...Essay Writing Skills This guide is designed to help students to structure their work. Like any written work, essays require careful planning, reading and note taking, appropriate academic style, referencing and structure. An essay is different from a report in that it is generally written as one flowing document that uses paragraphs to separate ideas, without the section headings, underlining, numbering and bullet points that are used in reports. Usually, essays do NOT have diagrams or appendices. Essays have 4 vital sections: Introduction, Main Body, Conclusion and References/Bibliography. The word count applies to three essay sections, NOT including the References or Bibliography. The Introduction paragraph/section This helps set the context for the essay. It introduces the main ideas of the essay and draws the reader into the subject. A good Introduction gets to the heart of the subject and captures the interest of the reader, acting as a trailer to what is to follow. It tells readers what to expect by addressing Who, What, When, Where, Why and How? The Introduction outlines the main issues on which you intend to focus and others you just intend to mention. In this way it sets your parameters. It defines any terms or concepts that you need and acknowledges possible issues raised by the question and explains your approach. It could include a comment on the importance of the topic. It may act as an overview in summarising the issues, to show an understanding...
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...learning a Language many skills work together to create a link between a speaker and interlocutors. These skills generally taught and assessed in terms of the ‘four basic language skills, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing. All language learners will need to develop their skills in each of these sections. Although all four language skills are crucial for improving learners’ language competence in a second language, purpose of this study is focus on writing skills. According to Cumming (1998,p.61), “the word "writing"...
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...Throughout my life, writing was always a challenging subject to me. Although I may not be able to write as well as others, I have enhanced my writing skills. As I was assigned to write a great amount of essays in this English course, I realized that my writing has improved immensely. This course has taught me how to write various types of essays, for example, rhetorical analysis, review, report, and reader responses. Every essay has different requirements and different components to include. By using these skills to compose an essay, I am capable of improving my writing and noticing my strengths and weaknesses. Every year, my writing skills improve little by little due to the amount of practice from writing essays. In every essay, there was...
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...CHALLENGES STUDENTS FACE IN LEARNING ESSAY WRITING SKILLS IN ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN MANGA DISTRICT, NYAMIRA COUNTY, KENYA BY NYANG’AU BENARD NYASIMI E55/CE/14078/2009 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION KENYATTA UNIVERSITY JULY 2013 * DECLARATION This thesis is my original work and has not been presented for degree in any other university. Signature: ______________________________ Date: ________________________ BY NYANG’AU BENARD NYASIMI E55/CE/14078/2009 We confirm that this thesis was carried out by the candidate under our supervision as university supervisors. Signature------------------------------------------------------ Date-------------------------- Dr .Sophia. Ndethiu. Department of Educational Communication and Technology. Kenyatta University. Signature------------------------------------------------------ Date------------------------- Dr. John. Kimemia. Department of Educational Communication and Technology. Kenyatta University. * DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my loving wife Zipporah Nyasimi and our sons Philemon Siko and Enock Ongeri . * ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to acknowledge the support of those individuals who made it possible for a successful completion of this work. Special thanks go to my supervisors Dr. Sophia Ndethiu and Dr. John. Kimemia for the support, guidance...
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...my future business endeavour. I have found that after so long out of the education system it has been a difficult transition juggling study and work. The first units that were chosen for me in study period 2, I thought were difficult to understand having never written an essay before and without the knowledge or know how, I was not able to complete these units. SSK12 has given me a good understanding of what it takes at becoming a university student and in particular the skills on writing essays. As I have mentioned previously up until study period 2, I had never written an essay and did not fully comprehend how important the set out of a university essay was. Choosing an Essay Question was an important part of my learning in week 6 because this has now given me the beginning step in writing a university essay using the correct format. I am feeling a lot more confident when approaching the subject of essays as I now understand and have the knowledge on the procedure in completing an academic essay and what is required. I now know that by firstly choosing a question will then help you to with your thesis and this in turn will give you your main idea and sets the way in which to write your essay. During the time that I was employed by the government it was necessary for me to constantly refer to certain policies and procedures on a daily basis. I was able to use the marking text system to allow me easy reference by indicated the pages with tabs and then within the...
