Category: Research Writing

  • Why Good Grammar Is Important

    Importance of Good Grammar
    Most students don’t take good grammar seriously.

    Most students don’t take proper grammar seriously. They just want to write the essay/ assignment, finish it, and hand it over. They forget that proper grammar might be the only explanation as to why they keep getting Fs. Writing your essay on time is not enough; you have to make sure you proofread your work before you hand it in. Proofreading means you have to correct spelling mistakes, stylistic mistakes, punctuation mistakes, and make sure your grammar is good. I hope the following reasons make you take grammar seriously in your next essay.

    1. Good grammar makes you look smart
    You do not need to use big words when talking or writing to appear smart. Understanding words, their usage, and pronunciation is more important. Good grammar will protect you from looking or sounding foolish, and your professor will understand the points you are trying to put across in your essay. This will lead to good grades, a good college/ university, and probably a great job. Conversations you have with friends will also be understood better. No one wants to be the joke of the class for using poor grammar when constructing a sentence, so work on your grammar!

    2. Good grammar leads to good communication
    Imagine trying to explain a point for five minutes to a friend, and even after countless repeating, they still have no clue what you are saying (or even worse, they keep getting it wrong). It’s frustrating, right? Poor grammar does that- it breaks down communication. It makes the reader or listener not get the point. It weakens your idea, and in most cases, your point is interpreted wrong.

    The reader will get frustrated if they have to keep rereading and reorganizing the sentence so that it makes sense. If they have to do this in more than one sentence in your essay, you are doomed. If the professor understands what you are saying, then they can understand how you have organized your thoughts, leading to a good grade.

    3. Good grammar will help you get into a good university/ college
    Colleges/ universities usually look out for smart students. Your application essay and, in some cases, follow-up interviews are the determiners of that. An application essay full of mistakes and poor grammar will not get you into the college of your choice. Speaking poorly with grammatical errors will make you look stupid. Continuous use of poor grammar when talking will make the administrators think you do not have a proper education. This could be one of the reasons (or the only reason) you get disqualified. Good grammar will also reflect in your grades, especially your writing score.

    4. Good grammar will get you a job
    Some employers insist on proper grammar by employees. In the article I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar by Kyle Wiens, he says, “Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re. Good grammar makes good business sense — and not just when it comes to hiring writers.”

    In the eyes of an employer, an applicant who uses proper grammar on their resume is intelligent and not lazy or stubborn. When looking for a job, you want your image to be projected right and not be defined by grammatical errors.

    Check your essay for errors before submitting it to your professor. When you perfect your grammar during writing, you are able to concentrate on the structure and content of your work. Your reader also understands your point of view and does not have to keep correcting your errors. Good grammar is mandatory for any student and makes you appear intelligent. Practice writing proper grammar, and your spoken grammar will also improve.

  • How to Write an Effective Paragraph

    Essay Writing TipsA paragraph is made up of a group of sentences that are related to a single main idea. When writing, paragraphs should be carefully developed and contain focus. There should be a relation between individual sentences. This can be achieved by focusing on the paragraph’s main idea and providing transitions to connect ideas. The main idea is represented by the topic sentence and occurs at the beginning of the paragraph. Sentences that follow (supporting sentences) should be related to this main idea and contribute to it. These pointers in creating an effective paragraph will make you a professional writer:

    1. Deciding on the main idea

    Choose a topic for your paragraph that gives it unity and focus. Decide on the genre of the topic ( is it a story, question, description, etc.?). Note down issues you will cover with the intended audience in mind. Does the reader have prior knowledge of the topic at hand, or do you have to give the whole account of a topic?

     2. Outline creation

    Create an outline of ideas to help you decide what ideas are relevant and which ones are not. Do thorough research on the topic to get supporting ideas and information for your topic. Rearrange the points from most important to ease the writing process.

     3. Choose a topic sentence

    This sentence tells the reader what the paragraph is about. It’s a very important sentence as it has the ability to influence your reader to read the rest of the paragraph. Make it captivating and let it represent a summary of what the rest of the paragraph is about. Most experienced writers are able to place the topic sentence at different stages of the paragraph but as a beginner, make sure it’s the first sentence in the paragraph.

    4. Supporting sentences

    These should expand and discuss in detail the topic sentence. They should all relate to the topic sentence and should be simple, short, clear to the point, and not ambiguous. Make use of facts, statistics, figures, quotes, and examples to make these supporting sentences strong. A paragraph can be made of three, five, or more sentences, but this is dependent on the topic you are writing about or the type of paper.

    5. Conclusion

    Make the conclusion sentence a summary of points covered in the supporting sentences. It should reinforce and re-word your topic sentence. It should also emphasize information given in the supporting sentences. The concluding sentence is a signal to the reader that you are about to move to the next paragraph.

    6. Include coherence

    After collecting all the information, organize your ideas coherently. A coherent paragraph flows, and the content fits together in an understandable way for the reader. Transitions such as also, after a while, again, although, but, after all, above, granted that, as a result, for example, etc. can be used. Repeating keyword phrases and maintaining the same point of view throughout a paragraph also leads to coherence. With paragraph coherence, the reader moves easily from one sentence to the next and feels that the ideas are unified.

    7. Proofread your work

    This is the most important part in creating a paragraph that flows. Proofreading will help you get rid of mistakes in style, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. It also rids your paragraph of information that is irrelevant and not related to the main topic. When editing a paragraph, make sure it’s written in one tense, that it has subject-verb agreement, and that the nouns are capitalized. Make sure that none of the main points you had outlined is left out. Your paragraph, after editing, should contain all the elements of a great paragraph: coherence, unity, order, and completeness.

  • Essential Sections Required on an Essay

    As a student, you have to write an essay or a research paper at one time in your school life. Essays play a big part in determining the grade you get. They have guidelines, though, and it’s important to know them before starting work on your essay. There are some universally accepted essential sections required on your essay, especially if it’s 6,000 words or more long. They include:

    1)      A title page

    This should be the first page attached to your work. It should be filled in correctly in case a departmental cover sheet is offered.  If not, provide the essay title in caps at the top of the page, your name and student number, the course, the examiner’s name, and the date you hand in the essay.

    2)      A front section.

    This one should contain the table of contents, a list of illustrations/tables, and an abstract.

    3)      An introduction

    The introduction should restate the essay question using a hypothesis and provide a clear outline of the essay. This is where you give the reader your point of view on the essay question and how you will support your view. You inform the reader what your discussion will be about, what you will not discuss, and why. The introduction topic should convince the reader to read the rest of your essay.

    4)      A body

    Follow the outline you provided in the front section. Provide evidence that substantiates your thesis on the body. Provide a different idea related to the topic for each paragraph. Paragraphs must be well constructed and start with a topic sentence. A topic sentence gives the main idea of a paragraph and summarizes it. The paragraphs should relate and provide a smooth flow to your essay. They should be clear, concise, and contribute to the main argument.

    5)      A conclusion

    Your conclusion should be a summary of the main points in your essay. It should clearly show how these points relate to the topic question. Do not introduce any new material in the conclusion section.

    6)      Appendix

    The appendix contains any information that may be of help to the reader and is optional. This information, however, is not part of the overall word count.

    7)      A bibliography/ reference list

    This appears at the end of the essay. It contains a list of sources you used when writing your paper. State the title of the source, the author, year of publication, publisher, place of publication, and pages depending on the citation format your examiner asks you to use. Different citation formats include APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, Harvard, etc.