Essay Essentials: Improve Your Academic Writing

Brainstorming unlocks your ideas for essays, opens topics and invites openness to possibilities, then guides you with freeriding and questioning strategies to expand and outline your writing.

Learn to craft a compelling introduction by using an attention getter and providing background and context. Present a clear thesis with a guiding idea that ties the essay together.

Develop clear body paragraphs by using a topic sentence tied to the thesis, then add point content and a concluding sentence, with transitions linking paragraphs to the introduction and thesis.

Restate the thesis in a concise summary at the start of the conclusion and leave a meaningful final impression that lingers with readers.

Identify subjects and verbs, distinguish clauses from phrases, and recognize independent and dependent clauses, as well as complete and incomplete ideas, to build grammar foundations for clear essays.

Learn how spell check can't catch context and homophone errors. Discover strategies like reading aloud, checking subject-verb agreement, and distinguishing there, their, they're, and two to improve academic writing.