2. Writing an academic essay is not easy. Students need
all the help they can get. But first, they need to realise
that this task has the purpose of training them. It
teaches values like hard work and trains them in
research and writing. The values and training is
important for their career and life in the future. They
will be helpful, even necessary. One best and first help
students can use in their task now are some general
advice on academic essay writing.
4. Know what amount of time you have to do the whole
task. Lay out a time table on how you will go about it. As
mentioned, academic essay writing is not an easy task
but this difficulty is conquerable. To do so, you need to
“divide and conquer.” Breakdown the whole task into its
component phases and assign time to each of them. Your
goal is to beat the deadline and, at the same time, submit
the best output that you can. Assign enough time for
researching, writing, revising and proofreading your
work. Time is always scarce, so start as early as you can.
6. Academic essay writing is intimidating. Address this
concern by approaching it as a challenge wherein what
you need to do is to explore and discover. This is a much
more attractive and interesting way to treat the task
than to take it as a threat to “come up with an answer, or
else...” This way, you do not need to fear that you will not
be able to come up with anything to write. Instead, you
are taking it as an adventure to find out anything that
you can and enjoy while you are doing so. Along the way
or at the end, you will be able to come up with something
that will be a good answer that you can give.
7. Write base on the best materials that is available to
you and what you can access. This is the best that you
can do given the circumstances. And besides, what good
are the materials which are better than what you can
access when you cannot access them? Even more
experienced students still feel that learning how to write
an essay can be maddening especially with MBA
assignments. But you can overcome it with exploring
and discovering.
9. One problem in writing academic essays is when you
are not sure about what to include or where to put them.
The answer? Just write! Jot everything in your notes as
you research. Then, when you write drafts, especially the
first one, just include everything that you think will add
value to your work. Do not spend so much time thinking
whether or not to include them or where to include
them. Just include them. You will still revise your work
anyway.
11. When you revise your work, you review it and have
an overall look at the state that it is in. This is the time
when you can develop the outline of your work. You have
written everything and you can now see what are the
components that you have. Identify them and arrange
them logically. This is your outline. After this, you can
now look at the whole thing, how you should arrange its
components, which are redundant and which are
unnecessary. Take breaks between revisions. After
finishing one round of revision, leave it for maybe at
least one day before going back to it. This way, you will
have a fresh mind when you look at it again. When
revising, create good transitions between paragraphs.
13. Review your work for the preciseness and
appropriateness of the words and tone you use. The
fewer the words, the better your work is. Just see to it
that you do not compromise the clarity of your ideas,
message and their expression. Remove unnecessary and
redundant words, sentences or even paragraphs. Never
fail to proofread the final version of your work.
