By: Steve Patterson
Submitted: 2010-12-30 16:56:41 | Word Count: 529
If you are given the task of writing an academic essay, you want to know the best approach to adopt so that you get the best possible grades. On the surface, this sounds easy enough but there is more than meets the eye, as you shall soon see.
Most students think that just by submitting a well researched paper that is written with perfect grammar means that they have a chance for scoring well. Unfortunately, this approach will most likely get them an average score. Let's take a look at why this is on.
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An academic essay is often used as a tool by educational institutions to assess the students in various areas. Different educational systems may have different grading systems. But in general, most will want to grade students according to: amount of research (or the equivalent of effort), understanding of topic, originality of ideas, and expression of ideas. These are the four key areas.
As you can see, it is easy to assess a student's ability to write and to conduct research. It is also easy to see whether a student has a good grasp of the subject at hand just by reading the paper. For instance, if a student has good command of English, he has a good command of English. There is no two way about it.
The problem is, it's not so easy when it comes to assessing originality of ideas. What if all the students start coming up with original ideas? Does that mean all of them should get distinctions for their papers? In theory, they should. But in reality, we all know that this is not the case. That is because educational institutions sometimes set thresholds as to how many students can score As, how many can score Bs, and so on. That means even if you have a whole cohort of geniuses, not everyone will get As. Only a handful will be able to get the top grade.
So what does that mean for the student?It means that in order to have a higher chance of scoring top grades, you need to know what your fellow classmates are writing about. Often, you can get a good feel of what the other students are writing just by talking to them.
But note that this does not mean seeing your classmates as the competition. In fact, all of you have the same goal - to score good grades. The challenge, therefore, should be to elevate everyone's standards by having open discussions about the ideas that you are going to write about. That way, everyone shares and the writing process becomes more fun. As students, the common "enemy" is whoever will be grading the papers. So make the job of the graders as tough as possible by submitting top notch academic essays.
This is the secret that very few students know about. Usually, in any given cohort, only a few students know this. And guess what? They are the ones who score top grades. And they continue to do so on a consistent basis. Know that you know the secret as well, maybe you can score better than them!
