How to Help Students or Children Prepare for Essay Writing Tests

I've taught students both how to write the essays for their school tests and been a test grader for the companies that score them. Learning to score the tests opened my eyes to how to help students learn to write them. Here are some tips so that you can as well.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pen and paper
• An essay writing prompt in the style of the prompts used in testing

1. 
   Follow the rules for transitions and paragraph contents when writing an essay.

   The biggest problem students have is worrying about what to say. The secret that students don't realize is that what you say doesn't matter, so long as it makes sense. Help them stop spending so much time deciding what to say when concentrating on saying something—anything—properly is what's most important.

2. The test is scored on the way you say things, not on what you say. Decide on what to say quickly and spend the majority of the time working out how to say it. The writing prompt will suggest something and offer a few suggestions about how to approach the topic. Grab onto the first idea you have and start developing the points you need to elaborate on that idea. Decide what the overall, final point will be and choose ideas that will help build up to that point in the conclusion.

3. Is there a good introductory paragraph? It must provide the main points that will be covered in the essay. Each point gets a sentence. The sentences in the opening paragraph are like promises. The writer promises to write a paragraph about each point raised in the introduction. For a five-paragraph essay, there are three points (the three body paragraphs will develop each one) to introduce.

4. Take the ideas introduced in the introductory paragraph and develop them with at least three or four supporting sentences per paragraph in the body of the essay. Each body paragraph begins with a transitional sentence or phrase. The transitions can be simple. For a five-paragraph essay simple transitions like "First..." "Next..." and "Finally..." work. For a compare and contrast essay, transitions like "Similarities include..." or "Differences include..." or perhaps "On the one hand..." or "On the other hand..." are fine.

5. Supporting sentences need to be grammatically correct with proper capitalization and punctuation. They need to say something sensible about the topic, but these sentences don't have to be brilliant, or even true–-just organized and on topic. Supporting sentences must "support" the points listed in the introduction–-those promises about what was to come.

6. Another transional sentence or phrase begins the conclusion. Something as simple as "In conclusion..." or "To sum up..." is all that is needed. Depending on the type of essay, the conclusion serves different purposes. The conclusion can offer thoughts about what was learned from the points made in the essay or reach a decision about something based on its advantages and disadvantages. The conclusion must be based on the points made in the essay, since the whole essay is building up to a conclusion about the topic.

7. Be organized. Use transitions. Stick to the ideas introduced in the beginning. Elaborate on each one with several supporting sentences. Draw a conclusion about the topic. Do that, and the essay will score well, no matter what it's talking about.

[vadra]

on 1/3/2009 This is great... very helpful.