THE WAY TO WRITE A GOOD ENGLISH ESSAY

Written by Rahmatullah

Nowadays, knowing the way to write an English essay is very important for students. When the students do their assignments, of course they have to write it into good essay. Students might encounter essay assignments in any school subject and at any level of school, from a personal experience essay in middle school to a complex analysis of a scientific process in graduate school. Thus, how is the way to write an English essay? Here I would like to explain the way and the steps to write a good English essay. Based on the University of New England (UNE)’s paper, there twelve steps to write a good English essay. The steps are divided into two parts; preparing for writing and writing essay.

Before we write an essay, of course we have to prepare about what we are going to write. In UNE’s paper, there are seven steps in preparing for writing. The first step is “Choose the question”. In this step, we think about our topic and the availability of reference material that we need. When we choose the question, we write down everything we know about the topic which is related to the question.

Writing down everything we know about the topic is not enough to make a good English essay. So that we do the second step that is “Analyze the question”. We have to analyze the question to identifying the key words or the instruction word in the question. Be sure that we understand exactly what the question requires us to do.

The third step is “Rewrite the question”. In this step, we write the question by using our own words. This step is to consider us whether we understand about the question or not. Therefore, we have to try to write it by using another words from the source question.

The fourth step is “Brainstorming”. Brainstorming is useful whether we have too few ideas, or too many. It can help us whether we do not know how to organize our thoughts, or whether you do not even have any thoughts. In brainstorming, we will not necessarily use all the concepts we come up with, but the ideas will help develop the theme of our essay.

After brainstorming, we do the fifth step that is “Research”. We do some research to take some references related to our topic. It will help us to take some specific examples to support our ideas.

The sixth step is “Decide on the order of presentation”. When we have many information and examples related to our topic, we decide them in order to divide the information which very important for our essay. We return to our original notes. We focus on our points what we are going to present in essay. We cannot take all of the information or examples which we have researched. We have to take some of them which only very important for our essay.

The last step in preparing for writing is “Plan”. In writing plan, we write some points about our essay. In the essay plan, it must consist of question, introduction, body, and conclusion. In this stage, we make an outline about what we will write in our essay. The outline will help us to develop our essay.

After we prepare for our writing, we go on to the next part is “Writing the essay”. In this part, we start from the eight step that is “Write the first paragraph”. In the previous step we plan our essay, but in this step we start to write the whole of our essay. In writing the first draft, we should use a computer program. It will very helpful to edit and proofread the essay.

The ninth step is “revise and edit”. We may ask ourselves by some questions. For example, “Does the introduction identify the topic?” or “Are there enough points?”. In revising and editing, we do not only check to the part of the essay, but also we need to check the spelling, sentence structure and punctuation.

The tenth step is “Write the second draft”. In this stage, we have to make sure that our essay have been revised and edited. It is important for us to present it, and make sure that we conform to the requirements, including our list of references.

The eleventh step is “Print and proofread”. In this step we print our essay and recheck it again. Make sure that it is correct. We make some correction about our essay.

The step is “Re-read”. Before we submit our essay, we have to re-read it again. Read through it one more time. Read aloud and make sure that it makes sense to us.

From the explanation above, we can conclude that writing a good English essay is not easy one. We have to do some steps to write a good English essay. Based on the explanation above that I toke from the University of New England’s paper, the steps are divided into two parts; preparing for writing and writing the essay. Before we write an essay, we have to do some preparation. It will help us to write a good English essay.

References: Teaching and Learning Centre The University of New England,  Writing an Essay http://www.une.edu.au/