6 Mistakes You Should Never Let Your Child Make While Writing School Essays

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Writing School Essays

Essays and assignments are a standard part academic assessments. But, many students end up losing points for mistakes that are avoidable. 

There are ways to make sure these common mistakes are avoided so that students don’t become habituated to careless errors. 

As a parent, you can only guide your children, check their work, and encourage them to work harder and better. Also, you can offer them pointers and important tips to improve their essay writing skills.

1. Generic Titles

One of the first mistakes students tend to make is using a generic title. While it does correspond to the assignment, it does not showcase creativity nor inspire people to read. 

Essays with a great and creative title will attract the readers attention. The best way to do this is to use adjectives that emphasize the topic. Use different terms, for example, instead of ‘My Childhood’, you can use ‘Growing Up in a Small Town.’

2. Boring Opening Paragraph

The opening paragraph is important as it is meant to engage the readers and make them invested in the topic. 

Students should always use the opening paragraph as a way to describe their topic briefly. They should do this in about two or three sentences so that they don’t end up repeating themselves. 

If the topic is ‘Growing Up in a Small Town,’ they can start by stating their feelings about growing up there. This statement sets the tone of the essay, so they can make it positive or negative and give a basic idea of what the reader will experience in the essay. 

3. Repetitive Statements

Students tend to make roundabout points that are not well thought out and end up making the essay a little repetitive. Students usually make this mistake in order to increase the length or word count of their essays. 

This is avoidable by planning out the essay and having a few key points that need to be in the essay. They can also avoid this by doing in-depth research and getting more points for the essay.

When writing an extended essay, students should create a detailed structure and plan roughly how many words they can write under one sub-topic. 

You can also offer to read your child’s extended essay and suggest edits where repetition is noticeable. If you can’t find the time, look for online resources that can help in refining the extended essay

4. Grammatical Errors

When students start writing essays they get into the flow and oftentimes end up using the wrong tense or the wrong form. 

The best way to remedy this is to reread the essay after finishing. 

Checking and rechecking work is a great practice as it can help students understand the flow of their essays. This can also help them correct spelling and grammar errors that they might have made. 

Students should always double and triple-check all their work before submitting it.

5. Poor Research

Today we have the whole world at our fingertips. But when writing school essays this can be a headache as it’s hard to find credible sources. 

Most students look for a single source while researching and think it will save them time. But this might be their downfall! 

Poor research can lead them to use roundabouts and repetitive statements in their essay. 

It is better to gather a few reliable information sources. Having multiple sources will also give their essay more foundation and content. 

6. Not Including a Bibliography

Students often forget a bibliography or have a very short bibliography that is not credible. Some students might also be deterred by the word bibliography but it is ultimately just listing your sources for cross-referencing.

As mentioned beforehand, it is better to have multiple sources to build the essay around. This strategy will also give students a diverse and unique bibliography. 

A thorough bibliography will show that they put work into research and consequently their essays. 

Conclusion

These tips are simple and can save a student’s essays and also their grades. 

Always encourage your child to research well and find credible information for writing school essays, put in original work, and never ignore proper grammar and spelling.