A first-class essay has an 80 percent or higher score, although some institutions categorize papers graded at 70-75% as first-class. In most cases, not so many students attain the benchmark. Nevertheless, writing high-grade essays in all your classes guaranteed you a first-class degree in your final combination transcript.
An A essay uses an appropriate attention-getting opening, makes a good transition, is well organized, has in-text citations and a bibliographic page, has a thesis statement supported by the body paragraphs, and has a befitting conclusion. Such an essay only attains distinction. Attaining a distinction in your essay takes practice, perfection, and dedication. If you write high-score essays, they will always be used as examples in class. You can also get the privilege of being published on the school's writing center's website.
Maybe you are a law, political science, criminology, music, anthropology, science, or business student, wondering how to write a distinction essay. Your questions end here because we have put together a guide that will help you write a good essay that scores good and excellent grades.
Wondering if you can write a first-class essay? Yes, you can, and here are some tips, tricks, and steps to help you ace your essays.
Everybody dreams and wishes they get the best grades in their high school, college, and university essays. Even when writing MBA and graduate-level essays, scoring higher grades can be challenging if you are unaware of the steps.
Our confident essay writers have developed these steps to help you achieve much, even with little time.
If you are wondering how an A essay looks, how it is written, and the steps it takes, we clarify all that here.
A good essay begins with reading the prompt, instructions, and rubric. Although this is a straightforward step, it carries too much weight in your writing process and determines the score you will get. Most students who skip this step end up derailing or getting confused with the ideas they present in their essays.
Reading the instructions helps you determine what the instructor, marker, or professor will look for when marking the essay to grade it among the top-scoring, average, or below-average essays. Knowing these benchmarks allows you to write an essay that meets the points.
All our writers will not begin writing an essay until you provide the prompt or instructions. Sometimes, when necessary, a writer will ask you to present them with the rubric to help them structure the essay and write it by following what the professors will be targeting.
Given the understanding of the prompt, rubric, and instructions, you must choose a question or topic.
You should put effort when choosing your essay question or topic because it determines the scope or direction of the essay. However, do not rush to pick a question because you think it sounds exciting or easy. Although doing so might sound convenient, the fact that you rushed into it will make you lose focus.
Instead, choose a topic or question with the information you can use to support the ideas that are interesting and neither too broad nor too narrow.
A first-class essay is engaging, flowing, and reinforced using academic/scholarly sources. Therefore, choose a topic where you can find high-standard sources and the correct number of sources.
Therefore, cross-check the sources available online through preliminary research to choose an outstanding topic. A focused question or topic guarantees a first-class score. If you are to select the topic, conduct research, weigh the available ideas, and determine if it is an essay, you can write within the number of words given. Choosing a good question demonstrates methodological rigor, a plus when marking your essay.
After you have chosen the topic and are well-informed of the marking criteria, you need to understand your topic or essay question. Doing so brings you closer to your essay's high scores.
Someone would say it is a cliche and a fundamental step, but you must do it to avoid failing your essay. Check for the directive words such as elaborate, assess, outline, explore, elaborate, critique, critically analyze, explain, compare, contrast, classify, prove, or discuss.
These signal words help determine the scope of your essay. Besides, understanding the question or topic enables you to develop a creative title for your essay.
After you understand the topic or question, you can write an outline for your essay. This is sometimes called the essay plan. The process is often called brainstorming, which entails evaluating your options, thoughts, and ideas and then coming up with the best.
As you settle down on the topic or question, you must begin researching to understand the topic further and plan your points for the essay. The question or the topic will determine the scope of your research stage for essay writing.
Focus on getting information from non-scholarly sources to familiarize yourself with the topic and develop a perspective. Then, skim through the scholarly resources to earn points and evidence for your essay.
Such evidence includes books, peer-reviewed articles, journal articles, periodicals, news from magazines and international news websites, books, government, educational, and NGO websites, and other relevant materials.
This research's results should help you develop an essay plan. When researching, use the thesaurus to understand technical terms and jargon so that you can simplify and use them in your essay. A high-quality essay does not have to use complex words. The simpler it is, the better.
Writing an essay plan helps you organize your ideas, which you can modify as you research, read, think, or discuss. An essay plan is a basic outline that lets you list the points you want to discuss in your essay.
