Writing Essays at College: Why It’s Important
Digital age has brought many changes to our lives, one of which is definitely the importance of writing as means of communication. People all over the world exchange information on a daily basis using written forms such as e-mails, text messaging, posts on social networks, comments on portals, blog entries… They express their thoughts, emotions, reasoning, argumentation for or against something. However, it is sometimes difficult to understand the message one has sent. When speaking, an interlocutor has a chance to ask for clarification or to pay attention to the body language of the speaker. Nonetheless, if one wants to convey the exact message in a written form, it may become difficult to say it exactly without writing an entire novel. The problem is getting bigger if an expert in the field is not able to convey his ideas properly when writing scientific or research papers. The laymen cannot understand science and, thus, misinterpret the whole papers. Here we come to the point where it is necessary to talk about developing writing skills during schooling in an organized and systematic way. Academic writing courses are a must at the tertiary level of education: students should be taught how to express their ideas in a concise and coherent way by organizing thoughts into meaningful, structured paragraphs while supporting their ideas with valid arguments. Specific skills are needed to express oneself appropriately in writing. The aim of this essay is to draw attention to the importance of technical aspects of writing where students should be taught the format and essay organization, development of students’ mastery of written language and expression of ideas through balanced and objective content. Academic essays are tools to communicate one’s research and findings to the academic community; therefore, universities should foster such courses in order to educate eloquent and literate graduates.
One of the basic reasons why students should have essay writing courses is that they should master the technical aspects of academic writing. Academic writing is certainly not the same as creative writing. It means that students at college should become aware of the essay format and organization. The essay format may sound as a pure technicality but it is important to check the title, indenting, margins, spacing, word count or other guidelines as required. Another relevant technical aspect is essay organization, i.e. whether the essay is organized into paragraphs, starting from the introductory paragraph, going through body paragraphs and ending with conclusion. Furthermore, it is not only the overall paragraph organization that matters - each of the paragraphs should have their own micro organization and composition in order to convey ideas easily. Students should learn how to develop their ideas by introducing the topic sentence and the controlling idea and further supporting them with facts, arguments or examples. This process is referred to as funneling and it needs a lot of time and practice to develop such technical skills.
Apart from the above mentioned technical components, writing essays regularly at college develops students’ written language and enhances their writing skills. Since practice makes perfect, students will become better at spelling, mechanics, punctuation, capital letters, grammar, sentence structure and the use of vocabulary. Moreover, by using different language structures they will not only add to variety and richness of argumentation but also practice reaching coherence (by achieving logical organization, using transition words and consistent pronouns) and paragraph unity (one idea per paragraph). In addition to this, in order to have an effective communication they should pay attention to cohesion (the relationship between different parts in the paragraph). Besides consolidating language structures, developing writing skills requires building up adequate vocabulary and register for the task set. Academic writing demands appropriate formal register and vocabulary meticulously chosen to provide the most accurate possible description of the topic. These components should become part of a carefully designed academic writing course where teachers guide students through the process of developing writing skills and enriching specialist vocabulary.
Nevertheless, technical aspects and language used are not enough for proper piece of writing. Since one of the aims of academic studies is to deepen and broaden students’ knowledge in a particular area of study, the task of essay writing courses should be to teach the future experts, specialists and researchers how to communicate their ideas and findings to others. The way of conveying their conclusions in a written form is through content. Content of the essay is not only organizationally but also contextually challenging. It requires structuring paragraphs by paying attention both to the order of importance and logical division of ideas. Furthermore, students must learn to supply that context that in spoken communication is evident from other nonlinguistic sources. They should provide relevant and adequate answer to the task set. Content of the essay should be balanced both in paragraphs and controlling ideas. Students should learn how to think critically by proposing both pros and cons, agreeing and disagreeing, comparing and contrasting and providing supporting facts and examples objectively. In a nutshell, content of the essay depends to some extent on the knowledge of the writer but it is also important to master the organizational challenges of how to deliver it adequately to the reader.
In summary, I strongly believe that essay writing courses should become an integral part of all academic studies no matter whether one studies humanities or technical sciences. Written form is very important as a tool to convey ideas, research findings or thoughts. In order to do this efficiently, future graduates should know about technical aspects of essay organization, their language skills should be developed and sophisticated, and their thoughts should be expressed clearly and precisely. Structure, language and content are key words for a successful essay writing. Well-structured and balanced academic essays need to be taught and practiced; they have nothing to do with creative talent to write, but with practicing and drilling. If a university cannot offer such a course independently, then it is up to the teachers to organize their specialist courses in that way they should include essay writing on a regular basis. Therefore, graduate students will be able to use the written form successfully in communication not only to the professionals but also to nonexperts and avoid misunderstanding and erroneous interpretations.
