How to improve your essays

With university in full swing, all those assignments should be starting to pile up. If you’re looking for some tips to improve your essay writing, EBR has gathered some below.

1.      Use appropriate language: Using the appropriate grammar, punctuation and vocabulary is crucial to earning that High Distinction. Markers like to read things that are concise and to the point – without excessive fluff. As long as you’re hitting the marking rubric, you don’t have to make your essay sound excessively fancy. Don’t use Thesaurus.com to find up ways to fill your word count, make sure everything is actual content. If you’re struggling to fill up your word count, you’re usually missing out on some arguments – the word limit is there for a reason. Likewise, correct grammar and punctuation are the most basic things to include in an essay. Making it easier and more pleasant to read for the marker, means more marks!

2.      Structure it appropriately: All essays should have an introduction, body paragraphs and some sort of conclusion. Specifically for business essays/reports, your assignment brief should tell you on what should be included and discussed in those body paragraphs. Makes sure to hit every single one of those topics in separate body paragraphs, making it clear and concise for the marker.

3.      Address and link to the question: One of the ways that students lose the most marks is by not addressing the question. When making points and referencing evidence (statistics, quotes, etc.) it is important to link those pieces of information back to the question. Include only the relevant statistics to the essay. One effective method I use is the PEEL method (Point, Explanation, Evidence, Link), where you make your argument, explain it, provide proof to back it up and then link it back to the question.

4.      Start early: As a university student, I know it’s hard to start early. With so many tasks to do and deadlines to prioritise, it’s extremely difficult to get started on things that aren’t due in the near future. However, starting early allows you to have time to finish, review and polish your essay. I guarantee from personal experience, that I’ve done best in all of the essays that I’ve finished around 3-4 days before the deadline, which allowed me to have a detailed editing session.

5.      Use Harvard referencers: Citing and annotating your sources is equally as important as the content you produce. It’s not only about getting the marks for citation - giving credit to authors is important in recognising them. While there are many different types of referencing, the most common one I see is the Harvard referencing style. Manually referencing your sources is time consuming, and it’s easy to make mistakes, so one effective way is to use a reference such as Citethisforme. You choose other styles too, with this citation website.

With this, I hope that you are successful in achieving the marks that you desire. Good luck with university!