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...WRITING ASSESSMENT EN110 Achieving Academic Excellence Directions: Be sure to make an electronic copy of your answer before submitting it to Ashworth College for grading. For this assignment, you are asked to review and exercise your writing skills. Write a five-paragraph essay on this topic using the outline below. Your essay should include an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Visit this site and study how to write a five-paragraph essay. http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/five_par.htm “Why college education is important to me” 1. Support your essay with your motivations, dreams, goals and aspirations, inspiration, plans, reasons, rationalizations, quotes, anecdotes, research. 2. Employ correct rules of sentence composition, grammar, and mechanics of style. 3. Use at least two references. Each reference must use a quoted passage and be appropriately cited to avoid plagiarism. 4. Include a bibliography at the end of the essay. 5. Turn in at least two full pages or up to three pages of writing, 12-pt. Times Roman, double-spaced. 6. Pay attention to spelling, grammar, and punctuation. 7. Use this basic outline: a. Introduction b. Body Paragraph 1 c. Body Paragraph 2 d. Body Paragraph 3 e. Conclusion f. Bibliography This is the end of the Writing Assessment. WRITING ASSESSMENT EN110 Achieving Academic Excellence Directions: Be sure...
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... My goals as a writer are to improve my vocabulary and improve my writing skills. Writing might benefit me because it can help improve with my communication skills. One of my goals is to improve my vocabulary because if you use bigger words in your essay, when you’re ready for a job interview and use big words they will know your very educated. Writing might benefit me because it can help improve with my communication skills because the way you write is the same way you speak. As a writer I want to be able to elaborate more in my essays and gain more writing skills. These are two things I want to get out of this course. I want to elaborate more in my essays because I think I don’t put enough details in my essays. I also would like to elaborate more in my essays because it draws more attention to the audience. The steps I will take in order to reach my goals are, creating a thinking web, reading more, use bigger words in my essays and class discussions, or ask for someone’s advice on what I wrote. I would take these steps in order to reach my goals because they improve my writing skills and communication skills. In conclusion, my goals as a writer are to improve my vocabulary, and improve my writing skills. Writing might benefit me because it can help improve with my communication skills. When this course is over I want to be able to elaborate more in my essays and gain more writing...
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...understanding English when talking to others. Writing an essay was almost impossible for me to think of. Realizing how difficult it was to experience these linguistic difficulties, I then decided to go back to school to improve my English skills. Therefore, English became especially essential for me to succeed in my educational goals. I was determined to earn an Associate’s degree then transfer to a university for a Bachelor’s degree. I started going to ESL classes and studied English very hard to make progress in my speaking, reading and writing skills. After spending one year in ESL classes, I qualified for English 43. I learned lots of grammar and how to write paragraphs efficiently during these classes. I noticed that writing an essay was more challenging when I got into English 49. However, since then I’ve learned how to write a five-paragraph argumentative essay which was one of my weaknesses in academic writings. I have made a lot of progress in writing skills since I started studying English 49. I now think that I’m ready to go on to English 101 due to the fact that I have learned useful strategies to follow a writing process and develop coherent paragraphs effectively. A writing process is the most important step that I learned in this class. First of all, before writing a complete essay, I need to come up with the pre-writing which consists of free writing and brainstorming. I found this step essential because free writing helps me find as many supports and examples...
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...time to focus on bringing my writing skills up. My skills have gotten better in the aspect of morale, explaining, and focus. My last writing class was over a year ago and that was more of a research paper more than an actual focus on my writing skills. What I mean by that is I wasn’t just writing down just an explanation from a book but instead I was using this chance to experience a different in writing assignments. My first week back in writing wasn’t my best week due to my lack in practicing my skills but with just a week or two it came back to me. I started to remember to write out the end plan instead of writing what just comes to mind; which usually got me lost halfway through. The class was also a...
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...experiences. From the discussions and articles of the week to the countless essays we had to write. I believe that Mrs.Miles really focused on our writing skills, which I am awfully grateful that she did. Mrs.Miles has assisted in my growth in writing; as my grammar has improved, including the use of commas, colons, and semicolons. In fact, I am now knowledgeable of the fact...
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...Project: Reflective Essay Introduction: Now that you are nearing the completion of WRTG 101, you have reached a time when it can be useful to you to reflect and evaluate your learning experience. In a fast-paced course such as this one, you have worked hard and quickly to complete your assignments according to the instructions given to you. Now is the opportunity for you to consider the experiences you had had in writing throughout this course and how those experiences might be useful to you in future courses. This assignment asks you to reflect and consider the work you have done, how successfully you feel you have completed it, and how the skills and strategies you have learned in completing this work may help you in your future studies. Since this assignment is reflective and self-evaluating, using “I, me, my” should be acceptable as you write this essay. The Assignment: This assignment calls for you to write an essay of 800-1000 words, double spaced. The essay should have the following academic essay elements: 1) a clear introduction, body, and conclusion 2) a clearly identifiable thesis statement in the introduction 3) evidence based upon your recollections and any material from the course (whether from the texts, the online resources, the course modules, the feedback to drafts, or the conference topics) that you might find relevant to mention in your discussion Length: 800-1000 words Possible approaches for the reflective essay in WRTG 101: ...
