how to write an essay about a teacher

Essay About Being a Teacher: Top 5 Examples and Prompts

If you are writing an essay about being a teacher, here are some examples to give you inspiration.

Without a doubt, teaching is one of the most important professions one can have. Teachers give children the lessons they must learn to face the future and contribute positively to society. They can be considered the gateway to success stories such as Oprah Winfrey , Adele , and John Legend , all of whom have cited their teachers as major inspirations to their careers. 

Many educators would say that “teaching is its own reward.” However, it may be difficult to see how this is the case, especially considering the fact that being an educator entails massive amounts of stress and pressure. Teaching has actually been reported to be one of the most underpaid jobs , yet many teachers still love what they do. Why is this?

If you want to write an essay about being a teacher, whether you are one or not, you can get started by reading the 5 examples featured here. 

1. Reflections on being a teacher … by Darren Koh

2. teaching in the pandemic: ‘this is not sustainable’ by natasha singer, 3. why i got rid of my teacher’s desk by matthew r. morris, 4. stress is pushing many teachers out of the profession by daphne gomez, 5. doubt and dreams by katheryn england, top writing prompts on essay about being a teacher, 1. what makes teaching so fulfilling, 2. what can you learn from being a teacher, 3. why do people become teachers, 4. should you become a teacher, 5. how have teachers helped you become who you are today.

“Although strictly speaking, based on the appointments I hold, I really do not have time to do much of it. I say teach, not lecturing. The lecturer steps up to the lectern and declaims her knowledge. She points out the difficulties in the area, she talks about solutions to problems, and she makes suggestions for reform. The focus is on the subject – the students follow. The teacher, however, needs to meet the students where they are in order to bring them to where they have to be. The focus is on the student’s ability.”

Koh writes about how he teaches, the difficulties of teaching, and what it means to be a teacher. He helps his students hone their skills and use them critically. He also discusses the difficulty of connecting with each student and focusing their attention on application rather than mere knowledge. Koh wants students to achieve their full potential; teaching to him is engaging, inspirational, and transparent. He wants readers to know that being a teacher is rewarding yet difficult, and is something he holds close to his heart.

“‘I work until midnight each night trying to lock and load all my links, lessons, etc. I never get ahead,” one anonymous educator wrote. ‘Emails, endless email. Parents blaming me because their kids chose to stay in bed, on phones, on video games instead of doing work.’”

Singer writes about the difficult life of teachers trying to balance in-person and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of the standard class routine, being a teacher during the pandemic has entailed the burden of handling students who opt for remote learning. They are faced with additional struggles, including connection issues, complaining parents, and being overworked in general- it’s as if they teach twice the number of classes as normal. This is exhausting and may prove detrimental to the American education system, according to the sources Singer cites. 

“What it means to me is that I am checking (or acknowledging) my privilege as a teacher in the space of the classroom and in order to facilitate a more equitable classroom community for my students, erasing one of the pillars of that inequity is a step in the right direction. I am comfortable in my role as the head member in my classroom, and I don’t need a teacher’s desk anymore to signify that.”

Morris, an educator, writes about what teaching means to him, highlighted by his decision to remove his teacher’s desk from his classroom. Being a teacher for him is about leading the discussion or being the “lead learner,” as he puts it, rather than being an instructor. His removal of the teacher’s desk was decided upon based on his desire to help his students feel more equal and at home in class. He believes that being a teacher means being able to foster authentic connections both for and with his students.

“Teachers want to help all students achieve, and the feeling of leaving any student behind is devastating. The pressure that they put on themselves to ensure that they serve all students can also contribute to the stress.”

Gomez writes about the stress that comes with being a teacher, largely due to time constraints, lack of resources, and the number of students they must instruct. As much as they want to help their students, their environment does not allow them to touch the lives of all students equally. They are extremely pressured to uphold certain standards of work, and while they try as hard as they can, they do not always succeed. As a result, many teachers have left the profession altogether. Gomez ends her piece with an invitation for teachers to read about other job opportunities. 

“Then I re-evaluate what I want for myself, and what it is that keeps me working towards my dreams. Through the goals I’ve set for myself, I can maintain focus, move past my self-doubt and succeed. By focusing on my goals, I can make a difference in the world directly around me.”

Taken from a collection of short essays, England’s essay is about why she so desperately wishes to become a teacher. She was previously able to work as a teaching assistant to her former elementary school teacher, and enjoyed imparting new knowledge unto children. Even in moments of self-doubt, she reminds herself to be confident in her dreams and hopes to be able to make a difference in the world with her future profession.

When it comes to teachers, we often hear about either “the joy of teaching” or the immense stress that comes with it. You can explore the gratitude and satisfaction that teachers feel toward their jobs, even with all the struggles they face. Read or watch the news and interviews with teachers themselves.

Research on the skills and qualifications people need to be teachers, as well as any qualities they may need to do their job well. What skills can you get from teaching? What traits can you develop? What lessons can you learn? 

Despite the seemingly endless barrage of stories about the difficulties that teachers face, many people still want to teach. You can explore the reasoning behind their decisions, and perhaps get some personal insight on being a teacher as well. 

Based on what you know, would you recommend teaching as a job? If you aren’t too knowledgeable on this topic, you can use the essay examples provided as guides- they present both the positive and negative aspects of being a teacher. Be sure to support your argument with ample evidence- interviews, anecdotes, statistics, and the like.  

Teachers, whether in a school setting or not, have almost certainly helped make you into the person you are now. You can discuss the impact that your teachers have had on your life, for better or for worse, and the importance of their roles as teachers in forming students for the future.

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Essay on Teacher for Students and Children

500+ words essay on teacher.

Teachers are a special blessing from God to us. They are the ones who build a good nation and make the world a better place. A teacher teaches us the importance of a pen over that of a sword. They are much esteemed in society as they elevate the living standards of people. They are like the building blocks of society who educate people and make them better human beings .

Moreover, teachers have a great impact on society and their student’s life. They also great importance in a parent’s life as parents expect a lot from teachers for their kids. However, like in every profession, there are both good and bad teachers. While there aren’t that many bad teachers, still the number is significant. A good teacher possesses qualities which a bad teacher does not. After identifying the qualities of a good teacher we can work to improve the teaching scenario.

A Good Teacher

A good teacher is not that hard to find, but you must know where to look. The good teachers are well-prepared in advance for their education goals. They prepare their plan of action every day to ensure maximum productivity. Teachers have a lot of knowledge about everything, specifically in the subject they specialize in. A good teacher expands their knowledge continues to provide good answers to their students.

Similarly, a good teacher is like a friend that helps us in all our troubles. A good teacher creates their individual learning process which is unique and not mainstream. This makes the students learn the subject in a better manner. In other words, a good teacher ensures their students are learning efficiently and scoring good marks.

Most importantly, a good teacher is one who does not merely focus on our academic performance but our overall development. Only then can a student truly grow. Thus, good teachers will understand their student’s problems and try to deal with them correctly. They make the student feel like they always have someone to talk to if they can’t do it at home or with their friends.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Impact of Teachers on a Student’s Life

Growing up, our parents and teachers are the first ones to impact our lives significantly. In fact, in the younger years, students have complete faith in their teachers and they listen to their teachers more than their parents. This shows the significance and impact of a teacher .

When we become older and enter college, teachers become our friends. Some even become our role models. They inspire us to do great things in life. We learn how to be selfless by teachers. Teachers unknowingly also teach very important lessons to a student.

For instance, when a student gets hurt in school, the teacher rushes them to the infirmary for first aid. This makes a student feel secure and that they know a teacher plays the role of a parent in school.

In other words, a teacher does not merely stick to the role of a teacher. They adapt into various roles as and when the need arises. They become our friends when we are sad, they care for us like our parents when we are hurt. Thus, we see how great a teacher impacts a student’s life and shapes it.

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Essay Writing: A complete guide for students and teachers

P LANNING, PARAGRAPHING AND POLISHING: FINE-TUNING THE PERFECT ESSAY

Essay writing is an essential skill for every student. Whether writing a particular academic essay (such as persuasive, narrative, descriptive, or expository) or a timed exam essay, the key to getting good at writing is to write. Creating opportunities for our students to engage in extended writing activities will go a long way to helping them improve their skills as scribes.

But, putting the hours in alone will not be enough to attain the highest levels in essay writing. Practice must be meaningful. Once students have a broad overview of how to structure the various types of essays, they are ready to narrow in on the minor details that will enable them to fine-tune their work as a lean vehicle of their thoughts and ideas.

In this article, we will drill down to some aspects that will assist students in taking their essay writing skills up a notch. Many ideas and activities can be integrated into broader lesson plans based on essay writing. Often, though, they will work effectively in isolation – just as athletes isolate physical movements to drill that are relevant to their sport. When these movements become second nature, they can be repeated naturally in the context of the game or in our case, the writing of the essay.

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Planning an essay

The Boys Scouts’ motto is famously ‘Be Prepared’. It’s a solid motto that can be applied to most aspects of life; essay writing is no different. Given the purpose of an essay is generally to present a logical and reasoned argument, investing time in organising arguments, ideas, and structure would seem to be time well spent.

Given that essays can take a wide range of forms and that we all have our own individual approaches to writing, it stands to reason that there will be no single best approach to the planning stage of essay writing. That said, there are several helpful hints and techniques we can share with our students to help them wrestle their ideas into a writable form. Let’s take a look at a few of the best of these:

BREAK THE QUESTION DOWN: UNDERSTAND YOUR ESSAY TOPIC.

Whether students are tackling an assignment that you have set for them in class or responding to an essay prompt in an exam situation, they should get into the habit of analyzing the nature of the task. To do this, they should unravel the question’s meaning or prompt. Students can practice this in class by responding to various essay titles, questions, and prompts, thereby gaining valuable experience breaking these down.

Have students work in groups to underline and dissect the keywords and phrases and discuss what exactly is being asked of them in the task. Are they being asked to discuss, describe, persuade, or explain? Understanding the exact nature of the task is crucial before going any further in the planning process, never mind the writing process .

BRAINSTORM AND MIND MAP WHAT YOU KNOW:

Once students have understood what the essay task asks them, they should consider what they know about the topic and, often, how they feel about it. When teaching essay writing, we so often emphasize that it is about expressing our opinions on things, but for our younger students what they think about something isn’t always obvious, even to themselves.

Brainstorming and mind-mapping what they know about a topic offers them an opportunity to uncover not just what they already know about a topic, but also gives them a chance to reveal to themselves what they think about the topic. This will help guide them in structuring their research and, later, the essay they will write . When writing an essay in an exam context, this may be the only ‘research’ the student can undertake before the writing, so practicing this will be even more important.

RESEARCH YOUR ESSAY

The previous step above should reveal to students the general direction their research will take. With the ubiquitousness of the internet, gone are the days of students relying on a single well-thumbed encyclopaedia from the school library as their sole authoritative source in their essay. If anything, the real problem for our students today is narrowing down their sources to a manageable number. Students should use the information from the previous step to help here. At this stage, it is important that they:

●      Ensure the research material is directly relevant to the essay task

●      Record in detail the sources of the information that they will use in their essay

●      Engage with the material personally by asking questions and challenging their own biases

●      Identify the key points that will be made in their essay

●      Group ideas, counterarguments, and opinions together

●      Identify the overarching argument they will make in their own essay.

Once these stages have been completed the student is ready to organise their points into a logical order.

WRITING YOUR ESSAY

There are a number of ways for students to organize their points in preparation for writing. They can use graphic organizers , post-it notes, or any number of available writing apps. The important thing for them to consider here is that their points should follow a logical progression. This progression of their argument will be expressed in the form of body paragraphs that will inform the structure of their finished essay.

The number of paragraphs contained in an essay will depend on a number of factors such as word limits, time limits, the complexity of the question etc. Regardless of the essay’s length, students should ensure their essay follows the Rule of Three in that every essay they write contains an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Generally speaking, essay paragraphs will focus on one main idea that is usually expressed in a topic sentence that is followed by a series of supporting sentences that bolster that main idea. The first and final sentences are of the most significance here with the first sentence of a paragraph making the point to the reader and the final sentence of the paragraph making the overall relevance to the essay’s argument crystal clear. 

Though students will most likely be familiar with the broad generic structure of essays, it is worth investing time to ensure they have a clear conception of how each part of the essay works, that is, of the exact nature of the task it performs. Let’s review:

Common Essay Structure

Introduction: Provides the reader with context for the essay. It states the broad argument that the essay will make and informs the reader of the writer’s general perspective and approach to the question.

