Key Tips for Students to Improve Their Academic Writing Skills

by Julie Clements Promoter

The ability to write in a meaningful and impactful manner is regarded as good writing skills. Good writing skills allow you to communicate your message with clarity, and to a larger audience than through face-to-face or telephone conversations. Good writing skills play a huge role in a student’s life. Academic writing acts as a communication tool for conveying the student’s acquired knowledge in a specific field of study. In schools and colleges, students need good writing skills to draft reports, assignments, research papers, thesis etc and in the future it will also help in creating a well-written resume. To achieve good writing skills, students attend various writing courses and may also rely on digital transcription services that provide text to text transcription with accuracy.

Even in this present digital age, the art of writing is important for drafting emails, blogs, website updates etc. Therefore, it is vital to teach students how to write well so that it will be useful for them in the future too. Following are some tips to strengthen your writing skills.

Create an outline: The first and foremost step is to have a good structure for your content. Making an outline of what needs to be written helps you to create a well-written essay or other content. Do not start writing without a clear topic because it affects the structure of the essay. The basic structure of academic writing has three main parts:

Introduction: This includes an overview of the topic and the purpose of the topic.
Body: This includes an elaborate and in-depth understanding of the topic and supporting examples.
Conclusion: This is the closure part which restates the topic, your arguments and suggestions about the topic.

Good writing style with punctuation and grammar: This includes good structuring of sentences, proper use of pronouns, articles, verb and subject agreement, and finally the use of correct punctuation forms. Grammar explains the form and structure of words and by mastering good grammar, students can make writing easier to understand. Punctuations help to convey the precise meaning of a sentence and it can also change the meaning of the sentence.

Good use of vocabulary: Use of good vocabulary helps you to express your thoughts in a clear and concise manner. It also brings more clarity to your argument and creates a good impression on readers. Use of obscure language can weaken your argument. Avoid words such as stuff, things etc as it will not give the readers a good sense of meaning. If a student’s vocabulary is poor, then he or she can refer to a thesaurus and a dictionary. Another tip is to read books and pay attention to the new words. These new words can be entered into a journal and used when necessary.
Analyze the evidence: Including scholarly evidence or any type of evidence in your essay is a mandatory requirement, especially for college essays. Including evidence that helps to illustrate some point in your essay is a great way to support your argument. Researchers can refer to journals, articles, research papers, and other peer-reviewed reliable resources to ensure that the arguments are valid.
Include a good conclusion:The main purpose of the conclusion is to restate the argument. Writing a proper conclusion is important because it allows you to have a final say about the essay, synthesize your thoughts, demonstrate the importance of your ideas and lead your readers to a new view of the subject. It is important to remember that a good conclusion gives a good final impression and ends the essay on a positive note.

Students need to be good writers in order to do well in their exams, complete homework assignments and eventually compose longer essays and reports. Writing gives voice to your inner thoughts and allows you to share them with others. Academic writing holds great significance and it needs attention and support from the academic fraternity. Implementing and evaluating practical writing methods in all levels of an institution helps to improve the writing skills of students. Students can also approach academic transcription service provider for text to text transcription solutions.