What are common essay mistakes? When writing your first college paper, you may feel frustrated, stressed, or puzzled. You may be aware of many fearful stories of how your friend completed an essay during days and nights and still failed. If you are not the one who wants to make common college essay mistakes, you should read this article. Knowing common failure will help you make your essay free of mistakes. Another way to go around making your essays seamless is to ask for professional help from EliteWritings.com, a custom writing service that hires only elite writers on their expert team.
Overall, students make common errors in their assignments not because they do not know something or want to spoil their works. The mistakes are common as they are the trickiest and require more attention than professors usually give. Check the information below not to get caught in the most common essay errors.
Topic Choice
Professors usually allow students to choose the topic of their pieces of writing. If you think that this is a good opportunity to write whatever you wish, you are wrong. You will understand it as soon as you start choosing a topic. If you have no limits in choice, you may become stuck. An unlimited choice is as difficult as a too limited one. You need to spend some time choosing a proper topic. Well, you should always take into account the goal of writing. Your paper should relate to the area of your interests or preferences. Thus, if you have to write an admission essay to a college, you need to focus on the idea of your application. No matter what you decide to write about, you should make emphasis on a specific issue. Also, you have to narrow the topic to make it logical and understandable. Writing an essay with the topic My Application is not a good idea. You need to focus on a particular idea, including the reasons why you apply for this college or the motivation to study the profession. If you fail to choose a proper topic for discussion, your paper will be defocused, and you will skip from one idea to another without logical flow. Only a strictly developed topic will help you remain focused and provide valid and strong arguments in favor of your total score.
Instructions Consideration
One of the major mistakes students make is the inability to read and follow instructions provided. Each essay students have to complete contains a set of instructions. You should always read them attentively. If the instructions indicate to develop a question for your task and answer it, it means you have to do as requested. Some students ignore this aspect thinking that the topic is a kind of a question, and do not clearly state any. As a result, an admission committee sees that you do not have a question and consider you as a person who cannot follow instructions.
Critical thinking, writing skills, and creativity are important to you. Being a student, you have to be able to follow instructions, and if you cannot do it with a simple essay, you may also fail to follow the college rules. Each instruction requires your critical assessment and thorough consideration. Instructions guide you in your writing process, and you have to follow them. If you ignore some small aspects, you may get a lowered grade, and it may cost you an application. So, you should always check whether you have followed each issue in your requirements. You should consider that your future life and career are at stake.
Plagiarizing
Plagiarism is a serious violation of college rules. No matter at what stage of learning you are at the moment, you should ensure that each your piece of writing is plagiarism-free. Plagiarism is the highest level of college dishonesty. If you dare plagiarize, you should be ready that you may be even expelled from college. Take into consideration that the admission committee does not consider the plagiarized admission essays if you copy at the stage of application. It is a clear sign that you will violate the college rules in the future.
The Internet is full of the most effective admission essays. Still, you should not use any of them. While living in the digital era and having free and easy access to many sources of data, your unique writing and specific ideas are at a top of value. If you need to use some quotes, you should cite them in a proper or required way. If you think that the ideas of some person are interesting for considerations, you need to paraphrase them; but you should provide a reference in your writing. Never use ideas of other people pretending those are yours.
Two Types of Plagiarism:
- Direct plagiarism. If you copy some ideas from the Internet or any other sources, this is direct plagiarism. It is easy to detect it with specific software.
- Indirect plagiarism. If you use the ideas of some people and paraphrase those without giving a credit to the author of these ideas, you also plagiarize. Such a type of plagiarism is difficult to detect with the software. Do not think that people who will read your essay are not clever enough to detect such plagiarism. Professors have received their status for knowledge. So, do not consider that you are smarter.
Informal Writing
Even if admission college essays presuppose the use of the first person, and you may even sound less formal than standard academic writing, you should stick to professional language. Never use jargon or common language; avoid nonstandard verb forms and slang. A freer way of expression does not mean that you have to forget all the principles of professional academic writing and start writing like a message to your friend in a chat. Mind your vocabulary. Always think about sentence structure. Avoid skipping from one idea to another like you may do in your daily communication. Consider that an admission college essay is still an academic piece and common rules are a priority. Avoid using specific terms that may require additional explanation. Terminology cannot make your writing more professional but it may affect the impression from you as an applicant. Do not try to sound smarter than you are.
Poor Organization
You may spoil a perfect idea with the poor organization of your work and writing. If you do not develop a plan for writing and an outline, you risk handing in a poor essay. Organizing your work and planning your writing process are the common strategies that could help you throughout your studying. Start with planning time when you will conduct research and write your paper. Leave a couple of days for editing and proofreading. While composing an essay, make notes of your research. List the sources and add comments to return to these notes while writing. Writing an outline can help you add each idea to your paper without losing important points.