Body Paragraphs: These are the ‘meat’ of the essay and lay out the argument stated in the introduction point by point with supporting evidence.

Conclusion: Usually, the conclusion will restate the central argument while summarising the essay’s main supporting reasons before linking everything back to the original question.

ESSAY WRITING PARAGRAPH WRITING TIPS

●      Each paragraph should focus on a single main idea

●      Paragraphs should follow a logical sequence; students should group similar ideas together to avoid incoherence

●      Paragraphs should be denoted consistently; students should choose either to indent or skip a line

●      Transition words and phrases such as alternatively , consequently , in contrast should be used to give flow and provide a bridge between paragraphs.

HOW TO EDIT AN ESSAY

Students shouldn’t expect their essays to emerge from the writing process perfectly formed. Except in exam situations and the like, thorough editing is an essential aspect in the writing process. 

Often, students struggle with this aspect of the process the most. After spending hours of effort on planning, research, and writing the first draft, students can be reluctant to go back over the same terrain they have so recently travelled. It is important at this point to give them some helpful guidelines to help them to know what to look out for. The following tips will provide just such help: 

One Piece at a Time: There is a lot to look out for in the editing process and often students overlook aspects as they try to juggle too many balls during the process. One effective strategy to combat this is for students to perform a number of rounds of editing with each focusing on a different aspect. For example, the first round could focus on content, the second round on looking out for word repetition (use a thesaurus to help here), with the third attending to spelling and grammar.

Sum It Up: When reviewing the paragraphs they have written, a good starting point is for students to read each paragraph and attempt to sum up its main point in a single line. If this is not possible, their readers will most likely have difficulty following their train of thought too and the paragraph needs to be overhauled.

Let It Breathe: When possible, encourage students to allow some time for their essay to ‘breathe’ before returning to it for editing purposes. This may require some skilful time management on the part of the student, for example, a student rush-writing the night before the deadline does not lend itself to effective editing. Fresh eyes are one of the sharpest tools in the writer’s toolbox.

Read It Aloud: This time-tested editing method is a great way for students to identify mistakes and typos in their work. We tend to read things more slowly when reading aloud giving us the time to spot errors. Also, when we read silently our minds can often fill in the gaps or gloss over the mistakes that will become apparent when we read out loud.

Phone a Friend: Peer editing is another great way to identify errors that our brains may miss when reading our own work. Encourage students to partner up for a little ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours’.

Use Tech Tools: We need to ensure our students have the mental tools to edit their own work and for this they will need a good grasp of English grammar and punctuation. However, there are also a wealth of tech tools such as spellcheck and grammar checks that can offer a great once-over option to catch anything students may have missed in earlier editing rounds.

Putting the Jewels on Display: While some struggle to edit, others struggle to let go. There comes a point when it is time for students to release their work to the reader. They must learn to relinquish control after the creation is complete. This will be much easier to achieve if the student feels that they have done everything in their control to ensure their essay is representative of the best of their abilities and if they have followed the advice here, they should be confident they have done so.

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Role of A Teacher Essay: Write It Easily

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Teachers stay in the lives of their students forever: either in memories of carefree times or in the form of knowledge they received from a certain teacher. All of us are influenced by teachers from high school or university. And everyone has a different experience. So how to write essays about teachers ? Let’s find out together.

What Is the Role of a Teacher Essay?

This is a type of essay in which students describe the role of teachers in their lives. Many courses will assign you to write an essay about this theme. Also, it may serve as a strong personal statement when applying for college. So no matter what the purpose of the role of the teacher essay is, students always struggle with what to write in this academic piece of writing. If you are one of such students, you definitely need to go on and make it clear for yourself. 

What to Write About in Teacher Essays ?

There are a lot of ideas on what should essays about teachers consist of. Because this is a huge field of discussion, it might be quite challenging to structure the information properly. Let’s get to the simple question: who is a teacher for you? By defining what role a teacher plays in your academic and personal life, you will be able to get your essay written in an appropriate manner. Here are the roles teachers occupy:

• Teachers give knowledge. First of all, a teacher is a person who teaches. It might sound simple but people in that profession are responsible for improving their student’s knowledge in a certain field. 
• They support. Another mission of a good teacher is to support students in their educational journey. Sometimes it is harder, other times it is easier and you can definitely feel that teachers are those who are going along with you through the challenges.
• Teachers inspire. Who is the first standard of knowledge for students? Of course, their teachers. Good ones always inspire students to learn more through their examples. So why don’t you share your experience in having a teacher that is a standard for you?
• They evaluate. Constructive criticism is what is needed for growth. Dedicated teachers always find a way to motivate students for better results. They don’t just put an F grade but explain the growth zones. 

How to Write Essays About Teacher

Essays about teachers don’t have a specific structure or flow. Unless you are given a manual on what to write about in your work, you can be creative in your own way. The following ideas will help you in writing your role of a teacher essay.

Think About a Real Example

When writing your essay, think over the teachers that are standards for you. Analyze what skills they have, and how they teach the material and influence you. You can describe your own example as providing real-life experience in an essay is always a good idea.

Consider This Profession From Different Angles

As we mentioned above, a teacher is not only a person who shares expertise in a certain field. This is a motivator, influencer, evaluator, and supporter in one profession. Describing a teacher from a different perspective will greatly complement your work.

Imagine That You Are a Teacher

In essays about teachers , you can also write about how you would teach if you were a teacher. Thus, you will apply this profession to yourself and see how challenging it might be to become a teacher, even imaginary.

Essay About a Good Teacher: Final Words

Writing the role of a teacher essay requires thorough preparation. Even though this piece of writing is more flexible than other ones, you have to conduct deep analysis to write a professional essay. Use your own examples and look at this theme from different perspectives and you will write a high-quality essay.

What is the role of the teacher essay?

The role of the teacher essay is an essay in which the profession of a teacher is described. Its purpose is to provide readers with a clear understanding of how teachers are valuable and important in our lives.

What is the role of a teacher in the life of a student essay?

In this type of essay, you have to write about teacher-student cooperation. Teachers play a crucial role in the lives of their students. Sometimes they become their “school parents’’. That is what should be described in this type of academic writing. 

What is a good sentence for a teacher?

The best way to describe any teacher is to look at his profession from different angles. Teachers don’t only teach. They perform a lot more functions in the educational process. Describing these functions will be a good sentence for a teacher. 

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The top 8 essay writing tips for Teachers

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids to work together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important – Bill Gates

Teachers are the most important tool when it comes to education and educating young minds. Every genius has had humble beginnings wherein he was taught by a teacher.

Teaching is not an easy job. It often requires dealing with unruly children who just won’t listen. Since the pandemic, most schools started their lectures online, and teachers and students alike were forced to interact with each other with the use of technology.

Teachers have had to adapt and change their ways of teaching as the world shut down. They’ve had to learn new techniques and modify them to leverage your teaching. Just like when a person prepares to become a teacher with all the similar efforts, any  teacher has to adopt these new changes and techniques  as well.

Teaching things online can be more difficult than teaching your students physically in the classroom. You have to find new ways to grab your students’ attention and oftentimes this isn’t easy, especially when it comes to the subjects which students already find boring! 

Take essay writing, for example. How often have your students looked at you bored or in a disinterested manner only because you gave them a writing assignment? Writing can be fun and is a great form of expression. In this article, we’re going to talk about our top 8 essay writing skills, which you can share with your students and make essay writing a fun and easy task.

Top 8 essay writing tips

1). plan your essay.

Essays tell a story. Every piece that’s writing should have a natural flow to their piece, and this extends beyond the basics of introduction, body, and conclusion. When advising students on how to write essays, recommend listing all the points which you would like to make. Every point should have its own individual paragraph. Once you’ve listed the points, sort them out in a logical manner, a manner that makes the most sense. As the essay progresses, a story narrative gets developed, which is interesting to the readers. Also, logically, every paragraph should be a buildup towards the final paragraph.

2). Using clear topic sentences

There’s a clear goal to essay writing when it comes to schools which is to gain marks. Teach your students an effective way of getting maximum results when writing an essay. The first sentence to a paragraph sets a tone. The crux of your article should be explained when the marker reads the first sentence of a paragraph. Ideally, explain your paragraph first and then explain it by building on it by adding examples and explanations which back up your key points and show your knowledge.

3). Be source heavy

This will depend on the kind of essay which you are asking your students to write. If it’s on a topic which your  students need to do research  on, then focus on the importance of good research. It’s important to base your essay around facts so that your article is reliable. Reading up on your information is also important when it comes to learning or gaining more knowledge. The more you read up on facts, the more you’ll learn.

4). Write the body first, the introduction second, and the conclusion last

Writing an introduction is hard. You’ll have to compile the basic crux of your essay in the introduction part of your essay even before you have the entire essay, which is why we recommend that you focus on the body of the essay first and write an introduction when you have the basic flow of your essay written down. As long as the entire essay makes sense at the end, it doesn’t really matter the way you write it and how you begin. Writing the essay body first is just our suggestion as we believe it to be the most helpful way when it comes to writing essays.

5). Remember the tone and the voice of your essay

Are you expecting your students to write the essay in an active voice or a passive voice? Focusing on the language that you are using is equally important. An essay should be informative and should also connect with your audiences. No matter how great your article is technically, if it doesn’t resonate with your audiences and connects with them, then the marks your students will receive won’t probably be very high.

6). Make use of technology

When teachers are teaching online, it’s best to make  use of online tools  which make your life easier. When it comes to writing essays, websites such as essay punch can help guide your students when you can’t. They say that practice makes perfect, and on Essay punch, students can spend time practicing their skills and overcome their writers’ block, if any. Teachers are human too, and they can’t reach each and every student no matter how much they want to, and even if they do, this process can be tedious and taxing, which is why teachers must make the use of technology whenever they can to make their lives easier.

7). Create drafts

No writer writes an essay on the first go and doesn’t edit them. Editing is the process of making an essay better. Once a final copy is submitted, no matter how much they may want it back, it’s not possible, so insist on writing rough drafts for your essay first, making edits on that draft, and only when they’re fully confident should the essay be submitted. Oftentimes it may so happen that after writing an essay, the writer may want to delete the whole thing because it doesn’t make sense anymore. Tell your students that it’s okay. The more you write, the better your content will be and even great writers have once scrapped everything they’ve worked on and started fresh to gain better results.

8). Eliminate unnecessary words

Sometimes, writers make the mistake of over-explaining their point. Understanding where short explanations are enough is the key to not boring an examiner. Sometimes smaller words have bigger impacts and moreover, when it comes to essay writing in schools, remember that teachers have to go through several essays at a time of the same subject, making it a boring task and having to read lengthy paragraphs for a basic concept can be frustrating which is why it’s important to tell your students to make their essay as short, informative and creative as possible.

These are just some essay writing tips that we think teachers should know about.

In Conclusion

Ultimately any form of writing is an expression, and even though the topic you give your students might be the same, it can be surprising the way every student writes an essay differently and with a different point of view for you to read. Some of these rules may or may not work when it comes to writing a fictional story, as in fictional stories, the writer relies on his mind’s imagination and then pens down these thoughts in the form of an essay for you to read.

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The Beginner's Guide to Writing an Essay | Steps & Examples

An academic essay is a focused piece of writing that develops an idea or argument using evidence, analysis, and interpretation.

There are many types of essays you might write as a student. The content and length of an essay depends on your level, subject of study, and course requirements. However, most essays at university level are argumentative — they aim to persuade the reader of a particular position or perspective on a topic.

The essay writing process consists of three main stages:

• Preparation: Decide on your topic, do your research, and create an essay outline.
• Writing : Set out your argument in the introduction, develop it with evidence in the main body, and wrap it up with a conclusion.
• Revision:  Check your essay on the content, organization, grammar, spelling, and formatting of your essay.

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Essay writing process, preparation for writing an essay, writing the introduction, writing the main body, writing the conclusion, essay checklist, lecture slides, frequently asked questions about writing an essay.

The writing process of preparation, writing, and revisions applies to every essay or paper, but the time and effort spent on each stage depends on the type of essay .

For example, if you’ve been assigned a five-paragraph expository essay for a high school class, you’ll probably spend the most time on the writing stage; for a college-level argumentative essay , on the other hand, you’ll need to spend more time researching your topic and developing an original argument before you start writing.

