Student Eassy Writing with Stylewriter Software

Confronted with an essay, term paper, dissertation or other academic paper, students often fall into the traps of failing to answer the question, adopting a stilted academic tone and using a long-winded style.

Like all good writing, essays should be clear, direct, relevant and interesting.  To do this, you must

concentrate on the central question,
plan the paper selecting specific and relevant information,
include good examples and illustrations,  and
write in a concise and readable style.

The aim should not be to display an academic superiority, but to show a confidence of the subject matter and to inform the reader of the relevance of your knowledge to the question.

Start by making sure you do understand the question.  Look for key words defining the scope of your writing, such as: compare, contrast, criticise, define, describe, discuss, evaluate, justify, outline, review, summarise.

Use the checklist to help you write your essays.

Checklist

1.    Read and understand the question.
2.    Plan to answer the question.
3.    Select relevant information – don’t include everything you know.
4.    Summarise your answer in the opening paragraph.
5.    Develop one idea or theme in each paragraph.
6.    Link paragraphs to make the writing flow.
7.    Use plain English, avoiding an academic or abstract style.
8.    Impress with clarity.  Don’t waffle, repeat yourself or ramble.
9.    Conclude by summarising your findings or views.

10.    Proofread and edit your work.

When you select Student Essay Writing as your writing task, StyleWriter Software adjusts its statistical measures as follows:

	Style Index	Average Sentance	Passive Index	Long Sentance Limit
Excellent Range	0-20	11-20	0-30	40

Plain English Writing Task Styles in Stylewriter

This entry was posted on June 13th, 2010 and is filed under Writing Task Styles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.