It entails the essay topic or question, possible thesis statements, introduction statements, paragraph highlights (topic sentence (argument), evidence/elaboration/supporting materials, and the conclusion sentences), and conclusion. You can complete your essay plan as you research the topic.
The essay plan can help you write a good outline for your essay. Besides, you can know where the weight lies and what evidence to use. You can also draw mind maps to help plan your essay.
Using your essay plan, create an outline for your essay. Some students prefer to jump straight to the outline and leave out the essay plan, which is still okay. Either complements the other.
Therefore, you can write an outline summarizing the introduction sentence starters, essay hook, thesis statement, signpost, topic sentences, supporting sentences, and concluding sentences. In addition, your outline should have an organized list of materials you will use in your essay. You can organize these materials using online citation management tools.
Because you have not formed ideas in your outline, you need to refine the ideas in your essay plan or outline in the subsequent stages. Using the citations and references from the sources helps you structure your arguments. Categorize the sources based on the strength they have in supporting your arguments.
For example, if you are writing a three-page essay, ensure that the body of your essay has at least three main arguments that relate to the thesis, each well-supported by facts, evidence, and elaboration. The themes of the body paragraphs should relate to the essay title and the thesis statement. Front your strongest arguments first and go in order of decreasing strength.
The outline should have the structure of your essay. Let it be what you envision the top-grade essay to look like when complete. You can use the numbered approach when writing your outline to ensure that each point is presented. Also, your outline should determine the organization format: either spatial order or a chronological organization approach.
By now, you have everything you need to write an excellent essay that scores you an A. The remaining bit is to piece the information into a first draft. As a rule of thumb, when writing the first draft, focus on writing first and editing later. Following this will make essay writing less stressful and straightforward. Therefore, fill your outline by fulfilling the word count for every essay section.
Begin writing your introduction with an opening statement. An excellent way to start your essay is by using facts, contradicting information, statistics, or statements that draw your readers' attention. These attention grabbers signal your readers to read your essay to get the main argument.
These statements should be catchy, concise, and straightforward. Ensure that they are not broad claims or statements without correct facts. After the hook statement or the attention grabber, have a few lines or sentences detailing the topic's background.
Introduce the context of the topic and let the readers know why they should read your essay. Help the reader context the topic you are handling in the essay. You can summarize theories or define concepts and terms.
By now, you have a preliminary or working thesis and need to refine it as you proceed or maintain it. Therefore, follow your background statement with your refined thesis statement.
The thesis statement should condense the gist of your entire essay in a sentence or two.
Each topic sentence is a mini-thesis statement, meaning it draws strength from it. For more extended essays, you can signpost the ideas as they appear in the paragraphs so that your readers know what to anticipate and in what order.
After clearing your introduction, you need to develop the body paragraphs. A body paragraph should be between 130 words and 150 words. This means you should balance the sentences: using a mix of short and long sentences to achieve a reasonable word count.
Begin every paragraph with a distinct, relevant, and valid topic sentence. The topic sentences must connect to the thesis because each body paragraph elaborates on the thesis.
Have supporting details such as evidence, examples, illustrations, and explanations expounding on how the topic sentence and the evidence relate to the thesis and the topic.
Finally, you need a conclusion sentence that transitions your paragraph to the next one.
After writing the body paragraphs, complete your essay with a firm conclusion. 90% of the time, your professor, marker, or teacher will read the title, introduction, and conclusion and be able to tell the grade you get by skimming through the body paragraph.
A conclusion is worth 10% of the entire word count for your essay. Therefore, you have no time to introduce any new ideas. Instead, begin with the right conclusion statement and draw your readers' attention to the fact that the essay is coming to a close.
Next, write a summary wrapping up the main points in the body. Finally, your last sentence should be a call-to-action or final sentence that announces your stance on the topic.
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Although there is no bulletproof way to write an essay, editing, and proofreading thoroughly can turn a below-average essay into a first-class essay. We have received average essays and edited/proofread them to the extent of scoring As and distinctions for our clients.
After completing your essay, you should edit for grammar, punctuation, spelling, and organization. Check whether your points are flowing or whether you need to reorganize the paper and revise your thesis statement.
Likewise, check and correct mistakes to make your paper readable, gradable, and destined for high scores. This is technically the last step in the essay writing process.
