Nowadays more and more students rely on online writing companies that help them with research and essay writing. Though some educators still frown upon such services, in fact they save students overburdened with urgent assignments, everyday chores, and job responsibilities, from falling apart. If you also feel unable to cope with tons of assignments you can take advantage of services provided by a professional essay writing service and make more time for yourself or other more pleasant activities. But if you want to apply or sharpen your own writing skills and learn produce exceptional essays by yourself, check out some useful tips provided below.

Make Sure You Understand the Essay Prompt

Our first recommendation may seem too obvious at first sight. It goes without saying that you need to read your essay prompt carefully to understand what is required of you. But in fact, lots of students just skim through the tasks or instructions and get down to writing their essay without taking the question in. Make it your rule to spend at least three minutes pondering your essay question. Try to identify the key words or phrases that can help you comprehend the task fully and deeply. We suggest that you underline or highlight those words not to lose focus of them as you go. Furthermore, try to understand why your instructor gave you this particular task or proposed exactly this topic. Should you find yourself unable to comprehend the assignment after having read it carefully consider contacting specialists from your college writing center or visit your instructor and ask for clarifications.

Read to Write

Another mistake you may be consistently making while preparing to write your essay is failure to do the readings assigned that can go a long way in helping you put together your paper. A vast majority of students skim their readings at best. As a result, they find themselves lacking knowledge and skills necessary to come up with an effective argument and further develop it in the paper. We know that you may be way too tired to devote much time to perusing boring readings, but doing all the assigned reading is a good habit that will benefit you in the long run. Also, we recommend that you record your thoughts, reactions, and questions as you read. Underline or circle the passages you consider important, make notes, and record ideas you’ll be able to subsequently use in the essay.  

Brainstorm Ideas

It’s a rare student that can generate worthwhile ideas for their papers with ease. Writing is a laborious process that takes much time and effort. Therefore, it’s good to know some secrets to effective brainstorming that can accelerate this process. Below are some useful techniques you may want to take advantage of next time you’re writing an essay.

• Freewriting. We have already emphasized the importance of recording ideas your mind generates at the preparation stage. When you’re ready to get to write your assignment, don’t aim for perfection. There’s undoubtedly a swarm of ideas in your head your paper can benefit from. So, grab a piece of paper and a pen and start jotting down your preliminary thoughts and observations you think can help you develop the main argument or support your claims. Don’t pay much attention to grammar and phrasing at this stage. Your mains task is to keep track of important thoughts and force out new ideas. You’ll be able to edit and refine your draft later. 
• Listing. Those students that feel most comfortable when everything is strictly organized or gravitate towards brevity may find the listing technique helpful. It implies pulling off some individual phrases or even words that represent the whole idea and writing them down.
• Asking questions. We bet your teachers told you about this method but you just didn’t take notice of it. It’s about time you started asking yourself questions like “What’s the main argument I need to develop in my essay?”, “Where can I find convincing evidence to back up my claims?”, “Why are there some many opposing views on the issues I’m going to discuss?”, etc.

All of the afore listed techniques will help you develop unique and creative content for your essay.

Edit and Revise

Lack of time isn’t a good enough excuse to deliver a poor essay. But a good many students merely ignore this simple truth. Once they complete their draft they don’t bother to invest more time and pains into revising the essay. As a result, they often end up dissatisfied with their grades. Not to make the same mistake, let your final draft sit in your computer for a little while and get back to it later. Check for grammar mistakes, run-on sentences, punctuation errors, and awkward phrasings. Make sure you’ve provided sufficient evidence to prove your stance is correct. Also, check out the bibliography and quotations. All of the sources you’ve consulted must be properly documented, and all the quotations must be formatted properly.