Boost your essay performance

Life moves forward quickly, and this fact doesn’t always work in our favor, especially when we need to perform a written assignment. A lot of various factors may exist for us to find it difficult to cope with the tasks on time, subjective and objective ones, from a strict mentor with high demands to feeling sick or tired. Nonetheless, there is a list of writing strategies for you to be able to get the work done even within a terrifying time limit.

1. Think in the right direction

Preparing your mind to the task properly is one of the most important things while working with paper-and-pencil assignments. The sense of anxiety and unrest comes right before you start doing the job. As the clock ticks, it gets harder to pull yourself together and stop worrying. Changing your view of the situation is the only way out of this state. Try to vector your energy into a constructive direction and assure yourself that you are capable of more than you imagine. You really are – the potential of the brain is great enough for us to perform the tasks of very high difficulty, and it’s just the matter of our self-efficacy whether we choose to make a fast writing process possible or not. So, get involved into a fight against your lack of self-trust and become a champion in it.

2. Don’t get distracted

If you are constantly interrupted by endless mobile notifications, emails and calls, there’s a good chance you won’t manage to do even the half of the deal. All these things are like time-consuming monsters that speed up the flow of time and leave you back at the bottom of the ladder. Switch on the discipline mode, roll up your sleeves and get directly to the writing process. Bring in all your willpower and don’t let anything disturb you. If it’s a tough thing for you to do, don’t make it a reason to postpone the assignment anyway, as there are a plenty of useful resources such as specialized anti-social-network applications and extensions that will assist you at arranging your work-friendly atmosphere. Take care of installing them in advance.

3. Make use of writing tools

It is rather painless for anyone to use their computer keyboard to do the written assignments. So, if you aren’t really interested in how to improve your handwriting, typing is much more efficient thing to do while working at your composition. If your mentor doesn’t mind a printed text (which is more comfortable to examine, by the way), typing is a good option to choose for you to cover all the bases, that is to take control of what you’ve already written and make up further paragraphs that will logically follow the previous ones.

4. Focus on the given topic

Sometimes we don’t get what we are called for at first sight. We see a topic and start writing what comes to our head, and, considering the fact that our mind is programmed to look for recognizable information, we may misinterpret the whole idea, especially when we are tired and stressed. That is why – stop, take a deep breath, and pay attention to the task given in a headline. Think about the topic for a while, about what can be implicated in it. Moreover, repeat it to yourself from time to time while writing so that you kept the question in your head all the time and followed the task exactly. Flow of consciousness is not an option in this case, as it may blur the correct answer.

5. Create a simple ergonomics

Before you start working directly at your assignment, it is better to arrange all the resources properly. Switch on your organizing skills and get prepared the material you’ve selected to assist you – make bookmarks, underline useful paragraphs etc., so you won’t need to do it in the process, when it may slow it down or interrupt the thought.

6. Describe the main idea

Check up whether you are able to distinguish and point out the one essential thing to derive all your statement from. In case you’re not, it is a bad start as you’ll only beat about the bush. You need to formulate a precise view you’re going to support to not turn the process into things to write about when you’re bored. This is a crucial thing to do to sound persuasive and bring the concept to its logical interpretation. There’s no need to focus on that very much though, so that going in this process didn’t become the only thing you’d manage to cope with. Just prepare a single thought and work on it.

7. Make the plan and the essay the same record

Don’t bother to create a separate list with the statements you’ll further fulfill into your essay. Make a draft to be the basis of your writing by filling it with the main points, proofs, examples etc. You can make your sketches short or long, it is up to you to decide. This will help you to arrange the information according to the required parts and add the corresponding material to it then. This way you’ll also be able to place the sentences wherever you need in your document and edit all the structure.

8. Make a whole expository writing piece from the sketches

Now, that the most of the work has been done, gather all the pieces together into a complete well-structured writing so that it was logical, detailed and consisted of everything which makes it correct and appropriate.

9. Start with the middle section first

There exists a kind of optional but effective rule, when we are asked to tell about something. It presupposes starting it from the middle - from the essence. That is why reveal the main idea first, the one which supports your statement, and finish writing by making up the rest of the essay parts, as they will probably formulate in your head during the process of writing the middle part.