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Before you start writing, you should make sure you have a clear idea of what you want to say and how you’re going to say it. There are a few key steps you can follow to make sure you’re prepared:

• Understand your assignment: What is the goal of this essay? What is the length and deadline of the assignment? Is there anything you need to clarify with your teacher or professor?
• Define a topic: If you’re allowed to choose your own topic , try to pick something that you already know a bit about and that will hold your interest.
• Do your research: Read  primary and secondary sources and take notes to help you work out your position and angle on the topic. You’ll use these as evidence for your points.
• Come up with a thesis:  The thesis is the central point or argument that you want to make. A clear thesis is essential for a focused essay—you should keep referring back to it as you write.
• Create an outline: Map out the rough structure of your essay in an outline . This makes it easier to start writing and keeps you on track as you go.

Once you’ve got a clear idea of what you want to discuss, in what order, and what evidence you’ll use, you’re ready to start writing.

The introduction sets the tone for your essay. It should grab the reader’s interest and inform them of what to expect. The introduction generally comprises 10–20% of the text.

1. Hook your reader

The first sentence of the introduction should pique your reader’s interest and curiosity. This sentence is sometimes called the hook. It might be an intriguing question, a surprising fact, or a bold statement emphasizing the relevance of the topic.

Let’s say we’re writing an essay about the development of Braille (the raised-dot reading and writing system used by visually impaired people). Our hook can make a strong statement about the topic:

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability.

2. Provide background on your topic

Next, it’s important to give context that will help your reader understand your argument. This might involve providing background information, giving an overview of important academic work or debates on the topic, and explaining difficult terms. Don’t provide too much detail in the introduction—you can elaborate in the body of your essay.

3. Present the thesis statement

Next, you should formulate your thesis statement— the central argument you’re going to make. The thesis statement provides focus and signals your position on the topic. It is usually one or two sentences long. The thesis statement for our essay on Braille could look like this:

As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness.

4. Map the structure

In longer essays, you can end the introduction by briefly describing what will be covered in each part of the essay. This guides the reader through your structure and gives a preview of how your argument will develop.

The invention of Braille marked a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by blind and visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

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The body of your essay is where you make arguments supporting your thesis, provide evidence, and develop your ideas. Its purpose is to present, interpret, and analyze the information and sources you have gathered to support your argument.

Length of the body text

The length of the body depends on the type of essay. On average, the body comprises 60–80% of your essay. For a high school essay, this could be just three paragraphs, but for a graduate school essay of 6,000 words, the body could take up 8–10 pages.

Paragraph structure

To give your essay a clear structure , it is important to organize it into paragraphs . Each paragraph should be centered around one main point or idea.

That idea is introduced in a  topic sentence . The topic sentence should generally lead on from the previous paragraph and introduce the point to be made in this paragraph. Transition words can be used to create clear connections between sentences.

After the topic sentence, present evidence such as data, examples, or quotes from relevant sources. Be sure to interpret and explain the evidence, and show how it helps develop your overall argument.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

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The conclusion is the final paragraph of an essay. It should generally take up no more than 10–15% of the text . A strong essay conclusion :

• Returns to your thesis
• Ties together your main points
• Shows why your argument matters

A great conclusion should finish with a memorable or impactful sentence that leaves the reader with a strong final impression.

What not to include in a conclusion

To make your essay’s conclusion as strong as possible, there are a few things you should avoid. The most common mistakes are:

• Including new arguments or evidence
• Undermining your arguments (e.g. “This is just one approach of many”)
• Using concluding phrases like “To sum up…” or “In conclusion…”

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Write your essay conclusion

Checklist: Essay

My essay follows the requirements of the assignment (topic and length ).

My introduction sparks the reader’s interest and provides any necessary background information on the topic.

My introduction contains a thesis statement that states the focus and position of the essay.

I use paragraphs to structure the essay.

I use topic sentences to introduce each paragraph.

Each paragraph has a single focus and a clear connection to the thesis statement.

I make clear transitions between paragraphs and ideas.

My conclusion doesn’t just repeat my points, but draws connections between arguments.

I don’t introduce new arguments or evidence in the conclusion.

I have given an in-text citation for every quote or piece of information I got from another source.

I have included a reference page at the end of my essay, listing full details of all my sources.

My citations and references are correctly formatted according to the required citation style .

My essay has an interesting and informative title.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (e.g. font, page numbers, line spacing).

Your essay meets all the most important requirements. Our editors can give it a final check to help you submit with confidence.

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

• It gives your writing direction and focus.
• It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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• 9 Ways to Write a More Original Essay to Impress Your Teachers and Improve Your Marks

As a bright student who aspires to the upper echelons of the university league tables and the highest degree classification, you’re naturally going to want your essays to stand out from the crowd.

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Faced with the same essay question and reading material, it’s likely that there’s going to be a significant degree of conformity among the essays produced by your classmates. Having read the same literature or scholarship, everyone tends to end up writing much the same thing – which must get rather boring for the person marking it! If you want to reach the top marks and impress your teacher or lecturer, as well as developing your own knowledge of the subject and cultivating your capacity for original thinking, you need to start writing more original essays. So how do you make yours a bit different, so that it gets noticed? Here are a few tips to give you some inspiration.

1. Choose an obscure topic

2. Defend a minority opinion

If you can’t find a suitably obscure topic to write about that’s within the limits of the brief you’ve been set, your other option is to argue the case for an opinion that deviates from the standard accepted one. For extra brownie points this could even be your own theory, providing that you have a reasonable amount of evidence to support it, and providing that you also consider other opinions in your essay. Be careful with doing this, as you could risk making a fool of yourself if you choose to defend a widely discredited opinion with lots of evidence stacked against it. If you do choose this tactic, brainstorm all the possible objections or responses to it and pre-empt them in your essay. This way, as the person marking your essay reads through it and starts to think, “But what if…?” or “and how about…?”, you’ll have a response ready and waiting for them. This will show that you’ve thought about it in considerable depth, adding weight to your argument and proving that you’re someone with the intellectual curiosity to explore new ideas.

3. Read obscure scholarship

If you read the same material as everyone else, the chances are fairly high that you’ll end up writing a very similar essay to everyone else. While you should certainly not disregard the material on your reading list – far from it – you can do a little extra reading outside the prescribed literature and impress your teacher or tutor with your additional knowledge. If you’re not sure where to start with finding other things to read, here are some good sources of information and advice: – Your teacher or tutor – the easiest way to get a few extra ideas for additional reading material is to ask your teacher or tutor. They should be willing to provide you with this, and you’ll also score some more brownie points upfront by asking in the first place. A word of warning, though: if you’ve asked for extra reading material, they’ll probably be expecting to see evidence in your essay that you’ve read it! So be careful you don’t shoot yourself in the foot. – Footnotes – these are a great place to look for additional (relevant) reading material by scholars or writers who’ve been cited somewhere in the text, but who may not have been on your original reading list. The author and title of the publication should be included in the footnote, with more details in the bibliography at the back. – Ask the librarian – though the librarian isn’t going to know every single piece of scholarship in the library like the back of their hand, they may be able to point you in the direction of some other publications that may contain relevant material. – Google search – though you should try to avoid using the internet for performing actual research , it could prove useful in locating some scholarship on the subject you’re writing about. If you read a Wikipedia article, the points made in the article should have clickable footnotes for supporting evidence; click on them, and you’ll jump to the bottom of the page for details of where this point came from. Then you just need to look up the book or article, either in the library or online (if you search the title of the publication, you might be able to find a digital version available to read online).

4. Try a different structure

If you’re struggling to find something original to say in the actual content of your essay, you could instead try experimenting with a different structure to the one you imagine your peers will be using. Particularly at A-level, you’ll find that what you’ve learned in class, and the way in which the questions are worded, makes a particular structure suggest itself straightaway. Rather than going with your first inclination, you could perhaps experiment with a different way of structuring it. That doesn’t mean you should dispense with the conventions of an introduction and conclusion, of course. Trying a new structure just means thinking outside the box when it comes to how you deal with the evidence you have available to discuss. Doing something different with the structure should capture the interest of the person marking it – but do make sure it’s for the right reasons, rather than because your argument is all over the place!

5. In English Literature, compare your set text with others

If you’re asked to write an essay about the set text you’re working on, it can be difficult to come up with something original. You and your classmates will probably be regurgitating the same interpretations given to you by your English teacher, and although this is an opportunity to come up with your own original interpretations, it’s not always possible to think of something that hasn’t already been thought of. A possible avenue for writing something a bit more original in this situation is to add in some comparisons with between the set text and other literature of the same author or period, or upon which your set text may have had an influence. For example, say you’re studying Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Unless they’ve been instructed otherwise, your classmates are probably going to stick exclusively to talking about this specific book. So, to be more original, you could bring in other works by Orwell, as well as other dystopian fiction  likely to have been influenced by Orwell. An example of a phrase you might use could be, “This is an idea Orwell had touched on four years previously in Animal Farm …”. Or, “This idea was to have a profound influence on Margaret Atwood, who developed the idea decades later in The Handmaid’s Tale ”. Try not to shoehorn references to other works into your essay just for the sake of it; only include them where it would develop your argument further, or add some context. Done properly, referring to other texts in this way helps make your essay more original at the same time as impressing the person marking it with the breadth of your knowledge.

6. Include photographs, charts and other illustrations

Provided they don’t detract from the words, visual illustrations could be another way to add originality to your essay. While you’ll need to be careful that they don’t come across as trying to divert attention away from an ill-formed argument in the writing itself, illustrations – such as charts, graphs, tables, photographs, diagrams and so on – can be a great way to support the text and make the overall essay more rich and interesting. Carefully thought-out visual features such as these can be an extremely effective way of conveying information, and, if nothing else, will certainly give your teacher or lecturer something of a break in the monotony of essay-marking!

7. Use more advanced language and syntax

Making use of a good vocabulary and employing advanced sentence structures are ways in which you can make your essay more linguistically original. What’s more, rather than aping the written style of whichever author or scholar you happen to be reading at the time, make sure you write in your own voice. That doesn’t mean you should write conversational English; it simply means that you need to find your own tone of voice and communicate confidently in it. The reader needs to feel that you know what you’re talking about, so confident use of language, in particular the effective use of sophisticated words and more advanced syntax, are crucial. Your essay shouldn’t read as though you’ve had a thesaurus next to you while you were writing it and replaced all the simpler words with more complicated ones; but a cleverly delivered under-used word will give a good impression.

8. Use an analogy

This tip may not be applicable to all essays, but one way of making your essay more original is to explain a complex concept using an analogy. An analogy, simply put, is when you compare one thing with another to help explain something. Most students will battle on with trying to explain something with a straightforward definition. However, if you can find a simpler way of explaining it using an analogy, then you may be able to summarise the concept far more effectively. For example, the pressure with which water escapes from a bucket with a hole in it can be used to explain exponential decay in radioactive substances. In both cases, the rate of a consumptive process depends on how much there is left of whatever is being depleted, which results in an exponential rate of decay. Drawing comparisons in this way takes advantage of the reader’s existing knowledge of something else to explain something new to them. Providing your analogy doesn’t become too tenuous, this is a sure-fire way to deliver greater originality in your essay.

9. Give your own opinion

Many students are so absorbed in writing about the opinions of other people that they forget to include anything of their own. This gives you an easy way of making your essay more original than theirs, by including your own opinion. You should avoid using the pronoun “I” too much (the received wisdom is that you should never say it, but there is a time and a place in my view), and your essay shouldn’t revolve around it; but there’s certainly nothing wrong with giving your own intelligent responses to the things you’ve read. Doing so shows a genuine interest in the subject, and it’s unlikely that your classmates will have made such an effort as this. With a little extra effort and thought, it’s relatively easy to make your essay stand out from the crowd. Is it worth putting in this extra elbow grease? Absolutely. You’ll be rewarded with good academic references, a deeper knowledge and, ultimately, better grades.

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How to Impress Teachers With Your Essay

Last Updated: February 27, 2018

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Ever wonder what it takes to get the A? Course you have.

Essay Template and Sample Essays

Impressing Teachers with Your Own Essay

• If you talk about something briefly at the very beginning of your intro, refer back to it quickly in your conclusion. It'll remind your teacher you know how to write an essay and you know what you're doing.

Community Q&A

• Never repeat yourself. Never repeat yourself. Never repeat yourself. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Be funny. It doesn't have to be laugh-out-loud humor (it can be though), but just say a little something here and there to make the teacher slightly smile when reading. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 1
• Be creative. Creativity is your best friend, your best weapon, and your best gift. Express your creativity in your essay, and it'll rub off on your teacher. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 1
• Don't overdo the humor or emotion. Too little and it's not effective. Too much and the teacher sees right through your pitiful attempt at writing a good essay. Like a spoonful of sugar, it takes just the right dose to work. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0
• Don't include the teacher in your essay. Know who you're addressing, but don't say "And in conclusion, that's why you're reading this essay now and why if I don't say anything in this sentence, you won't give me an A." Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Four Strategies for Effective Writing Instruction

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(This is the first post in a two-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is the single most effective instructional strategy you have used to teach writing?

