Learning
10 Easy Ways to Teach Essay Writing Skills
Good academic writing skills are necessary for receiving any degree, regardless of the discipline. How come that writing is still so important in our digital times? Well, by pursuing writing skills, students also acquire a scope of critical thinking, research, and composing competencies. However, good student work only results from good teaching skills, so let’s dive into tips to teach writing skills easily and efficiently.
What are essay writing skills? Five easy ways to fix confusing misconceptions about essay writing
Essay writing skills consist of a large intertwined system of minor and major competencies, such as information management and structuring. Usually, students can use a professional company, such as EssayHave essay writing service, to write a stellar paper for you. However, it will only be helpful if they get clear classroom instructions first.
To start with, teaching essay writing includes a few crucial skills: research, critical thinking, composition, quality checking, and writing itself. Here are five common confusion points in these skills for students and the teachers’ hacks to prevent them:
Present students with different types of research
Despite common student beliefs, essay research skills are not just “the ability to search online sources.” One common mistake in researching for writing is finding a peer-reviewed source not older than five years and calling it a day. However, good research skills include evaluating the source’s credibility, sample, methodology, and the relevance of the paper type to the essay. To explain these nuances, the teacher must show the differences between research types. For instance, there are primary, secondary, qualitative, quantitative, descriptive, experimental, and other research classifications.
Develop their critical thinking skills
One of the most important essay-writing skills is analyzing large volumes of data for your paper. To teach that, one can present essay pieces that are well-composed and well-spoken but have severe logical fallacies. This exercise will teach students that having the correct grammar does not earn you a good essay and a good grade.
The skill of composition: teaching to understand the importance of the essay components
Usually, students perceive the lessons about essay structure as mere formalities. Suppose high school teachers do not explain the purpose of structural essay components to the essay’s overall meaning. In that case, the students move to college or university with a limited understanding of the essay. Instead, the teacher should showcase how each formal essay part has a purpose and navigates the reader through the text. For example, the thesis statement is not important because it “stands in the first paragraph.” It is important as it summarizes the essay’s content for the reader at the beginning of the text.
Explain that complexity and sophistication do not replace quality
The common misconception about skills for writing an essay is that using fancy words makes an essay better. In that case, a good teacher must show the link between the form and the content. The teacher can write a few examples with beautiful, extraordinary writing but no actual sense to the sentences. Here are two correct sentences with a lot of filling words but little actual meaning:
Example: “In terms of management, it is important to consider various factors and aspects that contribute to organizational operations’ overall effectiveness and efficiency. It is crucial to think about many things that help the organization run smoothly and effectively.”
The teacher must explain how each essay sentence must be insightful rather than stating common knowledge.
Teach that the skill of writing is not a fancy phrase for “just writing”
Some students believe that if they learned writing in primary school, it means they can write anything by default. Teachers may devote the first few lessons to contrasting daily writing with well-composed essay pieces to fix this misconception.
How does one teach writing skills: five most useful methods
Teaching essay writing also requires a teacher’s understanding of specific effective methods. Here are five proven successful methods to develop the whole scope of student writing capacities:
- Analytical reading. A student must first learn from the existing examples to create something new. Therefore, before assigning the students their first essay, review some good examples in the classroom. Provide them with clear instructions on how to read an essay prompt. Also, help them identify the main argument, evidence, and rhetorical strategies in the given text so they can repeat it in their assignment.
- Paragraph structure practice. If you want your students to understand the importance of coherence and cohesion in the essay, do not rush. Work through the paragraph first, and repeat the exercise as many times as needed. Ensure your students understand the purpose of the essay structure, not just its forms.
- Reflective writing. Give your students essay assignments only on the topics that are interesting to them. Make them reflect and learn something about themselves while learning to write.
- In-class writing prompts. If you have a whole course behind, incorporate small five-minute exercises into your classes. For instance, this method will work well with thesis statement writing.
- Revision classes. Assign revision exercises where students revise their essays or essays written by others. Encourage them to focus on improving the clarity, coherence, and effectiveness of their writing.
A few extras: creative teaching methods
Finally, there are tons of different ways to teach essay writing skills. You can mix and transform any given method or exercise for the needs of a particular group. However, if that seems an exhausting task at the end of the long working day, here are some creative ideas to make your classes more engaging:
Classmate interviews. This activity helps improve citation skills and generate ideas for research papers. You can ask the student to write down what their classmate says differently, using direct and indirect speech. Or, have students interview a classmate about their favorite topic and create questions for their research.
- Writing challenges. Propose writing challenges with specific constraints or limitations. It could be word count limits, genre requirements, or incorporating particular words or phrases.
- Preparing a speech. In some ways, speech is only a verbal form of an essay, preserving all the same key qualities. An essay and a speech have clear, logical sequences and similar structures for argument-building. Therefore, try making the student present their essay verbally in your class. Otherwise, you can clarify the differences between the two. In that case, ask your students to transform one form into another.
Summing up
Altogether, teaching essay writing skills is not about the mere ability to write the text. The teacher must also be a bit philosophical about teaching critical thinking and a bit of a scientist to teach research skills. Hopefully, this article with tips clarifies some milestones of that process so you can adapt them to your class’s needs.
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