robot, churning out the same kind of words and lines time and time again?

Or, worse still, has your writing inspiration dried up completely?

Where there was once a raging river there's now only a dry and cracked riverbed, littered with the debris of unfinished writing projects?

One of the biggest causes of this kind of writer's block is that you're simply not giving yourself permission to write freely.

Your creativity is like a 6 year old boy who's been taken to the front of a huge toy store, only to then be told he can peer in but he's not allowed to go inside! Torturous!

So how can you give this permission again to your creativity, so it can rise up and show you all it's capable of? How do you give your creative writing the green light for go instead of feeling permanently stuck on red?

Creative writing prompts are a great way of unlocking your writing ability and giving it a fresh surge of inspiration.

The way creative writing prompts work is by giving you a short phrase or idea to get you started in a new direction you might not have thought of. It's that little push you need to get you flowing again, so your creativity can shine once more.

That 6 year old kid with his nose pressed up against the window of the toy store has now been shown the way in. In fact more than that, he's also been told - "You might want to check out the new electronic action figures on the 2nd floor, they're not like any you've seen before" and pointed in the right direction. So off he rushes.

Many writers aren't comfortable trying writing prompts because they feel it's like taking a short cut and they should be able to come up with their own ideas.

Back to the toy store kid again - if he didn't have a clue where those action figures were, or even where the toy store was, he could spend forever trying to get there. Once he's there, he doesn't need any encouragement to go off and explore!

It's the same with writing prompts. They may show you a technique you haven't used before or point you in a direction you've not thought of exploring in your writing, but once you're off there's no stopping you! All the writing, all the creativity, comes from within YOU.

Try using some creative writing prompts today, and you'll give your writing the green light it needs to produce something amazing once again.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Creative Writing Prompts - How To Dive In To The Ocean Of Creative Writing Talent Within You

Each of us are more creative than we realise, the amount of talent we have is not what holds us back form creating to our full potential. What hold us back from writing as deeply and as rewardingly as we're capable of is fear.

Your creative writing potential is a vast ocean.

The only problem is, most of the time you don't get much further than dipping a couple of toes in the edge then finding the water too cold and intimidating!

So how can you discover and put to use more of your creative writing talents?

How can you dive bravely into the ocean and discover the depth and breadth of what you're capable of writing?

Creative writing prompts are a fantastic tool for this. A creative writing prompt is simply a phrase or an idea or a technique that you can use as a starting point to write from, a way to begin to let your natural creativity unfold.

Creative writing prompts are the equivalent of being given a little boat to set sail in out on the vast ocean, and a friendly push off from the edge of the shore.

If you had to swim out on your own, that would be far more dangerous and intimidating. By using the boat, you have a safer way to get out into that vast ocean, a way that will mean you don't run back to the security of the beach at the slightest suggestion of getting your hair wet.

Some of us are put off by using creative writing prompts because we feel it's cheating, like we're using someone else's writing and claiming it as our own. But it's simply not true.

The writing prompts are not the ocean itself. They are not giving you more talent and ability. Also they are not writing all of your stories, poems or songs for you, perfectly packaged with absolutely no input from you.

The ocean is already there, and it's always been there.

You know from some of your past writing the kind of creativity you're capable of, even if you've only seen tiny glimmers here and there. And so you know once you're brave enough to venture out, you can see that kind of creative writing again, and much more of it.

Start experimenting with creative writing prompts today, take that brave step, hop into your boat and set sail!

Friday, October 26, 2012

The Strategic Use of Essay Writing Examples

If you're ever stuck trying to write an essay, one of the best tricks you can use is to find essay writing examples. The old chestnut "the best way to learn how to write is to read" didn't gain its cliche status for nothing; reading reorients you to the perspective of reader, making you a more mindful writer.

Your essay writing samples can be friends' essays, essays published in books, or just essays you find online. It is important to make sure that any essay writing examples you use are from quality sources, otherwise they might serve as poor examples on which to base your own work.

Once you have your hands on one or many samples, you can use them to give yourself a crash-course in essay writing. Look at your essay writing samples. How are they formatted? Notice the structure of the writing sample. Does it have an identifiable beginning, middle, and end?

Also try and pay attention to the way the author has organized his or her ideas into a cohesive argument. If the essay involves an emotional appeal, identify what strategies the author used to get a reaction out of you. Think about what kind of language is being used and the effect it has on you, as a reader, and how you might manipulate language to your benefit when you are writing your own essay.

