Imagine this scenario where your high school professor comes into class and says “students, let’s learn how to close read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird”. You’ve already read that book, so you know it wouldn't be much of a problem. But then as your professor starts explaining to the class what close reading a text is and what is required to do, you realize that this isn’t just a piece of cake and requires critical thinking and analysis.

Have you ever spent hours thinking of how to write a good thesis statement only to resort to the dull “This essay is going to be about...”? Stop. That’s not going to work. Not only is it a lazy tactic, but it also does nothing to entice the reader. How important is the thesis statement, you ask? Very important. It might seem like a simple two-line sentence in the introduction but it needs to embody the essence of the essay. This article will tell you what a thesis statement is and how you can write a good thesis statement.

Have you ever read a piece of literature and wondered how smoothly the author transitioned from one paragraph to the next? Making smooth transitions while writing is not a piece of cake. Most students struggle to write in a cohesive manner that effectively communicates the message. If you want to improve paragraph transitions and are wondering which words or phrases to use, this article’s for you. Read on to learn more about using strong transition words for essays with confidence.

College is the first step of turning into an adult -- academics, independence, responsibilities, stress, anxiety, friendship, laughter, and the list just goes on. It is the first step for what your life will turn into for the next few years, and let’s just say, it can get very stressful. There are times you can get overwhelmed, with the pressure to excel and the amount of work piled on you in the form of projects, essays, assignments, and exams.

Interviews, case studies, dissertations — you are most probably aware of primary research sources but there might come instances when you won’t be able to conduct primary research. What happens then? You turn to secondary research sources for your essay. Knowing how to conduct secondary research for your essay is very important. “Why” you wonder? That’s exactly what this article will address. Read on to learn what are the secondary research sources and how you can conduct secondary research for your high-school or college essay.

As a college student, your priority is to submit your essays and other assignments in the topmost quality, and turning an average or a good essay into an outstanding one requires the use of effective tools and websites. These online tools make the process of writing an essay much easier, helping you get better grades from your professors. Some students may not be gifted with perfect writing skills and would need some help to overcome their essay writing woes. If you’re one of them? This article is for you as we list the 11 best websites every college should know to simplify the essay writing experience.

Imagine this: your English literature course has been covering Shakespeare’s Hamlet for the last three weeks. You have nothing in common with Hamlet. He is a depressed brat — we know. He resents women, is a terrible lover, and far from an empathetic son. In fact, he annoys you so much with his strange ways and unpredictable behavior that you give up reading the play. SparkNotes it is, you tell yourself. But then, your teacher gives you a prompt and asks you to write an essay about Hamlet. You have now shut out everything and instead, you focus on the impending pain of having to write an interesting essay about something you cannot relate to on any level.

Have you ever had to write a literature review, not knowing what it is or how to write it, and then failed miserably on paper and in the eyes of your professor? But first -- why should one have to write a stellar literature review? Yes, it absolutely does! The purpose of writing a literature review is to summarize and analyze the ideas and concepts of the author, without bringing your personal opinions and ideas into the review. In this article, you will learn how to outline a literature review in five simple steps.

If there is one aspect of academics that has constantly haunted students and kept faculty on the alert, it’s plagiarism. Plagiarism usually revolves around someone using other people’s ideas, phrases, and words as their own, without giving a proper citation, whereas self-plagiarism happens when a person reuses their own materials and work that have already been published or submitted to their professors. If you’re wondering if you can get in trouble for plagiarizing yourself, read this article to know more.

Persuasive essays are assigned to students for using logic and reasoning, to show that the points they are making are more legitimate and credible than the other. Choose a correct topic, work on your argument, use logical evidence to prove why you are right, and try to persuade your professors to adopt your stance. The first step to submitting a quality persuasive essay is to know what topic you’ll be writing your paper on. Choosing the best persuasive essay topic will make the remaining process of writing the essay a much simpler task.

A narrative essay is a story you tell about yourself, your experiences, and your thought processes. The purpose of writing a narrative essay isn’t just about telling a tale but to figure out a deeper meaning behind each experience. Students are encouraged to find a moral or a theme that they can pull out from their experiences that changed their lives, even in the slightest possible manner. In this article, we enlist personal narrative ideas for high school to get you started.

When you’re giving a commemorative speech, you are celebrating either a person, an organization, a place, or an incident. Make sure you’re always genuine, courteous, and meaningful. As giving tributes go, it is advisable to let your audience know why you care about the person or the subject matter and highlight why it is significant to celebrate their accomplishments. But before, how do you start a commemorative speech? This article will tell you everything college students need to know about starting a commemorative speech with a powerful punch.

It’s Sunday night, and you just realized that you haven’t even started writing your 1000-word essay that is due on Monday. How are you going to write it in one night, you wonder. What follows is panic as you rack your brain wondering where and how to begin. Writing is an art. Every word you write is mirroring your thoughts and ideas on paper. Similarly, how you express these words is a way of expressing yourself. While essay writing is not rocket science, it certainly isn’t something you should take lightly as well.

Have there been times that you have read a short story in class and tried to analyze its meaning by deep-diving into the text to understand better? If yes, this article is for you.Short stories are relatively much shorter and less complex than most novels or plays. But that does not mean that they don’t require an in-depth analysis of what is written in the text and what messages the author of the book intends to convey to its readers. In this article, you will learn how to analyze a short story step-by-step, along with the essential elements of a short story.

A literary analytical essay majorly evaluates a literary piece of work, it could as well be any book or reading material that your professor has assigned to you to examine and analyze. Writing such an essay involves students to break the text down into smaller pieces and analyze each of these portions separately to form a comprehensive analysis of the assigned book. There are many steps to follow when you write an analytic essay. In this article, you will learn how to write an analytical essay on a book and how to structure the essay.

Note-taking is a powerful tool that helps in summarizing difficult concepts and retaining and understanding information that is given out during lectures. It helps you stay focused, and gather more data. Writing your notes down will enable you to memorize the points better and keep a record of what was taught on a certain day, thereby helping you study for your exams. In this article, you will learn how to take good lecture notes and make it work for you. Note-taking is like your personal reference library. It’s safe to say that the skill of taking good notes is effective in achieving your study goals and getting better grades in class.