17 Cool Resources to Fall in Love With Academic Writing
We, students, know how hard it can be to get interested in essay writing. Assignments of this type are like a nightmare: thesis statement, research, argumentation, a process of writing itself, and revising the work — all these become tortures leading to procrastination, plagiarizing, missing the deadline, weak critical thinking, and inability to express ideas through words.
But in today world of the web supremacy, we’ve got a powerful weapon that helps to promote a love of academic writing: online resources that involve us in comfort environment — learning through technologies.
Let alternative information providers into your education process — and writing assignments won’t annoy you anymore.
Research and outlining
Our classrooms are full of devices and internet, but they don’t automatically turn students into advanced web searchers. Many still don’t know what terms to put into Google for academic research, how to know if the found information is credible, how to synthesize and present it in essays, or how to back up research and cite sources properly.
Often, we fail to complete a research stage and make a connection between the research and writing a first draft of the essay. Or, we can’t record and organize the research correctly, which makes essay writing more difficult than it needs to be.
Pay attention to the following resources:
- Oxford Royal Academy’s complete guide to research.
- RMIT University’s video on planning and researching assignments.
- Zotero research tool that helps to find content, organize it, and add it to personal libraries.
- Mendeley network to find relevant papers, generate bibliographies, and collaborate with peers online.
- ReseachGate website to discover the latest scientific knowledge and find references to academic papers.
- Ashford Univeristy’s thesis generator to formulate statements for essays.
Argumentation
Regardless of an academic paper type, students need to know how to provide an argument and evidence, and how to establish a position on the topic. In other words, we need to understand how to write an essay body.
Learn how to build a text around points that you want to make in essays. Students should be able to explain, analyze, and summarize arguments rather than just report them.
These resources may help to master the skill:
- David Taylor’s video tutorial in writing an effective essay.
- Purdue’s online laboratory on essay writing.
- UNC Writing Center’s guide to arguments in writing.
- Argument samples from Mesa Community College.
Introductions and conclusions
These two parts of every academic paper present a major challenge to students. Often, we simply don’t know how to structure introductions and conclusions, what words to choose to hook a reader and state the thesis, how many paragraphs to write, what’s the difference between essay hooks and introductions, and so on.
Thus, introductions include a hook, a topic, and a thesis statement. In turn, essay conclusions have a more complicated structure, summarizing the whole essay and answering a reader’s “So what?” question.
To write stellar introductions and conclusions, try these resources:
- University of Leicester’s example to use when writing introductions.
- Bid4Papers’ detailed article on writing essay conclusions.
- The University of Melbourne’s visual representation of essay introductions and conclusions.
Proofreading and editing
Most students ignore this final step to take before submitting a paper for review. However, revising the final draft may help to organize the essay better and avoid small yet significant errors, able to influence a grade. When proofreading and editing a paper, you need to check its overall organization, paragraphs and the sequence of ideas within/between them, sentences (word choices, structure, spelling and grammar mistakes), and documentation. Additional tools and resources would come in handy here.
Recommended:
- Hemingway online tool to check essay grammar and readability.
- Proofread Bot’s online resource to polish spelling.
- Slick Write’s free application to check grammar and stylistic mistakes in papers.
- Write at Home’s formal essay proofreading checklist.
These evergreen tools and online resources will help you craft academic papers faster, better, and with no frustration caused by lack of knowledge, interest in the assigned topic, or skills in research and writing. Allow yourself to learn some issues on your own, be responsible for your writing, and pave your way to self-regulation, logical and emotional intelligence, and other soft skills development.
By Lesley Vos from the University of Chicago, a regular contributor to publications on education, career, and self-development. Follow her on Twitter @LesleyVos.