Finally, decide whether or not you think the essay is any good. Is the essay's point well made? Are there things you would change? If so, what? It's important to remember that you're using essay writing examples as just that-examples. Copying someone else's work without their permission and passing it off as your own is never a good idea, but if used responsibly essay writing samples can help a great deal if you are having a rough time with your essay.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Developing Outline For Essay Writing

A strong outline makes a meaningful original essay. Developing outline for essay writing makes a student write his essay faster and efficiently. It is the major part of the prewriting process of an essay. The time you spend to develop an outline for essay writing can be saved when you actually write the essay. An essay outline is a list of all required information that you plan to include in your essay and it doesn't necessarily rule out any points that you feel unnecessary at the time of preparing your outline for an essay. Preparing an outline helps you order your information to support the thesis statement most effectively.

Since writing an outline can sometimes be tedious job because this is where you actually start thinking about your essay seriously. Following some basic guideline can be of help here. Your essay combines three major parts, the introduction, the body and the conclusion. Let's look how you can prepare an outline for your introduction, you need to state the thesis statement and two to three major points. When preparing outline for introduction get the most important points to be included here so that you can generate the curiosity in the reader and get his attention. When you develop outline for the body of your essay, it should have points specified depending on the length and requirements of your essay. You should identify points that support the thesis statement of your essay. Each point should then be noted to explain when you actually write your essay. You should also find suitable examples that clearly explain your point. You can find more than one example for each point as you can choose the most suitable ones when you are finally writing it. Other than examples you should also collect facts and quotations that prove your major supporting points. You should also plan and outline how to show the point is relevant to your thesis statement. Depending on the requirement of your essay there should be points ranging from three to unlimited and each point should be given all the above mentioned supporting factors like examples and relevance proving statements. The conclusion should also be included in the prewriting process. You conclusion should tie points together to prove your thesis statement and it important not to include any new ideas in the conclusion. Another major pre-writing requirement is the formation of transition statements from one point to another. When you outline your essay, you should spend time to develop transition phrases and it helps to keep your essay in order and well organized.

There are some students who don't bother to spend time on developing an outline for essays and start writing right away. Here are few benefits of writing an outline for your essays. The most important benefit is that an outline helps you organize your thoughts and develop the essay from it, rather than start writing out of the blue. Once you develop an outline for your essay, you will be able to identify gaps in your research and supporting points and you get enough time to fix them. By developing a strong outline you are actually taking the stress away because you know what you are doing when sit to write the essay. It would always be beneficial to present your outline to professors so that they can make sure you are in the right track and can suggest you changes which would make your essays outstanding.

Often students find it difficult to start the outline writing process. You can start by gathering all the information you have collected on the essay through your research and sort the information you find beneficial. Next step could be a working thesis statement and selecting points that support it. Make sure you have covered all the major parts of the essay in your outline as introduction, body and conclusion before you actually start writing the essay.

Friday, October 12, 2012

Creative Writing Prompts - The Secret To Transforming Your Creative Writing

Is there a magic formula that enables anyone to instantly write the most wonderful writing of their life, some tiny technique you can read about then transform your writing overnight?

Well, not exactly. But the good news is, although each of us are unique in who we are, what we write and how we write it, there are certain key techniques that all of us can use to improve our writing, and to make it easier for us to reach our creative potential more consistently, more often.

One of the ways of becoming a better writer is to use creative writing prompts.

A writing prompt is simply a few words or a phrase that give you a starting place to write from, a springboard to dive into the deep pool of writing talent that lays within you.

Writing prompts don't tell you how to write, which words you should use, how long your sentences should be and so on. That's all up to your own creative expression. The prompt just provides an entry point to unlocking your imagination, and this can be invaluable, especially during times when you're feeling particularly blocked or short of inspiration.

Another benefit of using writing prompts is that they gradually make themselves redundant.

The more you use writing prompts, the more easily you'll be able to come up with the starting point yourself.

This works because your creativity is something that can be trained and developed. When you use prompts often, your creative mind learns to pre-empt what the writing prompt might have been, and it loves to fill in the gaps.

So instead of thinking "I'm really stuck, I think I'll use a writing prompt to get my creative juices flowing", you start to think: "I'm really stuck. What kind of writing prompt would work to get my creative juices flowing?". And then you come up with it!

This sounds too simple and obvious to work, but it does. In effect your saying "I don't think I know the answer to this question. But if I DID know the answer, here's what I think it would be..."

Because you're putting faith in your creativity to come up with something, it will, it loves the challenge. You've just got to present it with the challenge in the right way.

And this is how creative writing prompts can help, by training your creativity to come up with new ideas, new perspectives and different outlooks in the way you write.

Start using some creative writing prompts today and trust that your creativity is as deep a pool as you need it to be. You'll be amazed at how resourceful and creative you can be in hardly any time at all.