10. Don’t save the list of cited material for last

In case you need to provide the list of source materials in your work, do it in the process of writing, add them to your list at once as you cite the source. This way you won’t need to spend time on looking through all the work again for consolidating the required sources. Moreover, you’ll get most of the job done if you’ll write and fill in your bibliography simultaneously.

11. The same thing with error analysis

It is more time-saving if you perform so-called run-time editing and error analysis. It appears often that being short of time doesn’t give you a chance to check your work in the end. That is why do it sentence by sentence or at least every few sentences so that you were sure about the quality of your work even if you’ll need to give it away right after you put a period.

12. Stay original

It may sound like a terrible writing advice, when you have such a stress-provoking lack of time and looking for means to make the work done as quickly as possible. Anyway, try to write the entire essay relying on your own efforts and knowledge. If students were allowed to use the information from the world web as their own, there would be no need in writing essays at all. The thing is, you need to perform an original piece which will reflect your real thoughts and views. If you don’t do that, you’ll have a bunch of further things to worry about, including your teacher’s evaluation of your work, your performance within this very topic afterwards (which will probably be poor if you only cut and paste the material), less essay quality compared to what you could write yourself etc. So, as you may see yourself, there are more disadvantages than benefits. That is why take your time and make an original essay which is plagiarism-free, and then no matter what – you’ll feel certain it is one of a kind.

13. What about relying on other people’s words?

Making the work excessively citation-oriented is a widespread strategy among those who strive to get a quality essay fast. It is almost the same as copying and pasting the information in fact, because it doesn’t give way to your opinion, you only make up the work based on someone else’s views. The context of such an approach is understandable – it enlarges the text itself and speeds up the process considerably. Obviously, this kind of writing won’t be appreciated well as it will lack the crucial thing – you. Of course, an appropriate selection of good quotes that support your proofs and ideas (not vice versa), has a professional side in it, and such writing sounds competently, but only if these sayings are rare and not making the whole essay.

14. Don’t engage in empty talk

They say, brevity is the soul of wit. Consequently, writing long complex sentences is not the best option under all circumstances, but it is particularly true in a given case, considering the amount of time you have, and the fact that your writing must be clear and comprehensible. Don’t break your head over twisted sentence structure and fancy terminology. You only need to uncover the whole idea and support it in a proper way, not write a novel.

15. Find your place

It is a common knowledge that people tend to work more efficiently under stressful conditions. When you have to or choose voluntarily another place to work at, it is one of the stressful conditions as well. Try it out, go to the park, or to the bank of the river. Maybe the places you like will stimulate your imagination. Pay attention to the interferences that may occur, such as overcrowding or roar.

16. Develop the regime and listen to your body

You have probably noticed that the concentration decreases with every hour of intellectual work. It makes the process ineffective, and the result less satisfactory, that is why don’t ignore the work-and-rest balance. You won’t do any better if you exhaust yourself, so as soon as you feel tired or cannot focus on work at all, give yourself a few minutes to take the mind off it. You’ll accumulate more useful energy this way. On the other side, you may not do that if you don’t feel the need to, it is okay as well.

17. Outwit the teacher? No way.

There’s no need in using the tools of text editor to make your writing look larger than it really is. It is such an obvious method which cannot be unnoticed, that it is insistently recommended to not waste time on this, and come up with another good sentence instead.

18. There’s a time for search engines

It can happen to anyone that they don’t manage to work at all the required resources beforehand. So, we are where we are. You shouldn’t use external services to copy your essay from, but you surely can reach them for some guidance on the learned material. It won’t do any harm, if you search for appropriate creative writing tips, or some basic facts that may assist you in writing.

19. Eat and drink to your heart’s content

Consuming enough of liquid is one of the fundamental rules to keep your brain’s proper functioning. Hydration improves mental processes, and as a result, you work productively. The similar thing is with having a little nosh, it charges your cells with nutritional substances.

20. Give yourself a treat

Knowing that you will get a prize afterwards in a shape of any thing that makes you happy is one of the most powerful encouragements to effective activity. Think of your target – all that great stuff you’ll get, or see, or eat, when you’re done with the assignment. You’ve totally earned it. At least it.