Before this step, you can take a break to refresh your brain, break the writing monotony, and develop an objective mind. When editing and proofreading, read aloud to determine if the sentences fit into the context of a paragraph.
When you are done editing, check whether you have met the word count, dotted all your Is and crossed all your Ts, achieved the proper in-text citations depending on the formatting style, and set up your paper to 1-inch margins and font Times New Roman or Arial size 12.
Sometimes, take advantage of our online proofreading and editing services, for they have saved and turned around grades!
After you have ascertained that everything has fallen to its respective place, input your details, countercheck the submission guidelines, and submit the essay.
Submitting a well-written essay early increases the chance that your professor will read and mark it early when they still have a taste for marking.
You can bet that your essay will be marked and appropriate feedback is given. When submitting, ensure that your essay is in a Word document or any format your markers prefer.
Now that you know the steps, here are some essay cheats, hacks, and tips to help you write a high-score essay without breaking a sweat. So, whether you want a first-class essay in your law, political science, geography, English and Literature, or government class, here are the tips to help you. These tips can help you write an essay even if you lack the motivation to write one.
Once you are assigned to write an essay and want to score an A, you should plan, research, and write it early. 95% of the successful students always do and submit their assignments in three-quarters of the allotted time.
It allows them to write the essay when they still have the morale and burn. So, instead of waiting until the last minute, plan and begin writing your essay early.
Beginning early helps you reach out to your teacher for help with any questions regarding the essay prompt, topic, or essay questions. Sometimes, it also enables you to internalize everything and gather as many resources as required to write the essay.
Never use words you are unsure of, slang, and other informal words in your essay. Instead of complicating things, make them plain and simple. Professors know many things; they also have a lot of other things to do.
Using words that will prompt them to use dictionaries as they mark your paper makes them hate marking it. When you keep it simple, you are an inch closer to scoring an A in your essay.
When writing your essay, you must demonstrate that you have researched well beyond the course reading materials. Lecturers prefer and like novel materials and ideas. It makes them think of your essay as one that has in-depth information. And such is fodder for a distinction essay. Therefore, when writing your essay, research widely and in-depth.
First-class essays do not clumsily have unsupported points. All the claims, arguments, and points have to be substantiated. And as you support them, ensure that you critically elaborate on the evidence and weave in your opinions to explain them further.
A good way of demonstrating knowledge depth is through coherently framing the arguments. Then, in most cases, form an opinion based on the research. And you can only do this if you have the essay question, topic, title, and thesis statement in mind.
You can then build insights and thought processes that can be established through reading the essay. When your essay has a high level of logical reasoning and critical thinking, it is undoubtedly a first-class essay.
Let the reader know where your essay stands, given the conceptual and theoretical framework available in the literature. Of course, every claim statement in your essay has to be supported using relevant evidence.
We pride ourselves as a first-class essay service, given our insistence that writers develop essay plans and outlines. We have a post outlining the benefits of structuring your essay during pre-writing.
If you have a well-thought-out structure for your essay, you can present your arguments, support them, and give the right flow. First, map out your intro, body, and concluding paragraphs. A focused essay structure helps you visualize what falls where and in what order. That way, you can take your markers through the essay step-by-step.
With the basic structure of your essay, you can easily score a distinction on it, even if you write it at the last minute. The secret lies in ensuring your writing is clear, concise, coherent, comprehensive, compelling, and correct.
Your writing style should engage your readers right from the first sentence to the last dot for you to score an A. Only use the appropriate terms that demonstrate knowledge and not jargon or vocabulary that make reading your essay challenging.
Besides, stick to the citation and formatting styles to allow your readers to determine the scope and direction of your essay. Your arguments, too, must be solid and coherent. Let them demonstrate some technical knowledge to relate well with and engage your instructor or marker. Finally, a good essay sticks to the style requirements of the university or college.
And if there are opposing views, present them in your writing but show why your viewpoint is superior. This demonstrates maturity in your writing and that you have done in-depth research.
A distinction essay effectively uses core readings, further reading, and personal research (scholarly articles and sources outside of what is provided in class).
When incorporating the sources into your essay, use appropriate words such as posits, contends, illustrates, demonstrates, reports, assets, etc., to draw your readers' attention to the evidence.
You should then provide appropriate citations and elaborate or expound on the evidence given in your thesis. Again, use recent sources (those published in the last five years) unless you have to cite seminal work or primary sources published in the past.
