How to Write A Good Academic Essay

By Rahma Alfianty Oetami, 1606881090, EFN II Class C

Writing an essay is a general and basic skill that the university student should be able
to do. It is not a rare thing that sometimes we can find several essay competitions and those are
held for university student. The purpose of writing an essay is to give information about a case
or an issue and prove it with showing some evidences so the writer’s idea can seem convincing.
Although essay is a common thing, writing a good essay needs practice and time. The process
is not done as easily as one merely have an idea because they must write it based on the
evidence they should read beforehand. Here are certain guidelines about the stage of writing
an essay to improve our skills.
First is the structure of the essay which is divided into introduction, main body, and
conclusion. In the introduction, as the writer, we must bring in the reader’s interest by giving
a brief explanation about the idea we will explore. We could also define the idea and other key
term if necessary and state several points that will be the focus in our essay. The main body or
argument part consists of some points we mention earlier in the introduction. It can be divided
into one point for each paragraphs where the first sentence in each paragraph tells the reader of
the main idea. We can add some examples, evidences, details, statistics, quotations that are
relevant to the topic we choose. For the next paragraph, make sure that the first sentence has a
link to the previous paragraph so the essay will be systematic.
The conclusion is the part where we draw everything together by summarizing the idea
and state our general conclusion. Point out the reason as to why our conclusion is important
and do not introduce any new idea in this part. Now we continue to the stage of writing the
essay. First, we sould analyse the question that will become our topic. We analyse it by note
any term we need to define and try to write the question in our own words. It can be useful for
our introduction when we write about how we interpret the topic. Second, is make an outline
plan by making some sort of mind map where we can see how the idea and other terms connect
to each other. It can also be used for a guide when we are doing research.
Third is review the literature using the skimming techniques. Find the relevan literature
that can we use for our essay. The next is review, revise, and refine the plan. After we skim on
the literature, usually we will find key points that we might have missed when we decide the
idea. After that we can review our plan of the essay. Fifth is drafting where we finally try to
write the paragraphs. Let the ideas flow and do not worry too much about the spelling because
it may refrain us from writing our idea. Write the conclusion so that when we write along the
paragraphs, we remember that the conclusion is the purpose to begin with. If we have some
writer’s block when doing the introduction, we can try by writing it from the middle and if we
are suddenly stuck then just take a rest and come back later with a new spirit and motivation.
Sixth is about editing the draft for structure and content. Make sure the structure is
correct and linked to each other. You can try it by using more linking words such as however,
on the other hand, particularly, etc. Read it for several times and decide if anything is in the
right place or not regarding the topic. If you find some that you think are not good enough then
you can add several thing. Check the references and seek for a grammatical or spelling error,
too. Those are some little details things but very crucial in our skills of writing. If the essay is
finally finished then we can produce a hard copy by printing it.
There are also several things that we should prepare such as try read a lot of information
from books, journals, articles. Our reading will support our writing. Beware of plagiarism that
can happen to the sentences or even idea itself. We can do it by paraphrasing and not passing
off people’s ideas as our own. Put the citation if we retract the information from other sources.
Do not just cite the authors who have the same ideas like us because it will show as if we are
the one who’re right. We can bring in other people’s opposing ideas to explain how we think
that they are mistaken. In the end, improving writing skills need a lot of practice and reading
because it requires critical thinking to state our own point and it takes time for writing a good
essay.

Reference
Perutz, V. (n.d.). Student services a helpful guide to essay writing. Anglia Ruskin University:
Cambridge & Chelmsford.