How to Write an Effective Essay

Introduction
Learning to write an effective academic essay is one of the most important skills you will learn while attending college. As a student, there is a high probability that you will have to write a considerable number of essays. These essays will help you to improve your written communication skills and enable you to communicate ideas clearly and concisely. As you master the skills required to write effective essays, you will begin to create your best written work.
Preparing
The first step in writing your academic essay is to choose your topic carefully. Research your topic and make yourself an expert on that topic by utilizing the internet, academic databases, and the library. A university or college library is an indispensable tool for academic essay writing because it contains specialized journals, indexes, and critical works not found in a public library (Hodges and Whitten). Once you have a good knowledge base, analyze the arguments and evidence in the information presented. Pick your best idea and develop a clear thesis which sums up the main point of your essay in a concise sentence to let the readers know where you are going. Now it is time to organize your ideas by using the information you have gathered to develop an outline. An outline should have your main ideas in an orderly sequence, which represents the way they are to be presented. Remember that while you are making your outline, it is best to avoid repetition of ideas.
Getting organized
Developing an outline is the way to help you stay on track of things as you write. Try to identify your main point and your conclusion. Keep in mind that a basic essay structure should have three parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction is the first paragraph of your paper. It often begins with a general statement about the topic, and ends with a specific statement of the main ideas of your paper. The information should grab the reader’s attention, set up the issue, and lead into...