Teaching and learning good writing can be a challenge to educators and students alike.

The topic is no stranger to this column—you can see many previous related posts at Writing Instruction .

But I don’t think any of us can get too much good instructional advice in this area.

Today, Jenny Vo, Michele Morgan, and Joy Hamm share wisdom gained from their teaching experience.

Before I turn over the column to them, though, I’d like to share my favorite tool(s).

Graphic organizers, including writing frames (which are basically more expansive sentence starters) and writing structures (which function more as guides and less as “fill-in-the-blanks”) are critical elements of my writing instruction.

You can see an example of how I incorporate them in my seven-week story-writing unit and in the adaptations I made in it for concurrent teaching.

You might also be interested in The Best Scaffolded Writing Frames For Students .

Now, to today’s guests:

‘Shared Writing’

Jenny Vo earned her B.A. in English from Rice University and her M.Ed. in educational leadership from Lamar University. She has worked with English-learners during all of her 24 years in education and is currently an ESL ISST in Katy ISD in Katy, Texas. Jenny is the president-elect of TexTESOL IV and works to advocate for all ELs:

The single most effective instructional strategy that I have used to teach writing is shared writing. Shared writing is when the teacher and students write collaboratively. In shared writing, the teacher is the primary holder of the pen, even though the process is a collaborative one. The teacher serves as the scribe, while also questioning and prompting the students.

The students engage in discussions with the teacher and their peers on what should be included in the text. Shared writing can be done with the whole class or as a small-group activity.

There are two reasons why I love using shared writing. One, it is a great opportunity for the teacher to model the structures and functions of different types of writing while also weaving in lessons on spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

It is a perfect activity to do at the beginning of the unit for a new genre. Use shared writing to introduce the students to the purpose of the genre. Model the writing process from beginning to end, taking the students from idea generation to planning to drafting to revising to publishing. As you are writing, make sure you refrain from making errors, as you want your finished product to serve as a high-quality model for the students to refer back to as they write independently.

Another reason why I love using shared writing is that it connects the writing process with oral language. As the students co-construct the writing piece with the teacher, they are orally expressing their ideas and listening to the ideas of their classmates. It gives them the opportunity to practice rehearsing what they are going to say before it is written down on paper. Shared writing gives the teacher many opportunities to encourage their quieter or more reluctant students to engage in the discussion with the types of questions the teacher asks.

Writing well is a skill that is developed over time with much practice. Shared writing allows students to engage in the writing process while observing the construction of a high-quality sample. It is a very effective instructional strategy used to teach writing.

‘Four Square’

Michele Morgan has been writing IEPs and behavior plans to help students be more successful for 17 years. She is a national-board-certified teacher, Utah Teacher Fellow with Hope Street Group, and a special education elementary new-teacher specialist with the Granite school district. Follow her @MicheleTMorgan1:

For many students, writing is the most dreaded part of the school day. Writing involves many complex processes that students have to engage in before they produce a product—they must determine what they will write about, they must organize their thoughts into a logical sequence, and they must do the actual writing, whether on a computer or by hand. Still they are not done—they must edit their writing and revise mistakes. With all of that, it’s no wonder that students struggle with writing assignments.

In my years working with elementary special education students, I have found that writing is the most difficult subject to teach. Not only do my students struggle with the writing process, but they often have the added difficulties of not knowing how to spell words and not understanding how to use punctuation correctly. That is why the single most effective strategy I use when teaching writing is the Four Square graphic organizer.

The Four Square instructional strategy was developed in 1999 by Judith S. Gould and Evan Jay Gould. When I first started teaching, a colleague allowed me to borrow the Goulds’ book about using the Four Square method, and I have used it ever since. The Four Square is a graphic organizer that students can make themselves when given a blank sheet of paper. They fold it into four squares and draw a box in the middle of the page. The genius of this instructional strategy is that it can be used by any student, in any grade level, for any writing assignment. These are some of the ways I have used this strategy successfully with my students:

* Writing sentences: Students can write the topic for the sentence in the middle box, and in each square, they can draw pictures of details they want to add to their writing.

* Writing paragraphs: Students write the topic sentence in the middle box. They write a sentence containing a supporting detail in three of the squares and they write a concluding sentence in the last square.

* Writing short essays: Students write what information goes in the topic paragraph in the middle box, then list details to include in supporting paragraphs in the squares.

When I gave students writing assignments, the first thing I had them do was create a Four Square. We did this so often that it became automatic. After filling in the Four Square, they wrote rough drafts by copying their work off of the graphic organizer and into the correct format, either on lined paper or in a Word document. This worked for all of my special education students!

I was able to modify tasks using the Four Square so that all of my students could participate, regardless of their disabilities. Even if they did not know what to write about, they knew how to start the assignment (which is often the hardest part of getting it done!) and they grew to be more confident in their writing abilities.

In addition, when it was time to take the high-stakes state writing tests at the end of the year, this was a strategy my students could use to help them do well on the tests. I was able to give them a sheet of blank paper, and they knew what to do with it. I have used many different curriculum materials and programs to teach writing in the last 16 years, but the Four Square is the one strategy that I have used with every writing assignment, no matter the grade level, because it is so effective.

‘Swift Structures’

Joy Hamm has taught 11 years in a variety of English-language settings, ranging from kindergarten to adult learners. The last few years working with middle and high school Newcomers and completing her M.Ed in TESOL have fostered stronger advocacy in her district and beyond:

A majority of secondary content assessments include open-ended essay questions. Many students falter (not just ELs) because they are unaware of how to quickly organize their thoughts into a cohesive argument. In fact, the WIDA CAN DO Descriptors list level 5 writing proficiency as “organizing details logically and cohesively.” Thus, the most effective cross-curricular secondary writing strategy I use with my intermediate LTELs (long-term English-learners) is what I call “Swift Structures.” This term simply means reading a prompt across any content area and quickly jotting down an outline to organize a strong response.

To implement Swift Structures, begin by displaying a prompt and modeling how to swiftly create a bubble map or outline beginning with a thesis/opinion, then connecting the three main topics, which are each supported by at least three details. Emphasize this is NOT the time for complete sentences, just bulleted words or phrases.

Once the outline is completed, show your ELs how easy it is to plug in transitions, expand the bullets into detailed sentences, and add a brief introduction and conclusion. After modeling and guided practice, set a 5-10 minute timer and have students practice independently. Swift Structures is one of my weekly bell ringers, so students build confidence and skill over time. It is best to start with easy prompts where students have preformed opinions and knowledge in order to focus their attention on the thesis-topics-supporting-details outline, not struggling with the rigor of a content prompt.

Here is one easy prompt example: “Should students be allowed to use their cellphones in class?”

Swift Structure outline:

Thesis - Students should be allowed to use cellphones because (1) higher engagement (2) learning tools/apps (3) gain 21st-century skills

Topic 1. Cellphones create higher engagement in students...

Details A. interactive (Flipgrid, Kahoot)

B. less tempted by distractions

C. teaches responsibility

Topic 2. Furthermore,...access to learning tools...

A. Google Translate description

B. language practice (Duolingo)

C. content tutorials (Kahn Academy)

Topic 3. In addition,...practice 21st-century skills…

Details A. prep for workforce

B. access to information

C. time-management support

This bare-bones outline is like the frame of a house. Get the structure right, and it’s easier to fill in the interior decorating (style, grammar), roof (introduction) and driveway (conclusion). Without the frame, the roof and walls will fall apart, and the reader is left confused by circuitous rubble.

Once LTELs have mastered creating simple Swift Structures in less than 10 minutes, it is time to introduce complex questions similar to prompts found on content assessments or essays. Students need to gain assurance that they can quickly and logically explain and justify their opinions on multiple content essays without freezing under pressure.

Thanks to Jenny, Michele, and Joy for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

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19 Top Ideas for a “Why I want to be a Teacher” Essay

Here are the 19 best reasons you would want to be a teacher that you can include in your essay:

• To help children learn more effectively.
• To ensure children have positive mentors.
• To improve children’s lives.
• To help future generations solve the problems of today.
• To help the future generations become good citizens.
• To inspire future generations to create a more equal world.
• To give back to the community I grew up in.
• To be a part of helping my community thrive.
• To be a part of my community’s decision-making processes.
• Because you have the patience for working with children.
• Because you have compassion for children.
• Because you want to learn from children.
• Because you’re enthusiastic about learning.
• Because you are a generous person.
• Because you’re interested in learning how to teach difficult students.
• Because you’re interested in learning how to work with difficult parents.
• Because you’re interested in learning diverse strategies for teaching,
• Because you’re interested in learning to master classroom management.
• Because you’re interested in learning what works and what doesn’t in teaching.

The ‘Why I want to be a teacher’ essay is all about showing you have thought in-depth about what a teacher does and what their role is in society. It’s also about showing you think you’d be a good person to conduct that role.

The 9 Tips are split into five categories. You can scan this whole post or browse through the categories here:

This essay is hard to get right.

Most students write the exact same thing as one another with the same old cliché statements like “because I love kids” (ugh, wrong answer!). If you do this, your teacher will just give you an average grade (or worse).

You need your essay on “why you want to be a teacher” to be different – indeed excellent – so it stands out for your teacher.

I’ll show you how.

Why should you listen to me? Well, I’ve been teaching university students in education departments for 8 years. In that time I’ve marked several thousand essays by people aiming to become teachers. I know what essays get top marks and which ones are average. I also know exactly what mistakes students make that make their essays seem … dull.

So, let me get you started out by introducing 19 points that you should make in your essay on why you want to be a teacher. I’ll break these 19 points down into 5 separate categories. Check them out below.

Read Also: Is Being a Teacher Worth It? (Why I Quit a Good Job)

1. Definitely do not say “because kids are fun”. Do this instead.

The word ‘fun’ is a big red flag for markers. Too many people want to become teachers because they think it would be a fun profession. Or, they might think that they want to help children have fun . No, no, no.

This is an incorrect answer in your essay about why you want to become a teacher.

Yes, teaching is fun a lot of the time. And it is really nice to see students having fun based on activities you’ve set for them.

But society isn’t paying you to have fun, or even to make children have fun. You’re not going to be a child minder, aunt, uncle or clown. You’re going to be a professional who has a bigger social purpose than having fun.

Now, a lot of students say to me “But, students learn more when they’re having fun.” Sure, that might be true – but it’s not a central reason for teaching.

If making learning more fun is genuinely a reason why you decided to become a teacher, then you need to frame it in a way that shows the importance of teaching for the good of students. Here’s three better ways to say ‘because kids are fun’; for each on, we can start with “I want to become a teacher because…”:

• I want to help children learn more effectively. You could say something like: …When I was in school, learning was hard and I therefore hated teaching. There were a lot of teachers who seemed uninspired and uninterested in whether their children are learning. I was inspired to become a teacher so I could help children like myself to learn in ways that are engaging, motivating and inspiring.
• I want to ensure children have positive mentors. You could say something like: …Many children in the world don’t have positive mentors at home. A teacher is often the one person in a child’s life who is a stable mentor that the child can lean upon. I chose to become a teacher because I believe all children need a positive mentor that instils in them an interest in the world and a belief that they can make something of themselves.
• I want to improve children’s lives. You could say something like: …Being a teacher will give me the power to make children’s lives better. Learning opens doors to new opportunities, ways of thinking and paths in life that children wouldn’t have had before me. I am inspired by the idea of helping a child who is sad, uncertain and lacks confidence to see their own potential for creating a fulfilling life for themselves.

All three of those ideas still skirt around the idea that helping children have fun is something you want to see happen, but they also point out that there’s something deeper here than the idea that children should have fun: they should have fun for a reason. That reason could be so they learn more, develop an interest in the world, or see that their lives are full of potential.

Note that in my three examples above, I never used the word ‘fun’: it’s too much of a red flag for your markers.

2. Explain how teaching helps the world! Here’s how.

Have you ever heard someone say that ‘Teaching is a noble profession’? Well, it is. And this is something you really should be talking about in your essay on why you want to become a teacher.

Your teacher will be impressed by your understanding that teaching is a profession that keeps the world turning. Without teachers, where would we be? Probably back in the dark ages where people couldn’t read or write, technology wasn’t advancing very quickly at all, and people mostly lived in ignorance of their world.

