Writing an essay is an integral part of the student’s educational process in a higher educational institution. It is worth going through this stage to get a good final score. An essay is a type of paper on which you will have to work notably. Despite the fact that students are well aware of the degree of importance of the paper and the fact that it should be approached seriously, they often make mistakes that could well have been avoided.
It is enough to know the rules thoroughly for writing a paper, the requirements for format, and small life hacks for writing. In order not to make mistakes, it is better to study our article. In it, we will look at the most common mistakes that students make when writing an essay.
Also, the most obvious way to avoid mistakes in writing is to order an essay help on EssaySeek. Professional writers who work there know how to write papers correctly. You can be sure that your essay won’t contain a single mistake.
Mistake 1. Wrong topic
The very first mistake can be made when choosing a topic for writing a paper. The topic should be of interest to you, and the issues addressed in the work should be of practical and theoretical value. Of course, departments usually have a list of topics that are offered to students, but some refuse to use them. The reasons may be different – someone has a different area of scientific interest, and someone wants to prove themselves from the best side as they plan to enter a specific educational institution. Taking “your own” topic is a great idea, but it’s better to consult with someone first; otherwise, you can make yourself worse.
You can also check the relevance of the research topic by asking yourself a few questions:
- “Why does this problem need to be addressed?”;
- “How can an essay on this topic help solve existing practical problems?”;
- “What impact and on which industry will the study and the conclusions formulated as a result of it?”
If you can clearly answer the questions, then the topic you have chosen will undoubtedly arouse interest.
Mistake 2. Plagiarism
Having chosen a topic for writing a paper, students, for the most part, try to make their work easier and download information from various sources to their computers. Here they are divided into two categories: some look through the information of other people’s essays, draw conclusions and write their own paper; others – download everything in a row and submit someone else’s work as their own. Appropriation of other people’s thoughts and ideas and submitting them as your own is plagiarism. Today there are many both paid and free computer programs for checking for plagiarism – in a higher education institution, it will be accurately recognized. Once an accusation of plagiarism is made, the reputation can no longer be saved. It’s not worth the risk. It is better to immediately act “in good conscience” and make footnotes for all borrowings in the text.
Mistake 3. Failure to comply with the requirements for the uniqueness of the paper
In the modern world, more and more universities require that when writing academic papers, they have a high percentage of uniqueness. Everything is extremely simple here – the essay should be an independent academic work in which quotes from authoritative authors should not prevail over the number of thoughts of the author of the paper.
The fewer quotes, the higher the uniqueness. Once again, don’t plagiarize!
Mistake 4. Leveling the meaning of grammar
Did you smile? Do you think how it can be that an educated person writes words with errors? It is possible. Of course, no one doubts that the author studied well at school and knows how to spell; it’s just that sometimes you can make banal typos in the stream of thoughts and not check their presence in the text. Grammar errors are indeed common. A large amount of information requires increased concentration. While you are writing, someone is calling, writing a message, slamming the door – and that’s it; the workflow is disrupted. You can accidentally press the wrong buttons and write everything in capital letters, or you can type a set of letters in a different language.
Before submitting your paper for review, be sure to read it carefully. The key is to be careful. Sometimes students, knowing what the paper is about, simply skim through it without focusing on the format, essence, etc. As a result, they get a remark from the reviewer – “The work contains grammatical errors.” Such a remark, to be honest, is a shame.
Mistake 5. Neglecting the essay plan
Many students neglect the plan and often write a paper in the hope of later somehow “scattering” the information found on the topic in parts. This approach to work will not bring success. Having chosen a topic and determined its relevance, it is important at the initial stage to formulate the purpose of the essay and its tasks. This will help you avoid “going off-topic” in the writing process. By the way, the plan is written correctly and clearly, one can say about the quality of the whole paper. If everything is correctly divided into sections and subsections, then the text turns out to be logically consistent and correctly reveals the chosen topic. True, you can test yourself not only by analyzing how “easy it is to work.” You can still simply compare the goal, objectives, and findings. If they fit together, then everything is in order.
Mistake 6. Using all the sources you can find
To write an essay, you should use “fresh” sources that are no more than five years old. This will help you achieve a good result and a high mark from the teacher. Using old books or periodicals, it is unlikely that a student will be able to come up with something new and overshadow classmates with their ideas, who definitely did not leave this or that topic without attention. Moreover, the paper will lose its relevance, especially for works on law, economics, etc. Therefore, using everything in a row to “stuff” the number of sources for the list of references or to give credibility to the paper by making references to famous scientists is not worth it.
We hope the article will help you avoid making mistakes when writing a paper and help you achieve your desired goal as soon as possible.