10 Life Hacks to Improve Your Academic Writing Skills
If you are a student, you know all about the perils of academic writing. You also know that academic writing isn’t the most natural way to write. In fact, it’s a rather artificial way of writing, full of formality and stylization, making it hard to master. If you are one of the thousands of students who struggle with academic writing, you may be looking for ways to improve your academic writing skills.
Fortunately, there are some great life hacks that can help you to improve your academic writing skills. In this article, we’ll take a look at ten life hacks that can improve your academic writing so you can develop great essays that will hit the mark every time.
Essay writing has become something of an arms race between students who don’t want to write them and instructors who don’t want to read them. Thus, students copy and paste from the internet and instructors use plagiarism-detection software to catch them. Students have begun using artificial intelligence services to generate instant essays and instructors use AI-detection software to catch them. For each new advance to avoid essays another advance arises to stop them.
So, what can you do to improve your academic writing? Read on to find out:
Hack 1: Write during the morning hours
Many students procrastinate on their essays because they either hate writing them or have difficulty doing so. This blocks improvement of academic writing skills and can lead to late night writing sessions that are unproductive, particularly when students try to pull all-nighters. Most people are at their most productive and most alert in the early morning hours, when they are freshly rested. It can be a great idea to write as early in the day as possible so you can take advantage of your brain at its most agile.
Hack 2: Set clear writing goals
To improve your academic writing skills you need to pick a specific goal to work on with each new essay. This could include things like improving your grammar, increasing the clarity of your writing, or using more sophisticated vocabulary. Having clear goals will help you focus your efforts and track your progress, and making incremental improvements can seem a lot more achievable than trying to reach perfection all at once.
Hack 3: Outline before you write
Planning makes the academic writing process easier. Make an outline before you start writing. An outline will help you organize your thoughts and keep you on track as you write. An outline can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be, but the more detail you put into an outline, the better it will serve you during the writing process. A strong outline lists your thesis statement, your main points, and supporting details. A great outline also plans out the research you will use to prove each of your supporting details.
Hack 4: Seek professional essay help
You can learn a lot about the best way to write essays with professional academic writing services. It is one of the most effective ways to improve writing skills online. When you hire online writers from a company like SmartWritingService, you can see how a pro would approach your topic and use that information to develop your own essay. Seeing how professionals produce essays and develop arguments about your topic can show you the right way to develop your own paper and give you inspiration for new ways to approach your topic.
Hack 5: Use active voice whenever possible
Academic writing is notorious for using long passive-voice sentences, but this stereotype is not the right way to develop effective and engaging writing. Active voice makes your writing more direct and engaging, and it can also help you avoid awkward or wordy sentences. Choose active voice whenever possible.
Hack 6: Stay away from cliches and buzzwords
Is it cheugy to bluesky your paper? It’s certainly cringe. Avoid using cliches, buzzy slang, or overused phrases. These can make your writing seem unoriginal and can distract from your main points. Instead, use specific and concrete language. Spike vague or abstract words and cliches and try to use concrete words that convey a clear and specific meaning.
Hack 7: Practice reading your writing out loud
It’s far too easy for your eye to skip over mistakes when you are glancing at your work on a screen. Reading out loud can be a fix. This can help you identify awkward or unclear passages, and it can also help you improve your writing style by listening to what you wrote and using another sense—your ears rather than your eyes—to edit.
Hack 8: Get feedback from others
Receiving feedback can help you identify areas for improvement and help you grow as an academic writer. Asking for feedback can put a new set of eyes on your paper and help you to see past your own blind spots. Some potential sources of feedback could include classmates, professors, or a tutor.
Hack 9: Reward yourself
It isn’t always productive to write nonstop. Take periodic, fun breaks to refresh your mind and give yourself time to revise and edit your work. Rushing through the academic writing process can lead to careless mistakes and subpar writing. When you’re done with your paper, reward yourself with a special treat, such as a favorite TV show or food.
Hack 10: Keep learning and expanding your knowledge
The more you know about a subject, the easier it is to write about it clearly and accurately. Consider taking additional courses or doing independent research to broaden your understanding of the topics you are writing about.