So, being a teacher is has a bigger social purpose. As a teacher, you’ll be an important piece of society. You’ll be one of the army of tens – no, hundreds – of thousands of people helping future generations to propel our world towards better days. Below are some ways teaching helps the world. You can start these off with “I want to become a teacher because…”

• I want to help future generations solve the problems of today. Being a teacher gives you the opportunity to propel students to greater heights. The children in your classrooms will be the people who solve climate change (oh, goodness, I hope so!), create the technologies to make our lives more comfortable, and get us out of the ecological, economic and political messes we seem to have gotten ourselves into!
• I want to help the future generations become good citizens. There’s a concept called the ‘ hidden curriculum ’. This concept points to the fact that children learn more at school than what’s in the tests. They also learn how to get along, manners, democratic values and the importance of sharing. These soft skills are more than just a by-product of education. They’re incredibly important for showing our students how to get along in our society.
• I want to inspire future generations to create a more equal world. A lot of what we talk about at school are moral issues: what’s the right and wrong thing to do? How do our actions ensure or hinder equality of races, genders and social classes? As a teacher, you will be instilling in children the idea that the decisions they make will lead to a more or less equal world. And of course, we all want a more equal world for our children.

These points are some higher-order points that will help you teacher see that you’re becoming a teacher for more than ‘fun’. You’re becoming a teacher because you see the noble purpose in teaching. If you do this right, you’ll surely impress your teacher.

3. Discuss your commitment to community. Here’s how.

Teachers are at the center of communities. Parents take their children to school, drop them off, then go to work. They busily get on with their jobs: architect, shop assistant, nurse, builder, and so on… Then, they all come back at the end of the day to collect their children from school.

School is one of the few things that brings all of these different members of a community together. Parents gather around the pick up location to gather their kids, and there they stand around and chat about sports and politics and community issues.

School is at the heart of community.

And you, as a teacher, will be one of the respected members of that community: there to serve all the members of the community by helping to raise their children with the values of the community in which you live.

You can talk about this as a central reason why you want to be a teacher. How about you start off with: “I want to become a teacher because…”

• I want to give back to the community I grew up in. You could say …I grew up in a close-knit community where we all looked out for one another. Being a teacher will give me the opportunity to give back to my friends and mentors in the town who need someone to raise their children who they trust will do a great job.
• I want to be a part of helping my community thrive. You could talk about how you are from a growing community that needs good quality, respectable people who will educate future members of your community. As a teacher, you will be at the heart of ensuring your local town remains a great place to live.
• I want to be a part of my community’s decision-making processes. Teachers hold a certain authority: they know how students learn, and they usually have a very deep understanding of what is best for children in order to ensure they thrive. You can talk about how you want to become a person with deep knowledge about the children in your community so you can help guide you community’s decisions around how to raise their young people.

Note that in this group of ideas, ‘community’ represents the close-knit town in which you live, whereas in point 2, I talked about ‘society’, which was the bigger picture of the future of our nation or world rather than just your town.

4. Discuss the personality traits you think you can bring to the role. Here’s how.

You should show how you have reflected on the requirements of the role of teaching and thought about whether you have the personality traits that are required.

Why? Well, you need to be able to show that you know what being a teacher is all about… and that you think you’d be good at it.

So, let’s dive in to 5 personality traits that teachers have, and how you can show you have those traits:

• Patience. Patience is an enormously popular skill for teachers to have. You’ll have kids who just don’t understand concepts one iota, and you’ve got to sit there and work with them until they get it. It’s tedious, let me tell you!
• Compassion. Patience and compassion go hand-in-hand. If you don’t feel empathy for the kid who’s struggling super hard at learning, you’ll get pretty mad and just give up. You might also say some mean things to the kid! So, compassion is really necessary if you want to become a good teacher.
• Open minded. Teachers always need to be learning new things. We often talk about the importance of learning with students more than directly teaching If you set a student a task, you’ll be sending them out to gather as much information on the topic as possible. They’ll often come back with new knowledge and you will want to praise them for teaching you something new.
• Enthusiasm. Let me tell you, when it’s Wednesday afternoon in the middle of a hot school week and everyone’s depressed and flat there’s one person to rally the troops: you! Teachers need to wake up every morning, put their happy face on, and march into the classroom with boundless enthusiasm. It’ll motivate your students and make them feel welcome in the learning environment.
• Generosity. You need to be generous with your time and praise. You need to be constantly thinking about the students in your care and doing anything you can to help them learn, instil in them a love of learning, and give them the confidence to try anything. Teachers need to be very generous people.

There’s a ton more traits that make a good teacher that you can talk about. These are just a few. Go forth and learn more, and add them to your essay!

5. Conclude with the things you still need to learn. Here’s how.

One more thing: good teachers are constantly learning. As someone studying to be a teacher, you need to remember that there’s a long way to go before you have all the answers. Heck, I’ve been a teacher for nearly a decade and I’m not even half way towards knowing everything about being a good teacher.

So, conclude your essay by highlighting that you understand what the role of a teacher is in society and the key competencies required of a teacher; but then go further and mention your enthusiasm to learn more about the profession over the coming years.

Here’s 5 things you can mention that you still need to learn:

• How to teach difficult students. Some students hate school – mostly because of their terrible experiences in the past. You need to learn to get through to difficult students, and this takes time and patience to learn the art of inspiring the uninspired.
• How to work with difficult parents. Oh boy, you’ll have a lot of these. You can highlight this as one of the key things you want to work on in the coming years: again, you’ll need to draw on that skill of patience (as well as the skill of diplomacy ) when it comes time to deal with an angry parent.
• Diverse strategies for teaching. There are a lot of different ways to go about teaching. Over the years you’ll pick up on the various strategies and tricks different teachers have to help children learn.
• Classroom management. This is one of the hardest things young teachers need to learn. And really, it just takes time. Discuss how this is something you want to focus on, and how you’ll use mentors to really work on this skill.
• What works and what doesn’t. Great teachers have this intuitive knowledge about what works and what doesn’t, all based upon their deep experience and trial-and-error. The only way to learn to teach is to do it. Over the coming years, you’ll be learning about this. A lot.

You’ll only need one or two paragraphs on this final point, but it’s a great way to end your essay on why you want to become a teacher. It’ll show your humility and eagerness to take on one of the noblest professions in the world.

If you want to learn to write a top notch conclusion, you might also like my post on the 5 C’s Conclusion method .

Before you finish up your essay, you might want to check out my awesome posts on how to improve your essays, like these ones:

• How to write a killer Introduction
• My perfect paragraph formula , and
• How to edit your essay like a pro .

I promised 19 thoughtful points to make in your essay about why you want to be a teacher. Here they are, all summed up in one final list:

• Say you want to help children learn more effectively.
• Say you want to ensure children have positive mentors.
• Say you want to improve children’s lives.
• Say you want to help future generations solve the problems of today.
• Say you want to help the future generations become good citizens.
• Say you want to inspire future generations to create a more equal world.
• Say you want to give back to the community you grew up in.
• Say you want to be a part of helping your community thrive.
• Say you want to be a part of your community’s decision-making processes.
• Say you want to share your patience with your students.
• Say you want to share your compassion with your students.
• Say you want to learn from your students (be ‘open minded’)
• Say you want to share your enthusiasm for learning with your students.
• Say you want to share your generosity with your students.
• Say you’re interested in learning how to teach difficult students.
• Say you’re interested in learning how to work with difficult parents.
• Say you’re interested in learning diverse strategies for teaching,
• Say you’re interested in learning to master classroom management.
• Say you’re interested in learning what works and what doesn’t in teaching.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Teacher — How My Teacher Influenced Me

How My Teacher Influenced Me

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Published: Nov 15, 2018

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What public k-12 teachers want americans to know about teaching.

Illustrations by Hokyoung Kim

At a time when most teachers are feeling stressed and overwhelmed in their jobs, we asked 2,531 public K-12 teachers this open-ended question:

If there’s one thing you’d want the public to know about teachers, what would it be?

We also asked Americans what they think about teachers to compare with teachers’ perceptions of how the public views them.

Related: What’s It Like To Be a Teacher in America Today?

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand what public K-12 teachers would like Americans to know about their profession. We also wanted to learn how the public thinks about teachers.

For the open-end question, we surveyed 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers surveyed are members of RAND’s American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public K-12 school teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to account for differences in sampling and response to ensure they are representative of the target population.

Overall, 96% of surveyed teachers provided an answer to the open-ended question. Center researchers developed a coding scheme categorizing the responses, coded all responses, and then grouped them into the six themes explored in the data essay.

For the questions for the general public, we surveyed 5,029 U.S. adults from Nov. 9 to Nov. 16, 2023. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a nationally representative online survey panel. Panel members are randomly recruited through probability-based sampling, and households are provided with access to the Internet and hardware if needed. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data is weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories.

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, the teacher survey methodology and the general public survey methodology .

Most of the responses to the open-ended question fell into one of these six themes:

Teaching is a hard job

About half of teachers (51%) said they want the public to know that teaching is a difficult job and that teachers are hardworking. Within this share, many mentioned that they have roles and responsibilities in the classroom besides teaching, which makes the job stressful. Many also talked about working long hours, beyond those they’re contracted for.

“Teachers serve multiple roles other than being responsible for teaching curriculum. We are counselors, behavioral specialists and parents for students who need us to fill those roles. We sacrifice a lot to give all of ourselves to the role as teacher.”

– Elementary school teacher

“The amount of extra hours that teachers have to put in beyond the contractual time is ridiculous. Arriving 30 minutes before and leaving an hour after is just the tip of the iceberg. … And as far as ‘having summers off,’ most of August is taken up with preparing materials for the upcoming school year or attending three, four, seven days’ worth of unpaid development training.”

– High school teacher

Teachers care about their students

The next most common theme: 22% of teachers brought up how fulfilling teaching is and how much teachers care about their students. Many gave examples of the hardships of teaching but reaffirmed that they do their job because they love the kids and helping them succeed. 

“We are passionate about what we do. Every child we teach is important to us and we look out for them like they are our own.”

– Middle school teacher

“We are in it for the kids, and the most incredible moments are when children make connections with learning.”

Teachers are undervalued and disrespected

Some 17% of teachers want the public to know that they feel undervalued and disrespected, and that they need more public support. Some mentioned that they are well-educated professionals but are not treated as such. And many teachers in this category responded with a general plea for support from the public, which they don’t feel they’re getting now.

“We feel undervalued. The public and many parents of my students treat me and my peers as if we do not know as much as they do, as if we are uneducated.”

“The public attitudes toward teachers have been degrading, and it is making it impossible for well-qualified teachers to be found. People are simply not wanting to go into the profession because of public sentiments.”

Teachers are underpaid

A similar share of teachers (15%) want the public to know that teachers are underpaid. Many teachers said their salary doesn’t account for the effort and care they put into their students’ education and believe that their pay should reflect this.

“We are sorely underpaid for the amount of hours we work and the education level we have attained.”

Teachers need support and resources from government and administrators

About one-in-ten teachers (9%) said they need more support from the government, their administrators and other key stakeholders. Many mentioned working in understaffed schools, not having enough funding and paying for supplies out of pocket. Some teachers also expressed that they have little control over the curriculum that they teach.

“The world-class education we used to be proud of does not exist because of all the red tape we are constantly navigating. If you want to see real change in the classroom, advocate for smaller class sizes for your child, push your district to cap class sizes at a reasonable level and have real, authentic conversations with your child’s teacher about what is going on in the classroom if you’re curious.”

Teachers need more support from parents

Roughly the same share of teachers (8%) want the public to know that teachers need more support from parents, emphasizing that the parent-teacher relationship is strained. Many view parents as partners in their child’s education and believe that a strong relationship improves kids’ overall social and emotional development.

“Teachers help students to reach their potential. However, that job is near impossible if parents/guardians do not take an active part in their student’s education.”

How the U.S. public views teachers

While the top response from teachers in the open-ended question is that they want the public to know that teaching is a hard job, most Americans already see it that way. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say being a public K-12 teacher is harder than most other jobs, with 33% saying it’s a lot harder.

And about three-quarters of Americans (74%) say teachers should be paid more than they are now, including 39% who say teachers should be paid a lot more.

Americans are about evenly divided on whether the public generally looks up to (32%) or down on (30%) public K-12 teachers. Some 37% say Americans neither look up to or down on public K-12 teachers.

In addition to the open-ended question about what they want the public to know about them, we asked teachers how much they think most Americans trust public K-12 teachers to do their job well. We also asked the public how much they trust teachers. Answers differ considerably.

Nearly half of public K-12 teachers (47%) say most Americans don’t trust teachers much or at all. A third say most Americans trust teachers some, and 18% say the public trusts teachers a great deal or a fair amount.

