Essay Bites

One common way that essays go wrong is in failing to properly answer the question. This Bite will show you how to avoid that pitfall by breaking down the question in order to identify exactly what is being asked of you, allowing you to proceed with the research and writing stages safe in the knowledge that you’re on the right track.

This Bite focuses on the research stage. We’ll highlight some of the things you need to think about when selecting your sources, and we’ll look at how you go about taking a critical approach at this early stage in the essay process.

In this Bite we’ll look at how to go about planning your essay. This is a stage that many people don’t always bother with but here we’ll explain why it should always be part of your essay writing process, as well as exploring a few of the key things to keep in mind when building your own plan.

This Bite focuses in on how to write an effective introduction. Many people find this a difficult part of the essay to write, and there’s often a tendency to overcomplicate things at this stage. This Bite will introduce one possible model for writing an introduction which simplifies the whole process whilst ensuring you start your essay in an effective and attention-catching manner.

The main body is the key part of your essay, where the bulk of your marks will be gained or lost. In this Bite we’ll look at how to tackle the main body, with particular focus on the individual building blocks of your essay – paragraphs. We’ll illustrate a simple paragraph model which will help you write a main body that is well structured, properly evidenced, and critically engaged with the task at hand.

The conclusion is an important part of the overall essay, yet it is often rushed in order to comply with the word count or worse, left out altogether. This Bite will suggest a straightforward approach to writing effective and persuasive conclusions.

The editing and proofreading stages are often rushed or ignored entirely when writing essays, yet they are crucial elements of the process and will almost always lead to better marks. In this Bite we’ll explain the distinction between editing and proofreading, as well as offering some useful tips for both.

Academic writing is sometimes seen by students as a mysterious or complex thing, and this often results in a laborious or over-florid style as people try to sound ‘academic’. Yet in truth, academic writing boils down to following a handful of fairly simply rules, which we’ll outline in this Bite.

‘Referencing’ – is there a word more likely than this to strike despair into the heart of the average essay writer? Referencing appears complex, and thus people tend to procrastinate over it and often do a poor job. But really, once you have your head around how referencing works, it’s pretty straightforward. This Bite will explain why referencing is so important in academia, as well as breaking down the mechanics of how referencing works, regardless of the system employed. Work through this Bite and you need never fear referencing again!

When you get an essay back, it’s natural to be most interested in the mark you received. However, far more useful going forward will be the feedback that you receive from the marker. This Bite will help you think about how to engage with your essay feedback in order to make sure you tackle the next essay in the best shape possible.