Essay writing can be a daunting task, especially for new students or those with poor English skills. However, knowing the difficulties students face with academic essays can help to determine how to work around them.
In this article, you’re going to learn the challenges students face when writing academic essays. Aside from writer’s block and inadequate writing skills, there are many difficulties in writing academic essays and other papers, especially for beginners.
Here are some of the difficulties worth knowing:
Lack of Writing Skills
As mentioned above, writing skills aren’t inborn. They are gained through daily reading and writing practice. In most cases, students who struggle to write essays lack language proficiency. For this reason, they use words, phrases, or punctuation marks wrongly. Some students even use hard words that end up changing the meaning of the sentence.
To improve essay writing, students should develop a habit of reading. Besides, when writing, students should use simple words and write short sentences. They can also seek expert help from the best essay writing service providers, especially with editing, proofreading, and other tasks.
Inadequate Knowledge of the Topic
One of the difficulties of writing academic essays and other papers is insufficient knowledge about the topic. This is especially true if the students aren’t given the freedom to choose a topic by themselves.
See, when the time for writing essays comes, teachers give students topics to write about, or in some cases, students are allowed to pick a topic.
While the first scenario sounds good since you don’t have to go through the struggles of choosing a topic, the best scenario is when you get the freedom to choose a topic you have ample knowledge about.
The good news is that students can easily overcome this challenge by studying their notes or conducting in-depth research to get a better understanding of the topic before they start writing it.
Lack of Confidence
Lack of confidence is also another difficulty beginners face when it comes to writing academic essays. While some students might not have the skills and abilities, some just can’t believe in their abilities to write better essays.
Understandably, essay writing skills are innate, but thinking that you aren’t good at writing excellent essays is another problem students have. Self-doubt makes it hard for students to start and finish their work on time.
Everyone can write better essays through hard work and continuous practice. Aside from online courses, students can also take advantage of traditional classes in their local schools. Students should also practice writing every day and make mistakes. As they correct the mistakes, they will become better essay writers.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is probably one of the most serious challenges in writing academic essays for beginners. And because there are many types of plagiarism many students find it challenging to overcome this problem.
For instance, accidental plagiarism can be tricky to overcome. Of course, some students struggle with this problem because they don’t put in the hard work in researching and writing essays from scratch. But even misplacing a comma or basic punctuation mark can make you face plagiarism.
Most learning institutions use sophisticated plagiarism checkers to see whether students have copied their work from other scholars.
To overcome this challenge, students are required to research thoroughly and cite sources appropriately. It’s also advisable to learn how to paraphrase. Students should also learn the art of writing their essays from scratch.
Time Management
Time management is a valuable skill, especially in today’s world where everything is running fast. It’s also an invaluable skill for students in high school and college.
Without this skill, students struggle to submit their essays on time, and some end up plagiarizing their work.
This challenge is easy to overcome though. To work around this problem, students need to create a solid writing plan. This means determining the amount of time required to complete the essay and then subdividing it to ensure you have enough time for each section from the introduction to the conclusion.
Lack of Knowledge of the Target Audience
When asked to write essays, many students see their teachers as their target audience. This makes them focus on writing essays that please their teachers. In the process, they fail to address important issues on the topic.
To overcome this issue, students need to understand the target audience based on the topic they are writing about. For instance, when asked to write about childhood obesity, students should know that they are required to address the parents of students who suffer from obesity and are looking for a reliable solution to the illness.
Writing Perfect Essay Conclusions
Even though it’s the last part of the essay, the conclusion is one of the most important sections of every academic paper. Unfortunately, many students still struggle to write better conclusions.
The best thing is that it’s easy to write a captivating conclusion. Students need to wrap up the main points discussed in the essay without leaving the reader with any questions. Students also need to understand that the conclusion should contain anything that’s not discussed in the body paragraphs.
