Attempting to be a writer is not an easy task. Even the most successful students can sometimes struggle with it. On the other hand, it’s one of the most common types of college assignments. Various kinds of essays are often used to assess the degree, to which students have grasped the material given to them. That’s why improving your essay writing skills is such an important thing to do.
It may seem like a very specific type of work that won’t ever come in handy outside college. However, when broken down to its core components, essay writing deals with some very basic and yet very useful skills:
- Researching;
- Creative thinking;
- Critical thinking;
- Conceptualization;
- Thought processing.
These skills will create a foundation that will carry you not only through college but also through the majority of your adult life. And with the instruments available to us today, the process of developing these skills becomes much easier and more comfortable than ever. Here are some of the most popular and effective tools that will help you ace your essay assignments in college.
Plagiarism Checker
The first thing any student tends to worry about when turning their assignment in is plagiarism. This fear comes from not really understanding how the process of checking a paper for plagiarism works. You’ve probably heard an odd story about how a completely original work has ended up containing plagiarism. Very few of those stories have any sort of credibility to them. But it never hurts to be extra safe.
Running an assignment through a plagiarism checker is a standard practice among professional online proofreading service. There is no reason you shouldn’t adopt it as well. It takes a couple of seconds. In turn, it can save you from an unpleasant surprise that may cost you your passing grade. Especially, if you are relying heavily on your research sources.
There are plenty of plagiarism checkers you can find online. Some of them are free. But generally speaking, free alternatives have a range of significant disadvantages. The most important ones are character limits, check time delays, and results reliability. These can really ruin your day. Especially if you are racing the deadlines on a regular basis. So investing some of your hard-earned money into a reliable plagiarism checker might be a good idea.
One of the most common ones used today is Quetext. It has a free version which has a character limit. But for a reasonable price, you can drastically extend this limit to a slightly more impressive 200 pages per month. Which is sub-optimal if you are working with tons of text or have a tendency to double-check everything. But otherwise, a pleasant interface and a couple of helpful additional features are well-worth 10 bucks a month you’ll spend on it.
Grammar Checker
Grammar is the second most common concern, when it comes to essay writing. Neglecting grammar is the easiest way to absolutely destroy all the positive impressions from your essay. The content of your work can be flawless. But once you combine it with poor spelling and punctuation, it loses all the value. Luckily, grammar checkers are the most advanced type of helper tools out there.
Grammar checkers of various degrees of efficiency are present in virtually any decent notepad app. But what you are looking for here is something a tad more robust. The selection you are left with is rather vast. But one of the most popular choices is Grammarly. It is a free website with an intuitive interface and sufficient functionality that will cover all your basic needs in terms of grammar checks.
There is nothing too fancy about it. But it is pleasant to work with and it does the job well. Which is pretty much all you need. If you would like to go a little bit extra and support the developers – there are some additional features the app can offer to premium users. These can be pretty helpful. However, even if you decide to stick with the free version for whatever reason – it should be more than sufficient to carry you through the college and beyond.
Readability Checker
This parameter is by far the most overlooked in essay writing. And yes, it might not be as important to your essay as some of the other components. However, if you are looking to polish your work to perfection, this is one of the ways to do so. Making your text as easy to navigate for the reader as possible goes a long way. And it can definitely make your assignment stand out among the rest.
The readability largely depends on the structure and wording of your sentences and text as a whole. As a general rule – you are trying to make it as simple as possible. Short sentences, simple words. There is plenty of nuance to it. But there are certain tools that will help you automate this process to a degree. Hemingway is one of the best ones you can find out there.
It is very straightforward and easy to use. Color-coded sentences will give you a full and very comprehensive view of what might be wrong with your essay. It is very accurate in its assessment, but do keep in mind that no machine algorithm can replace a real person. Not yet, at least. Hemingway is pretty advanced and its advice is fairly accurate. But you should double-check everything nonetheless.
Final Words
Essay writing is not as hard as some students believe it to be. It depends heavily on the topic of your essay. But even when you pull the short stick, it’s more tiresome than actually difficult. It’s a test of your ability to deal with routine tasks as well as your ability to follow a simple writing format. You shouldn’t have any problems with this type of academic writing as long as you have a sufficient level of self-discipline.
