Cupcat 9 | - Freelance Writer
Dec 28, 2018 | #1
The point of writing an essay is to make sure that a student reads his lessons, understands the textbook information, and can apply the lessons in a required setting. Therefore, the essay needs to be informative and direct to the point. Why then, do professors insist on 1000-word essays that clearly have no point? If a paper can be written in 500 words, why require 1000? The simple answer? It doesn't accomplish anything.
Essays are written with the intention of delivering a clear response to a given statement or discussion topic. It is not the same as a research paper that requires a student to present certain types of inter-related information to the reader based on a learning of information taken from assorted academic sources. An essay is often just an opinion paper that takes it cues from the day's lesson or assigned reading, which asks the student to explain what he understood using information coming from the given text. It isn't meant to be rocket science. Yet professors seem to insist that students write a tremendous amount of words for say, a simple movie review based on "American Chaos." An essay is a mere reaction paper. A research paper, well, that's different. A research paper needs to be written in at least 1000 words. An essay, not so much.
Having a student write more than 500 words for a simple essay doesn't make much sense. Students may not have 1000 words to say about a given topic. The longest they can stretch their statement is 500 words at the most. Anything more than that and the essay turns into a vocabulary exercise for the student instead of an analytical opinion paper.
For an English native speaking student, he would not need 1000 words to express himself. Being a native speaker, he knows how to express himself directly in English and he doesn't very much care for beating around the bush when discussing a topic. He can reflect his intelligence using a few precise and proper meaning words within an essay. This is what sets him apart from an ESL student writing an essay.
An ESL student requires familiarity with the English language. Which is why asking an ESL learner to write more English words in his essay makes sense. He needs to understand word meanings and develop a proper sentence structure. This can only be done by encouraging him to write more English words. This is the only situation when a vocabulary competition should be in place for an essay. It should not be in play for a simple class writing assignment.
Writing long essays doesn't have a point in the academic world. Unless the student is writing a scientific paper, he doesn't have much use for an extremely long explanation of a given topic. Even an analytical report essay need not be extremely wordy. Essays that use too many words tend to be boring in presentation. Readers also find it more difficult to follow such essays which take too long to get to the point.
Essay readers only want the simplest presentation, regardless of topic complexity. Give them a subject sentence at the start of each paragraph and allow the writer to explain that topic. The reader will get the point. Use simple everyday words to help yourself be better understood as the writer. Don't try to rival Shakespeare or Plato. Just be understandable. It's not a vocabulary competition.
Long essays often fail to deliver on its message because of the focus on creative writing. Which is what happens when a student who doesn't have any real writing skills has to write a 1000-word essay. Instead of making a point, he tries to simply keep writing in the hopes that nobody will notice the lack of focus in his written work. Sadly, the professors notice, and it results in a not so ideal grade for the student on the essay. assignment. Something that could have been avoided had the professor set a more logical word count requirement for the essay discussion instead.
Essays are written with the intention of delivering a clear response to a given statement or discussion topic. It is not the same as a research paper that requires a student to present certain types of inter-related information to the reader based on a learning of information taken from assorted academic sources. An essay is often just an opinion paper that takes it cues from the day's lesson or assigned reading, which asks the student to explain what he understood using information coming from the given text. It isn't meant to be rocket science. Yet professors seem to insist that students write a tremendous amount of words for say, a simple movie review based on "American Chaos." An essay is a mere reaction paper. A research paper, well, that's different. A research paper needs to be written in at least 1000 words. An essay, not so much.Having a student write more than 500 words for a simple essay doesn't make much sense. Students may not have 1000 words to say about a given topic. The longest they can stretch their statement is 500 words at the most. Anything more than that and the essay turns into a vocabulary exercise for the student instead of an analytical opinion paper.
For an English native speaking student, he would not need 1000 words to express himself. Being a native speaker, he knows how to express himself directly in English and he doesn't very much care for beating around the bush when discussing a topic. He can reflect his intelligence using a few precise and proper meaning words within an essay. This is what sets him apart from an ESL student writing an essay.
An ESL student requires familiarity with the English language. Which is why asking an ESL learner to write more English words in his essay makes sense. He needs to understand word meanings and develop a proper sentence structure. This can only be done by encouraging him to write more English words. This is the only situation when a vocabulary competition should be in place for an essay. It should not be in play for a simple class writing assignment.
Writing long essays doesn't have a point in the academic world. Unless the student is writing a scientific paper, he doesn't have much use for an extremely long explanation of a given topic. Even an analytical report essay need not be extremely wordy. Essays that use too many words tend to be boring in presentation. Readers also find it more difficult to follow such essays which take too long to get to the point.
Essay readers only want the simplest presentation, regardless of topic complexity. Give them a subject sentence at the start of each paragraph and allow the writer to explain that topic. The reader will get the point. Use simple everyday words to help yourself be better understood as the writer. Don't try to rival Shakespeare or Plato. Just be understandable. It's not a vocabulary competition.
Long essays often fail to deliver on its message because of the focus on creative writing. Which is what happens when a student who doesn't have any real writing skills has to write a 1000-word essay. Instead of making a point, he tries to simply keep writing in the hopes that nobody will notice the lack of focus in his written work. Sadly, the professors notice, and it results in a not so ideal grade for the student on the essay. assignment. Something that could have been avoided had the professor set a more logical word count requirement for the essay discussion instead.