In contrast, a majority of Americans (57%) say they do trust public K-12 teachers to do their job well a great deal or a fair amount. About a quarter (26%) say they trust teachers some, and 17% say they don’t trust teachers much or at all.

Related: About half of Americans say public K-12 education is going in the wrong direction

How the public’s views differ by party

There are sizable party differences in Americans’ views of teachers. In particular, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say:

• They trust teachers to do their job well a great deal or a fair amount (70% vs. 44%)
• Teaching is a lot or somewhat harder when compared with most other jobs (77% vs. 59%)
• Teachers should be paid a lot or somewhat more than they are now (86% vs. 63%)

In their own words

Below, we have a selection of quotes that describe what teachers want the public to know about them and their profession.

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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How to Teach Essay Writing

Last Updated: June 26, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 88,905 times.

Teaching students how to write an essay is a big undertaking, but this is a crucial process for any high school or college student to learn. Start by assigning essays to read and then encourage students to choose an essay topic of their own. Spend class time helping students understand what makes a good essay. Then, use your assignments to guide students through writing their essays.

Choosing Genres and Topics

• Narrative , which is a non-fiction account of a personal experience. This is a good option if you want your students to share a story about something they did, such as a challenge they overcame or a favorite vacation they took. [2] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Expository , which is when you investigate an idea, discuss it at length, and make an argument about it. This might be a good option if you want students to explore a specific concept or a controversial subject. [3] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Descriptive , which is when you describe a person, place, object, emotion, experience, or situation. This can be a good way to allow your students to express themselves creatively through writing. [4] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Argumentative or persuasive essays require students to take a stance on a topic and make an argument to support that stance. This is different from an expository essay in that students won't be discussing a concept at length and then taking a position. The goal of an argumentative essay is to take a position right away and defend it with evidence. [5] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

• Make sure to select essays that are well-structured and interesting so that your students can model their own essays after these examples. Include essays written by former students, if you can, as well as professionally written essays.

Tip : Readers come in many forms. You can find readers that focus on a specific topic, such as food or pop culture. You can also find reader/handbook combos that will provide general information on writing along with the model essays.

• For example, for each of the essays you assign your students, you could ask them to identify the author's main point or focus, the structure of the essay, the author's use of sources, and the effect of the introduction and conclusion.
• Ask the students to create a reverse outline of the essay to help them understand how to construct a well-written essay. They'll identify the thesis, the main points of the body paragraphs, the supporting evidence, and the concluding statement. Then, they'll present this information in an outline. [8] X Research source

• For example, if you have assigned your students a narrative essay, then encourage them to choose a story that they love to tell or a story they have always wanted to tell but never have.
• If your students are writing argumentative essays, encourage them to select a topic that they feel strongly about or that they'd like to learn more about so that they can voice their opinion.

Explaining the Parts of an Essay

• For example, if you read an essay that begins with an interesting anecdote, highlight that in your class discussion of the essay. Ask students how they could integrate something like that into their own essays and have them write an anecdotal intro in class.
• Or, if you read an essay that starts with a shocking fact or statistic that grabs readers' attention, point this out to your students. Ask them to identify the most shocking fact or statistic related to their essay topic.

• For example, you could provide a few model thesis statements that students can use as templates and then ask them to write a thesis for their topic as an in-class activity or have them post it on an online discussion board.

Tip : Even though the thesis statement is only 1 sentence, this can be the most challenging part of writing an essay for some students. Plan to spend a full class session on writing thesis statements and review the information multiple times as well.

• For example, you could spend a class session going over topic sentences, and then look at how the authors of model essays have used topic sentences to introduce their claims. Then, identify where the author provides support for a claim and how they expand on the source.

• For example, you might direct students to a conclusion in a narrative essay that reflects on the significance of an author's experience. Ask students to write a paragraph where they reflect on the experience they are writing about and turn it in as homework or share it on class discussion board.
• For an expository or argumentative essay, you might show students conclusions that restate the most important aspect of a topic or that offer solutions for the future. Have students write their own conclusions that restate the most important parts of their subject or that outline some possible solutions to the problem.

Guiding Students Through the Writing Process

• Try giving students a sample timeline for how to work on their essays. For example, they might start brainstorming a topic, gathering sources (if required), and taking notes 4 weeks before the paper is due.
• Then, students might begin drafting 2 weeks before the paper is due with a goal of having a full draft 1 week before the essay's due date.
• Students could then plan to start revising their drafts 5 days before the essay is due. This will provide students with ample time to read through their papers a few times and make changes as needed.

• Freewriting, which is when you write freely about anything that comes to mind for a set amount of time, such as 10, 15, or 20 minutes.
• Clustering, which is when you write your topic or topic idea on a piece of paper and then use lines to connect that idea to others.
• Listing, which is when you make a list of any and all ideas related to a topic and ten read through it to find helpful information for your paper.
• Questioning, such as by answering the who, what, when, where, why, and how of their topic.
• Defining terms, such as identifying all of the key terms related to their topic and writing out definitions for each one.

• For example, if your students are writing narrative essays, then it might make the most sense for them to describe the events of a story chronologically.
• If students are writing expository or argumentative essays, then they might need to start by answering the most important questions about their topic and providing background information.
• For a descriptive essay, students might use spatial reasoning to describe something from top to bottom, or organize the descriptive paragraphs into categories for each of the 5 senses, such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and feel.

• For example, if you have just gone over different types of brainstorming strategies, you might ask students to choose 1 that they like and spend 10 minutes developing ideas for their essay.

• Try having students post a weekly response to a writing prompt or question that you assign.
• You may also want to create a separate discussion board where students can post ideas about their essay and get feedback from you and their classmates.

• You could also assign specific parts of the writing process as homework, such as requiring students to hand in a first draft as a homework assignment.

• For example, you might suggest reading the paper backward 1 sentence at a time or reading the paper out loud as a way to identify issues with organization and to weed out minor errors. [21] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source
• Try peer-review workshops that ask students to review each others' work. Students can work in pairs or groups during the workshop. Provide them with a worksheet, graphic organizer, or copy of the assignment rubric to guide their peer-review.

Tip : Emphasize the importance of giving yourself at least a few hours away from the essay before you revise it. If possible, it is even better to wait a few days. After this time passes, it is often easier to spot errors and work out better ways of describing things.

Community Q&A

• Students often need to write essays as part of college applications, for assignments in other courses, and when applying for scholarships. Remind your students of all the ways that improving their essay writing skills can benefit them. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/index.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/narrative_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/expository_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/descriptive_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/argumentative_essays.html
• ↑ https://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v1n2/petrie.pdf
• ↑ https://www.uww.edu/learn/restiptool/improve-student-writing
• ↑ https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/reverse-outline.original.pdf
• ↑ https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/brainstorming.shtml
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/tips-on-teaching-writing/situating-student-writers/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/tips-on-teaching-writing/in-class-writing-exercises/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/

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How to write an essay? | B2 First (FCE)

The essay is a compulsory task to be completed in Part 1 of the writing section in the Cambridge B2 First (FCE) that is written to convince someone of something or to simply inform the reader about a particular topic.

There is no single, method of successful writing essay. However, this article will outline how to write an excellent essay   in the B2 First (FCE) exam by putting into practice some simple, but invaluable, tips.

You will learn how to write an essay, an example of essay structure , guidance , sample topics , model answers , useful tips , frequently asked questions and useful phrases and expressions.

B2 First (FCE) Essay: Structure example

An essay can be organised in different ways, but it is useful to write one idea in one paragraph and add a short introduction and conclusion .

writing a professional essay

FCE, CAE, CPE

Practice, write & improve, b2 first (fce) essay: how to write an essay (guide).

It is always an essay written for your teacher, and the start of the question wording is always the same:

In your English class you have been talking about [topic]. Now, your English teacher has asked you to write an essay. Write your essay using all the notes and giving reasons for your point of view.

We will use the example question below in our writing essay  advice:

In your English class, you have been talking about society. Write an essay using all the notes and giving reasons for your point of view.

University should be free for everyone. Do you agree or disagree?

Write about: 1. Taxes 2. Opportunity 3. …………………… (your own idea)

Step 1: Briefly analyse your task…

Before you start writing your essay at B2 First exam you need to ask three questions:

What is the topic of the essay?

If you look at our example task you will notice that we are going to write about society .

In your English class, you have been talking about society . Write an essay using all the notes and giving reasons for your point of view.

Knowing this, you can quickly prepare in your head all the words that you associate with this topic or even write them down.

What exactly do I have to include in my essay?

As you can see there are three points included in the task there are two that are already given in our example

Write about: 1. Taxes 2. Opportunity 3. …………………… ( your own idea) <= you have to come up with this one yourself 

The first point is taxes , the second is opportunity , and the third one is something you must come up with yourself!

We decided that the third point we would comment on would be economics

Who is going to read my essay?

In the FCE essay, it’s always your English teacher.  It means that you need to write with respect because she is a person with authority, therefore essay has to be written in a formal style.

What is formal style?

Formal language is professional and serious rather than relaxed and friendly and is used especially in official situations. It is usually reserved for essays and academic settings, while informal writing is used for more casual settings, like friendly text messages and creative writing.

Below are listed the biggest differences between formal and informal writing styles:

Contractions

It is advised to avoid contractions (shortened versions of words) in formal language, but they’re acceptable in informal language.

Unfortunately, the team could not replicate the results. (Formal)

Unfortunately, the team couldn’t replicate the results. (Informal)

Colloquial Phrases/Slang

Formal language is also marked by an absence of colloquial phrases and slang (words or phrases that are common only in everyday speech), but are typically used in informal language.

Everyone was disappointed . (Formal)

Everyone was bummed . (Informal)

First-Person Pronouns

Generally, first-person pronouns (like I and we ) are avoided when writing with formal language . However, it’s accepted (and expected) in informal language.

The students were asked to fill out the questionnaire. (Formal) We asked the students to fill out the questionnaire. (Informal)

Phrasal Verbs

When using formal language in your B2 writing, it is also recommended to replace phrasal verbs (proper verbs that are followed by one or more prepositions and act as a single verb).

It was something the protestors could endure . (Formal) It was something the protestors could put up with . (Informal)

Vocabulary Choice

Formal language tends to use longer, more complex vocabulary. Sometimes it is not recommended to use this type of vocabulary with informal language (depending on what you’re writing) because it can confuse or distract your audience.

They needed assistance while recovering from the outcomes of the hurricane. (Formal) They needed help while recovering from the effects of the hurricane. (Informal)

Step 2: Write an introduction

The purpose of the introduction is simply to tell the reader what the essay is about.

You can start your essay by referring to the question that was asked “ University should be free for everyone. Do you agree or disagree? ” and writing it in your own words . It is also worth mentioning the three points you are going to describe.

Introduction : There are many factors to consider when deciding if the university should be free or not. Among these are taxes, equality of opportunity, and the economy. 

You can use phrases such as:

This essay will discuss … This essay will focus on … In order to discuss …, I will analyse …

Step 3: Main body paragraphs… 

Main body paragraphs are the most important part of your essay so they should be the longest and one paragraph should comment on one point. See below:

Write about: 1. Taxes – the first paragraph should comment on “ taxes”  2. Opportunity – the second paragraph should comment on “ opportunity “ 3. …………………… (your own idea) – the third paragraph should comment on “economy”

In addition, every paragraph should start with a topic sentence, which is like an introduction to the paragraph and it tells the reader what exactly the paragraph is going to discuss.

Also, a good idea is to include different linking words/expressions to make sure that your ideas are well connected and in a logical order.

What is a topic sentence?

A topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph (which is also the most important )

A topic sentence essentially tells readers about the rest of the paragraph . If the topic sentence says “ Cats are very good pets for several reasons” , then every sentence after that needs to describe that subject.

For example:

Cats are very good pets for several reasons . (<=topic sentence / every sentence after it describes that subject =>) They are naturally good caregivers because they take care of their kittens, so they want to take care of their owners as well. Cats are quite clean, and if you train them to use a litter box, they require almost no cleanup in their areas.

What are the linking words/expressions?

These are words and expressions that help the text flow logically . These words act as signposts, helping the reader easily move from one idea to the next and see connections between sentences or paragraphs.

Linking words is especially useful when you want to indicate that you are going to explain something, provide an example use a time sequence, or present a contrasting point of view.

