It’s the moment every parent dreads: whenever your child sits there, glum-faced, looking at a blank little bit of paper before them. They have a rapidly-approaching deadline due to their essay, and nothing, but nothing you do as a parent seems to simply help them get any nearer to completion. So what can you do to simply help? The clear answer is: quite a lot.
Creating a successful essay could be one of the most arduous parts of the schooling process, and yet, the requirement to write a composition is everywhere: from English literature, to economics, to physics, geography, classical studies, music, and history. To succeed, at senior high school and in tertiary study you should master essay writing.
Getting students over this barrier was one of the reasons I put pen to paper four years back and produced a guide called Write That Essay! At that stage, I was a senior academic at Auckland University and a university examiner. For nearly 20 years, in both course work and examinations, I had counselled everyone from 17-year-old ‘newbies’ to 40-year-old career changers making use of their essay writing. Often, the difference between students who might achieve a B-Grade and the A-Grade student was just some well-placed advice and direction.
I then visited over 50 New Zealand High Schools and spoke with over 8000 kiwi kids about essay writing. These students reported exactly the same challenges as I had previously encountered, and more. The end result has been two books and a DVD which have helped kids achieve some of the potential that sits inside all of us.
In this short article I am going to deal with some things you certainly can do as a parent to simply help your child succeed at essay writing. Because writing great essays is well within every child’s grasp.
Techniques for essay writing success:
It’s a disagreement
Remember an essay is a disagreement best essay writing service the job in a composition isn’t to write a tale or even to recount a plot. The teacher knows all this information. In a composition your child’s job is to present a compelling argument-using specific evidence-for the point they want to make.
Write an agenda: you’ll be pleased that you did
Get your child to write a brief list-plan of the topics that their essay needs to cover. Even a brief plan surpasses no plan at all, and will begin to provide the writer a feeling that completing a composition on that topic is well inside their grasp.
If your child is a visible learner, move from the desk and visit a neutral space. Grab a sizable sheet of blank A3 paper and some coloured pens, and brainstorm a mind map or sketch plan of what the essay should contain. Using pictures, lines, circles, and arrows will all help the visual learner grasp the job accessible and help them see what they have to do.
Getting Started
Challenging many kids (and adults) face writing essays is getting started. The individual sits there looking forward to inspiration hitting them just like a lightening bolt and it never happens. So what can you as a parent do to simply help?
Encourage them with thinking that great essays are never written the first time over. Encourage them to view essay writing as a three-part process. The initial draft is only to get out the ideas and words in rough form. In the 2nd and third effort, they will add with their essay where there are blanks, clarify ideas, and give it your final polish. Realising an essay isn’t allowed to be perfect the first time you write it, really helps some people.
Having enough to say
If your child is still stuck, find out if they have read up enough on the topic. Some inertia with writing could be because of not enough knowledge. They will find writing so much simpler if they spend another day or two reading more on the topic and gleaning some additional ideas.
Try utilizing a neutral sentence
Suggest starting the essay with a simple sentence: a word that merely states an interesting fact on the topic being written about. Here’s one: ‘Mozart was one of the most important Austrian composers of the eighteenth century.’ First sentences in essays don’t must be stellar – you simply need to start!