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...Office Hours: Friday 12:00-1:00pm | Course Description: This course is all about working together to develop your writing and communication skills for both academic and non-academic purposes through practice, practice, and more practice. This course will teach you to be a better reader, thinker, and writer. Upon successful completion of the course, you will be able to write clearly, correctly, and persuasively across disciplines and situations. You will not only learn to be an effective writer, but also hone your critical thinking skills. Required Texts: NB: It is recommended that students use the edition available in the campus bookstore. Buckley, Joanne. Fit to Print: The Canadian Student’s Guide to Essay Writing. 8th ed. Toronto: Nelson Education, 2013. Additional readings to be posted on Blackboard. Recommended Texts: The Secret to Effective Documentation (Trent University: Academic Skills Centre -- http://www.trentu.ca/academicskills/documentation/, 13 July 2011). Note: Citations in this course must be in the MLA format. learningSystem/Blackboard: This course will make use of Blackboard. Certain assignments will be submitted on Blackboard, and students are expected to check the course site for weekly announcements. Course Format: Meeting Type | Day | Time | Location | Lecture | Friday | 13:10—14:00 | Room 116 | Writing Lab A | Friday | 14:10—15:00 | Room 116 | Learning Outcomes/Objectives/Goals/Expectations: I have developed the course...
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...Basic Essay Formatting Guidelines Essay formatting: An overview of how to write a perfect essay with all the necessary guidelines in an easy to understand format. Essay formatting You can write an essay about a large variety of topics, be it academic or just creative writing. In all this cases the content might vary but the essay formatting will always remain the same regardless. Having the basic essay formatting skills will be crucial in all this cases. These steps should be enough to guide any amateur or professional writer to complete an essay. • Outline: The secret to essay formatting is the outline. Before anything else you should prepare a rough sketch of how your essay should look like. This includes the position and size of the heading, introduction, body and the conclusion of the essay. This will make you to be better prepared when you start your writing. • Think about the topic: Once you have the outline the writer should come up with the necessary material to write the essay i.e the writer should visualize what they are going to write about and the content of their writing. • Conduct Research: No essay can be perfected without proper research no matter what the topic is about. • The format: all essays should follow the following arrangement: 1. The introduction: in this paragraph the writer should introduce the topic to the reader albeit briefly, just to give the reader an idea of what is contained in...
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...had imagined and what I was actually experiencing. My English 1A class involved academic writing essay. In the class, there are people who come from different countries surround me. I felt nervous and began to second guess myself about writing skills. In this class, I should write eight essay in total, and I knew I failed the class already. But I didn’t give up, because I just want to improve myself. Writing in other language with academic knowledge is the most difficult part in my university life. There are four in class essay, which I should wrote it in the class by forty-five minutes at least 800 words, but I did not make it even once. My classmates are huge different with me, they wrote essay real fast. I felt nervous when I siting nearby them and wrote essay. Peer pressure pushed me cannot thinking about essay. I don’t like writing essay in the public place or people look at me. I always wrote out class in the midnight with coffee. It was real quite and I can focus on the essay. Even I still did the terrible work. The big problem that was writing grammar and mechanics. Because it is my first time to study the official writing class in the America. It was totally different with learned in China. I studied how to write the story. Fast writing and free writing. Even basic writing skills were new for me. I still remember the first essay that I wrote. The errors were through up whole essay was the comment in my final draft. I always had trouble with mechanics. Even I did not make...
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...unsure of my writing skills for college, thus English 111, which is a writing class, was intimidating to me. I had been out of school for over thirty years, and my memory of my writing in high school is not so clear. So at the beginning of the year, Dr. Kennedy asked us what we wanted to get of our class this semester. It was not hard for me to say I wanted to improve my writing skills. The skills I learned in English helped me improve my writing in other classes as well. Learning how to take notes with the double entry journal and Kia styles were a big help in my psychology and art history classes. Accordingly, the MEAL plan was a big help with getting...
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