Between paragraphs:

To begin with, I would like to put forward […] The first possible action is, to improve physical education …[…] A second option would be. …  competitive attitudes that […]

Within a paragraph:

[…] which activity is better than the others. Another reason for not financing sports […]

You can see a model answer below:

First paragraph comment on  “Taxes” Paragraph 1: Firstly , a majority of people believe that a significant part of taxes should go to education. Opponents might say if someone can afford university, then he/she should pay for it. However , people with higher education have better wages and therefore pay higher income tax after graduation .

Second paragraph comment on “Opportunity ” Paragraph 2: Secondly, making university free for all, creates more opportunities for those from low-income backgrounds . Although they may still have difficulty meeting other costs such as accommodation , it makes the playing field more level.

Third paragraph comment on “….…… (your own idea)” : economy Paragraph 3: In addition , having an educated workforce is proven to help the economy grow. Namely , the more highly educated people there are, the higher the standard of living for everyone. Consequently , more people will be able to pay taxes to fund the education of future generations.

                  – topic sentence

                    – linking words/expressions

                    – interesting/topical vocabulary

Remember, you don’t have to tell the truth! The examiners won’t know, so if you don’t have experience or an opinion you can make something up!

Step 4: Conclusion 

The conclusion comes at the end of your essay, it summarizes the main idea of the essay.  You need to write a clear, justified conclusion. You can’t just say, ‘I agree’, or ‘I disagree.’ Think of it like this: you need to convince the examiner that your conclusion is correct.

In conclusion, a university should be free for everyone. It makes economic sense and ultimately benefits all members of society.

                  – linking words/expressions

Make sure your paragraphs are connected to your conclusion!

See Full Essay

There are many factors to consider when deciding if the university should be free or not. Among these are taxes, equality of opportunity, and the economy.

Firstly, a majority of people believe that a significant part of taxes should go to education. Opponents might say if someone can afford university, then he/she should pay for it. However, people with higher education have better wages and therefore pay higher income tax after graduation.

Secondly, making university free for all, creates more opportunities for those from low-income backgrounds. Although they may still have difficulty meeting other costs such as accommodation, it makes the playing field more level.

In addition, having an educated workforce is proven to help the economy grow. Namely, the more highly educated people there are, the higher the standard of living for everyone. Consequently, more people will be able to pay taxes to fund the education of future generations.

Get Your (FCE) Essay Checked!

B2 first (fce)  essay: example essays, fce essay sample 1.

In your English class you have been talking about the environment. Write an essay using all the notes and give reasons for your point of view.

Every country in the world has problems with pollution and damage to the environment. Do you think these problems can be solved?

Write about: 1. transport 2. rivers and seas 3. ………………………… (your own idea)

Student’s FCE Essay Answer:

DEVELOPMENT VS ENVIRONMENT

If we surf the web looking for pollution and environmental catastrophes, we will find out that every country in the world suffers them. This is a natural consequence of the struggle between development and environment.

If a country decided to live isolated from the rest of the world, living on what it can naturally grow and produce, it surely wouldn’t be highly polluted. But we all want exotic food and technological items from all over the world, so we have to pay the price.

Investing on electrical transport would benefit the environment a lot. Even more if this electricity came from a natural source of energy like wind, rivers and solar boards. It’s difficult to achieve this because petrol companies will fight against these actions.

We also have to take care of our rivers and seas. We all have heard about factories throwing highly toxic substances to rivers, without minimizing their poisoning effects. A really strict law should be applied to fine these factories and make them change their policy.

But what about ourselves? We also can do a lot! If, when possible, we bought larger packs of food, we would be producing less rubbish. And this is only an example!

FCE Essay Sample 2

In your English class you have been talking about the fashion industry. Write an essay using all the notes and giving reasons for your point of view.

Some people say the fashion industry has a bad effect on people’s lives. Do you agree?

Write about: 1. whether people’s appearance is important 2. the price of clothes 3. …………………… (your own idea)

The society we live today is characterised by technology in constant development, fast speed processes, information travelling and getting to people at a blink of an eye and a complex web of social networking. In this context, the fashion industry is becoming increasingly important and having a more and more paramount role in our lives.

On one hand, the fashion industry is undeniably a source of profit and income. It hires millions of people all over the world and generates millions of dollars every year. Furthermore, such profitable business is also believed to be able to spread and make known the culture of a people, encouraging and enhancing a better understanding of each other.

Nevertheless, for those who are neither impressed nor motivated by numbers and figures, the fashion industry is seen as one which segregates people, isolating those who not fit their laws and commands. It is stated that people place too much importance on appearance and the material, world, sadly true, and the fashion industry just spurs on such situation. Moreover, not only are the costs of fashion item unrealistically high, it is thought to be a money better spent on more pressing issues, such as poverty and hunger.

I do believe that the fashion industry, as it is today, has a harmful effect, because it values a minority of people in detriment to the majority. However, it has such a wide reach that, it put into a good use, it can save lives.

B2 First (FCE) Essay: Example topics

Fce example topic 1.

Your teacher has asked you to write your response to the following statement taken from a recent newspaper article:

Is it true that we help the environment when we plant a tree?

Write about:

• clear the air
•  ………….( your own idea)

FCE Example topic 2

Nowadays children are suffering from obesity, that was once considered to be meant for adults only. What are its causes and what solutions can be offered?

• busy lifestyle
• ………………(your own idea)

FCE Example topic 3

Is it better to be the oldest or the youngest in a family?

• role of older sibling

More than Practice Tests

B2 first (fce)  essay: tips.

• Make sure you know how to comment on all the points that are asked
• Invent information if you don’t have any ideas
• Divide the essay into paragraphs – put one answer in one paragraph
• Use advanced vocabulary when you can and formal language
• The final paragraph is the best place to express your opinion clearly.
• Revise your essay to correct mistakes.

B2 First (FCE) Essay: FAQ

How long should a b2 essay be.

You need to answer the question with between 140-190 words. 

If an answer is too long, you may get a lower score.   If you write 200 words, it’s not a problem. However, if you write 300 words, it’s a problem.

Should you do a plan?

Yes! You must make a plan to organise your essay writing . On the day of the exam, you will be stressed and feel pressure. A plan is your way of organising you text and your thoughts.

What happens if I write more than 190 words?

Nothing… Well, almost nothing. In the past for every 5 words extra, they took away a point, however, now they do not. It is not good to go over 190 words because of time, but you can. I wouldn´t write more than 200 words because they will probably lower the mark they give you for content. They will determine some of it to be unnecessary.

What counts as a complex language in the exam?

You MUST use complex language at B2 level . You must use attention-grabbing vocabulary and a variety of grammar structures. The passive voice, relative clauses, modal verbs, conditionals, reported speech and inversions all count as COMPLEX grammar forms and you must use them. Otherwise, you can address academic experts and pay someone to write your paper if you need help to write an essay for you.

B2 First (FCE) Essay: Useful Phrases & Expressions

Introduction.

The trend nowadays is towards …. Over the past ten years or so the media have frequently carried reports of …. Recent research indicates that …. Hardly a week goes by without another report of ……….. appearing in the media. This raises the issue of whether …… Although most people would generally agree that ………… few would deny that ….

Stating your opinion

As I see it, It seems to me that ………… I would also say that …. I am convinced that …………… I am inclined to believe that ……………… There is no doubt in my mind that ……………… One of the drawbacks of ……. is ………. However, one of the benefits is that ………… Changing topic As regards the causes for this, ………….. Concerning the causes for this, ……… As for the causes, ………..

Presenting arguments

One justification is often given for ……….. is that…………….. Advocates/Proponents would claim that ……………… Those who object to …………….. often argue that ………………. Another objection is that …… However, it should not be forgotten that ………….. ……….. are opposed to ……………. on the grounds that …………….. From the point of view of …………….. According to ………………..

Describing causes

One factor which has led to ………… is ………….. One of the factors which has brought this about is ……… The problem often stems from ……………….. The situation has been exacerbated by ……………. ………….. has only made the situation worse. One consequence of ……………. is …………….

Proposing steps and measures

As regards the most appropriate response to this situation, one suggestion would be to ……… The first step to be taken would be to …….. To alleviate the situation people should ……….. In addition they ought to …………… To begin to tackle this situation society/individuals/the government need/s to This can only be dealt with if ………… To overcome this problem, ………….. Were the government to ……………, the situation would doubtless improve. Individuals can do a great deal to ………… The burden of responsiblity lies in the hands of …….. It is vitally important that ……… Legislation should be introduced to control …………….. It would be a grave error if we ……………..

All in all it seems to me that ……….. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that ………………….. All things considered, …………. On balance, I tend to believe that ………… The world would surely be a better place to live in if ………….. If people stopped ….ing, we would have/ we could look forward to a …………… The prospects for the future will be bleak/grim unless ……………….

Would you pass B2 First (FCE)?

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ESL Essay Writing: 7 Important Tips to Teach Students Plus Resources for Writing Lessons

“Every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end.”

This is true for a good essay, too.

An essay needs a coherent structure to successfully articulate its arguments. Strong preparation and planning is crucial to providing that structure.

Of course, essay writing can be challenging for ESL students. They must order their thoughts and construct their arguments—all in their second language.

So, here are seven ESL essay writing tips that will allow your students to weave together a coherent and persuasive essay, plus teacher resources for writing activities, prompts and lessons!

1. Build the Essay Around a Central Question

2. use the traditional 5-paragraph essay structure, 3. plan the essay carefully before writing, 4. encourage research and rewriting, 5. practice utilizing repetition, 6. aim to write a “full circle” essay, 7. edit the essay to the end, esl essay writing resources.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Encourage your students to build all their writing around one central question.

That central question is the engine of the writing—it should drive everything!

If a word or sentence is not assisting that forward motion toward the explication of that question and its possible answers, then it needs to be reworded, rephrased or just plain cut out and discarded.

Lean writing is merciless. Focusing on a central question throughout the prewriting, writing and rewriting stages helps develop the critical faculties required to discern what to keep and what to throw away.

Providing a clear structure for the student to approach essay writing can do a lot to build their confidence. The 5-paragraph essay, or “hamburger” essay, provides that clear structure for ESL writers.

Generally, this structure employs five separate paragraphs for the entire essay. Each paragraph serves a specific purpose, melding together to form a coherent whole:

• Paragraph 1: The introductory paragraph. This includes the thesis statement, orientating the reader to the purpose of the essay.
• Paragraphs 2 to 4: The body paragraphs. These make individual points that are further backed up by various forms of evidence.
• Paragraph 5:  The conclusion paragraph. This provides a summation of the arguments and a final statement of the thesis.

While students do not need to rigidly follow this format forever, the simple structure outlined above can serve as excellent training wheels for your writers.

Using the 5-paragraph structure as outlined above makes planning clear cut.

Once they have their theses and are planning their paragraphs, share with the students the ridiculously useful acronym P.E.E. This stands for Point, Explanation and Evidence.

Each body paragraph should make a point or argument in favor of the central thesis, followed by an explanation of this point and relevant evidence to back it up.

Students can make note of all their points, explanations and evidence before they start writing them in essay form. This helps take away some of the pressure ESL writers feel when faced with a blank page.

Extol the necessity for students to constantly refer to their planning. The mind-mapping techniques popularized by Tony Buzan can be useful at the planning stage and make for easy reference points to ensure focus is maintained throughout the essay.

Having a visual reference such as this can help ensure that your student-writers see each piece of the whole as well as that elusive “bigger picture,” so it becomes a case of seeing the forest and the trees!

Just as planning is crucial, so too is research.

Often ideas or connections do not occur until the writing process has begun. This is a good thing! Essay writing is a creative act, so students can have more ideas along the way and work them in as they go.

The key is to always be able to back up these ideas. Students who have done their research on their subject will be much more confident and articulate in expressing their arguments in their writing.

One way you can help students with context and research is to show relevant video content via FluentU . This language learning program uses authentic videos made by and for native speakers to help students learn English.

You can watch videos as a class or assign them directly to students for individual viewing. Videos come equipped with interactive bilingual subtitles and other learning tools such as multimedia flashcards and personalized quizzes so you can see how each student is doing.

No matter how your students do their research, the important thing is that they explore and understand their topic area before beginning the big task of writing their essay.

Even with thorough planning and research, writing oneself into a linguistic cul-de-sac is a common error. Especially with higher-level students, unforeseen currents can pull the student-writer off course.

Sometimes abandoning such a sentence helps. Going back to the drawing board and rewriting it is often best.

Students can be creative with their sentence structures   when expressing simpler ideas and arguments. However, when it comes to more complex concepts, help them learn to use shorter sentences to break their arguments into smaller, more digestible chunks.

Essay writing falls firmly in the camp of non-fiction. However, that doesn’t mean that essay writers can’t use some of the techniques more traditionally associated with fiction, poetry and drama .

