Common Problems Students Encounter When Writing Essays

5 Common Problems Students Encounter When Writing Essays

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5 Common Problems Students Encounter When Writing Essays

Whether you like it or not, essay writing is a staple across schools and universities everywhere. So if you’re struggling with your written requirements, rest assured that you’re not alone. On top of that, your problems probably have remedies already, thanks to enterprising students and helpful professors! Here are 5 of the most common hurdles that students face when writing an essay, together with tried and tested solutions.

5 Essay Writing Problems that Students Often Encounter

1. Starting the Essay

Many students find it hard to get their essays started. The topic may seem so broad or so unfamiliar that you’re not sure where to begin.

Solution: Grab a piece of scratch paper and ask yourself some key questions. What’s the assignment about? What is its central topic? Are there any aspects of the topic that you find unusual or interesting? Are there angles or problems that haven’t been explored? Write the answers down, and you should find ideas to jumpstart your essay. If you’re still stuck, go over a few resources.

TIP: Get an overview of your topic with the help of Wikipedia. Don’t include it in your bibliography, though! Instead, take a look at the references and external links at the ends of Wikipedia pages, or scan for keywords to look up on Google later on.

2. Expressing Ideas

Once you’ve started your essay, you’ll know what point you want to make. You might have problems getting from your introduction to your conclusion, though.

Solution: Make an outline. This is handy even if you’ve started your essay already. By creating an outline for your essay, you can see whether your main points flow from each other and build up to your desired conclusion. After fixing the problems in your outline, you can rearrange your essay as needed. You may do the same for the supporting points within a paragraph.

3. Presenting Meaningful Analyses

Even with flawless grammar and organization, you can still land a poor grade because your essay didn’t say anything valuable. Simply praising or summarizing the source material isn’t enough.

Solution: Dissect your material. Understand it thoroughly and it’ll be easier to spot problems and loopholes that can feed your paper. It may also help to know the author’s background, which often includes biases, political views, and relevant philosophies.

Then, start analyzing! Find out how real-life facts manifest as ideas or themes in the material, explore solutions to presented problems, or compare/contrast with other sources. If you’re set on praising your material, present the ideas and nuances that make the material noteworthy.

4. Backing Arguments

Merely stating something won’t make your readers believe you. Even if your argument seems like common sense to you, your instructor will look for evidence that supports what you have to say.

Solution: Back your main points with primary sources. Look up your keywords on Google Scholar and see what comes up, or find out if your university has subscriptions to online libraries like JSTOR and ScienceDirect. Just don’t accidentally plagiarize a work that you mean to cite.

5. Writing Just Enough

You’ve gotten everything down pat from start to finish, but you’re still way below the required word count. Oppositely, you may have churned out five pages for a two-page assignment.

Solution: If your essay’s too short, you need to find more relevant evidence that you can explore in your essay. Don’t resort to paper padding techniques! Your professors were students before, so they’ll be familiar with tricks such as tweaking font sizes or bluffing with complicated words.

Is your paper too long instead? Cut out unnecessary words, sentences, and paragraphs. Try pruning adjectives, adverbs, and intensifiers. Rephrase complicated passages into straightforward sentences. If you’re still way above the prescribed word count, narrow down your paper’s focus and shave off anything you no longer need.

Arm yourself with the solutions to these 5 common essay writing problems. Not only can you use these strategies to finish essays faster and get higher grades, but you might be able to help out fellow struggling students, too!