Strive to get scholarly sources from academic databases such as EBSCOhost, ProQuest, Jstor, PubMed, etc., which can be accessed via the university library. If unsure, you can also ask the librarian for good sources. And when you borrow ideas, cite every piece of information to avoid plagiarism in your essay.
Plagiarism is the first of the things you can do to mess up a first-class essay. A top-grade essay demonstrates reasoning, creativity, critical thinking, and mature writing and presentation skills. As you weave in what others have said, bring in your personal perspective to demonstrate independence and mature reasoning.
You can do this in the body paragraphs. Present logical arguments that are concise, clear, complete, correct, and coherent. Demonstrate confidence in your writing by expressing your perspective when explaining the evidence. Stay formal and original all through to make a first-class essay.
Avoid using too many quotes from other sources unless stated otherwise. Likewise, do not paraphrase too much. Instead, let your personal opinion be seen and demonstrated through your writing.
You can be stuck in your world of wrongness throughout the pre-writing, writing, and post-writing phases. However, when you have a second and third eye on your work, chances are that things will be okay. Therefore, check with someone outside your class, such as a professional proofreader, grading, marking services, or your professor, if your essay meets the standards set in the rubric.
Let them read and critique your essay's presentation, content, and organization. Our advice is that you take their critique seriously and revise the essay.
And as you revise, check the marking criteria to ascertain that your changes improve your grading. Remember, your target is beyond 75 marks to attain a first-class in your essay. Getting 80 points and above makes it a distinction essay.
A typical university- or college-level essay is assessed based on several characteristics that make it score an A or a lower grade. You can produce a first-class essay consistently if your paper meets the criteria below. After writing your essay, ensure to countercheck if it checks all the checkboxes in this first-class essay checklist.
Introduction
Body
Conclusion
We often get questions regarding how to write good essays. We have provided answers below to some of the commonly asked questions.
The score for a first-class or distinction essay varies depending on the university. Some universities cap 65-75 as the best score, whereas others are 70-80 percent. To be safe, strive to write essays scoring at least 80% to attain first-class grading.
Yes, you can write a perfect essay that scores the top grade in your rubric. To do so, research, read, plan, and write well. Ensure that your essay's argument is supported and weaved in your voice. Your essay should be mechanically sound and devoid of any errors and mistakes. A first-class essay is good; it is written up to the standards of essay writing and has a thesis statement, a hook, and a reasonable conclusion.
Start writing your essay using an attention-grabber or a hook. Let it be a statement, an idea, a fact, a statistic, or some statement that can attract the attention of any reader. Let the readers know the value of your essay off the bat.
Yes, why not? If you get your peace and pieces of ideas, thoughts, and arguments together and follow the eight steps we illustrated and the tips we gave, you can write an essay overnight and score an A. But, of course, the secret lies in how deep your research is. Writing an A-grade essay is as easy as snapping your finger if you have researched well. Oh! And remember to organize your research; this is where your essay plan and outline comes in handy.
To write a distinction law essay, start in advance. Deconstruct the question early enough, research widely, write an essay plan, write your essay, include the relevant citations, meet the length requirements, and have a reasonable conclusion.
When writing a political science essay, choose a good topic. Ensure that you can convince your readers using the few words at hand. Plan your essay early enough, brainstorm ideas, write an outline, write the paper beginning with the intro and finishing with a conclusion, polish your thesis, and proofread the essay.
Referencing is a mainstay in academic essay writing. References help the markers understand your thought process and tell the reader you have researched. Writing an essay with evidence helps shine a light on your readers and advances a scholarly discussion. It is proof that you organized your ideas, researched what scholars are saying, integrated the evidence into your essay then explained using your own words.
The number of sources you can use depends on the length of your essay, the data you are using, and the university essay instructions. A one-page essay should have at least two references. A two-page essay can have 4-5 references. The three-page essay will have at least 6-8 references, and the trend continues.
If you are writing a 1200 to1500-word essay, use 10-13 sources. And if you are writing a 2000 words essay, have up to 15 or 17 references. A 10-page essay can have up to 20 sources. Do not depend on just two to three references when writing an essay beyond two pages. In most cases, you will be told the number of sources to use. Do not overcite as you need to present your opinion as well.
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