One technique that’s particularly useful in essay writing is repetition. Just as poetry relies heavily on rhythm, so too does argument. Repetition can provide that sense of rhythm.

This is because written language has its origins in oral language. Think of the great orators and demagogues and their use of repetition. Speechwriters, too, are well aware of the power of repetition.

The writing principle of the “rule of 3” states that ideas expressed in these terms are more convincing and memorable. This is true of both spoken and written words and the ideas they express. Teach your students to use this method in their essay writing.

The very structure of the 5-paragraph essay lends itself to planning for this repetition, in fact. Each idea that is explored in a body paragraph should be outlined first in the introductory paragraph.

Then, the single body paragraph devoted to the idea will explore it at greater length, supported by evidence. And the third rap of the hammer occurs in the summation of the concluding paragraph, driving the point securely and convincingly home.

As mentioned at the start of this post, every good essay has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Each point made, explained and supported by evidence is a step toward what the writing teacher Roy Peter Clark calls “closing the circle of meaning.”

In planning for the conclusion of the essay, the students should take the opportunity to reaffirm their position. By referring to the points outlined in the introduction and driving them home one last time, the student-writer is bringing the essay to a satisfying full circle.

This may be accomplished by employing various strategies: an apt quotation, referring to future consequences or attempting to inspire and mobilize the reader.

Ending with a succinct quotation has the double benefit of lending some authoritative weight to the argument while also allowing the student to select a well-written, distilled expression of their central thesis. This can make for a strong ending, particularly for ESL students.

Often the essay thesis will suggest its own ending. If the essay is structured around a problem, it’s frequently appropriate to end the essay by offering solutions to the problem and outlining potential consequences if those solutions are not followed.

In the more polemical type of essay, the student may end with a call to arms, a plea for action on the part of the reader.

The strategy chosen by the student will depend largely on what fits the central thesis of their essay best.

For the ESL student, the final edit is especially important.

It offers a final chance to check form and meaning. For all writers, this process can be daunting, but more so for language students.

Often, ESL students will use the same words over and over again due to a limited vocabulary. Encourage your students to employ a thesaurus in the final draft before submission. This will freshen up their work, making it more readable, and will also increase their active vocabulary in the long run!

Another useful strategy at this stage is to encourage students to read their work aloud before handing it in.

This can be good pronunciation practice , but it also provides an opportunity to listen for grammatical errors. Further, it helps students hear where punctuation is required in the text, helping the overall rhythm and readability of the writing.

To really help your students become master essay writers, you’ll want to provide them with plenty of opportunities to test and flex their skills.

Writing prompts and exercises are a good place to start:

Descriptive writing activities encourage students to get creative and use their five senses, literary devices and diverse vocabulary. Read on for eight descriptive writing…

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-writing-projects/ https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-picture-description/

Giving good ESL writing prompts is important because inspiring prompts inspire students to write more and writing more is how they improve. Read this post to learn 50…

You’ll likely also want to teach them more about the mechanics of writing :

Are you looking for ESL writing skills to share with your ESL students? In this guide, you’ll find different ESL writing techniques, such as helping students understand…

Would you like to introduce journal writing into your ESL classes? Fantastic idea! Here are 9 essential tips to make it creative, engaging and fun.

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-writing-lessons/

Essays are a great way not only for students to learn how the language works, but also to learn about themselves.

Formulating thoughts and arguments about various subjects is good exercise for not only the students’ linguistic faculties, but also for understanding who they are and how they see the world.

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Cambridge C1 Advanced (CAE): How to Write an Essay

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Introduction

An essay in the C1 Advanced Writing paper is usually written for an academic tutor and may be written as a follow-up to a class activity, such as attending a seminar or watching a documentary. The main purpose of the task is to underline relevant salient issues on the stated topic, and to support an argument with subsidiary points and reasons. An essay should be well organised, with an introduction, clear development and an appropriate conclusion. It should hold the target reader’s attention and communicate complex ideas using an appropriate range of vocabulary and structures. Source: Cambridge English C1 Advanced handbook for teachers

Essays are part of the first section of the CAE Writing paper. The task is mandatory, which means that you always have to write an essay unlike the other texts ( emails/letter , proposals , reviews , reports ) where you can choose which one you would like to tackle in the exam.

Essay writing is not that difficult…

…if you know what you are doing. For most students, essay writing feels like this huge obstacle that they won’t be able to clear when, in fact, it is not as bad as you might think.

Just like every other writing task in C1 Advanced you can apply a specific structure because the different tasks share the same characteristics. Obviously, the topic changes and the input you get from the question differs, but, essentially, it is like repeating the same task over and over again. For this, you can become pretty good at essay writing in a short time just by practising regularly until most of it becomes almost automatic for you.

Long story short, in this article I’m going to take you by the hand and guide you through all the different aspects of essay writing. We’re going to see what a typical essay task looks like, the structure and language and, of course, common problems and mistakes you should avoid on your way to mastering essays.

What a typical essay task looks like

As mentioned earlier, essay tasks in C1 Advanced look very similar to each other and once you understand what those common features are, you will see that everything becomes a lot easier. A typical task might look like the one below:

Every essay writing task looks like this with the content changing, but the structure staying exactly the same.

There are also a few things highlighted for you in bold which are definitely important for you to consider when you plan and, later, write your text.

First of all, in the bigger box there is always the question you have to answer and three option s to choose from and, as the rubric tells you, you have to pick two of them . These two points need to be discussed and compared and then you explain (with reasons!) which option you think is better, more suitable, nicer or whatever the task asks you to do (Here: Which facility is it more important for local authorities to give money to?).

Apart from that, you are also gifted a few ideas in the smaller of the two boxes . You can use these in your essay (You don’t have to.), but make sure that you don’t just copy them word for word. Instead, paraphrase them and make them your own, or simply come up with your own ideas.

If you have ever written a Cambridge B2 First essay , you will immediately see the similarities between the tasks, but in C1 Advanced there is less support for you and you have to make more decisions on your own before you can even start to make a plan for your text. Read the whole task very carefully and then choose wisely based on what feels best for you in any given case .

Formal or informal language in an essay?

I’ll keep this short for you because this works in every single task: Keep your language formal , which means no contractions ( I’m , don’t , etc.), no colloquial expressions ( Hey, what’s up? , I liked it heaps ., etc.), and no slang or phrasal verbs that convey informality ( I’m bursting vs. I have had enough to eat; carry on vs. continue).

How to organise your essay

OK, we know now what we have to do and what kind of language we have to use so it’s time to look at the organisation and structure of a good essay.

When organising a piece of writing you should always think about what it is that you have to include in your text. In a C1 Advanced essay there are basically four things:

• First topic point
• Second topic point

From that, we can make four paragraphs and this applies to every single essay you are going to write to practise or in the official exam.

Let’s have another look at our example from earlier. The three options are museums, sports centres and public gardens. Museums and sports centres are both buildings and probably similar to talk about so I’m going to choose sports centres and public parks, just because we can contrast them better in my opinion.

Adding our two topic points to the list from before, this specific essay structure looks like this:

• Sports centres
• Public parks

So there you go. I think that the process up this point is fairly simple and from there most students jump right into the deep end and start to write their essay – but not so fast!

Plan before you start writing

One of the most crucial yet most undervalued tools for excellent writing is a good plan. Unfortunately, I see too many students skip this step and they often end up revising their texts over and over until they run out of time and the result is still not satisfactory.

Please don’t make the same mistake. It takes around five minutes to make a plan which helps you organise your thoughts and ideas in a way that makes sense. You will be able to focus on your language and arguments instead of worrying about possibly forgetting to include content while saving you time. It works and you should do it as well.

To make your plan just take the list we created above and add a couple of thoughts to each point so you know what you want to write about.

• Introduction (panel discussion, local authorities, sports centres & public gardens –> Which one is more important?)
• Sports centres (public health, wide variety of activities, social aspect)
• Public parks (green lung of the city, place to relax from city life, social outdoor activities)
• Conclusion (sports centres better choice –> more variety, more social, greater health benefits)

It took me 4 minutes to create this plan. I used the idea from the task for sports centres (“Sports centrs mean healthier people.”), but I paraphrased it (public health) while the idea for public parks seems too vague for me so I left it out. Remember that it is optional to include these thoughts in your essay. if you feel that you have better ones, go for it.

The different parts of an essay

So far, we’ve looked at a typical essay task and we put everything in order. The next step, of course, is to put our pen to paper and turn our ideas into a great essay. Please be aware that these are simply my recommendations and if you feel that they are helpful, you’re welcome, and if not, modify them or change whatever you think makes more sense for you.

The introduction to your essay serves several different purposes. It presents the topic/question to the reader and puts it in context, introduces the topic points you are going to discuss and creates interest and anticipation in the reader.

All of this sounds like an awful lot of stuff to include, but with a little bit of practice you’ll find out that it is a fairly repeatable process. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll produce one great introduction after another without having to think about it too much.

With all that being said, let’s look at a possible introduction for our example task.

In recent years, public funding for local facilities has become more problematic for many towns, which has become more obvious to me after listening to a panel on the financial needs of several different local facilities like sports centres and public parks. As these places battle for funds, the main question is which ones deserve the money more.

Let’s have a closer look at this intro. At the beginning the whole issue is put into the context of the financial problems many local authorities have experienced. Sports centres and public parks as our two topic points are included as well and, last but not least, a question is asked to create a little more interest in the reader.

With all our boxes being ticked we can now move on to the next part of the essay.

After you finish your introduction, you can turn your attention towards the main topic paragraphs. These are called ‘the body’ of you essay. I always compare it to a hamburger where the introduction and the conclusion are the bread bun while the patty, lettuce, tomatoes and sauce are the body. You want to make your essay tasty so make sure that the body is just as great as your intro.

Your topic paragraphs should be longer than the introduction and conclusion, but at the same time balanced and about the same length between the two of them. Remember, however, to stay within the limit of 220-260 words total.

A couple of characteristics that are useful and important for every topic paragraph are the following:

• Start with a topic sentence that makes it clear what the paragraph is about.
• Always support your arguments with reasons and/or examples .
• Avoid being too personal unless you give your own opinion at the end of the paragraph.

This is not rocket science, but let me show you what I mean in a couple of examples.

It is widely known that sports centres provide many different benefits to the local community. Someone on the panel mentioned that, from a public-health standpoint, it is crucial to offer opportunities to exercise in order to keep everyone healthy physically as well as mentally due to the social character of sports. In addition to that, exercise comes in many different shapes and forms, from team sports to individual activities like swimming, so there is something for everyone to enjoy in a dedicated group of people. While green spaces in a town or city have their own benefits, it can be difficult to maintain such large areas in order to keep parks pleasant and inviting to everyone. Nevertheless, considered by many as the green lung of a city their use as a refuge from hectic city life cannot be debated, and groups of people as well as individuals can be seen following their favourite pastime or socialising with others, which makes the discussion about allocating funds even more difficult.

At the beginning of each paragraph it immediately becomes clear what to expect as I mention sports centres and public parks (green spaces, parks). I managed to include all the points from our plan and I supported my arguments with some examples . Also, you can see that, for example, I didn’t use the word ‘I’ in these paragraphs at all even though my opinion on each point is pretty clear. Instead, I used more general statements (“It is widely known that…”, “considered by many as…”, “…can be seen”) which help convey your opinion without simply stating it .

Last but not least, both parts are balanced in terms of their length, but I don’t want you to think that they have to be perfectly equal. If there is good reason to give one part a little bit more attention over the other, that’s fine. For example, you can say in your essay that one of the ideas is more complex than the other, which tells the examiner that you actually thought about this instead of just having messed up your text. Be clear about it and think it through before you even start writing.

Finally, the conclusion of your essay is there to summarise and to give your opinion on the topic as well as to answer the question in the task (Which facilities should receive money from local authorities?). Your opinion can be nuanced and doesn’t have to be simply black or white as long as you can justify what you say.

In our example, a conclusion might look something like this:

Taking into account all the positions from above I come to the conclusion that funding should be allocated to both facilities as they provide essential resources to the local community. However, due to their more social character and possibly greater public health benefits I would give more funds to sports centres.

There you have it. The conclusion summarises the findings from the body of the essay and I answered the question giving my opinion. That’s really all you have to do in order to finish off your text well.

Time to start practising

With all the information provided in this article I hope you feel ready to start your journey to become an excellent essay writer. As you can see, the structure is clear and the tasks are always similar. Practise regularly in order to improve until essay writing becomes second nature for you.

Lots of love,

Teacher Phill 🙂

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