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How to make the most of English practice essays 📑

You’re often told by your teacher to churn out as many practice essays as possible in order to get better at essay writing. While practice does make perfect, churning out a million essays isn’t really going to get you anywhere. You may think I’m messing with you but hear me out: Practice essays are important. But you need to actually use them in order to make the ‘practice makes perfect’ stand true to its words. If you feel super frustrated with practice essays right now and feel like you’re getting nowhere with them, the following tips listed below will probably benefit you a lot.

So how do you really use practice essays?

Break down your essay ☕️

In the same way that you would break down a paragraph from a text in class, you need to pretend that your entire essay is a piece of text that you need to analyse and evaluate. This time is incredibly valuable and is often skipped over by many students. It is quite literally the purpose of writing a practice essay. Breaking down your essay will allow you to understand what elements you have included and what is missing. This is essential to know if you have ticked all the required sections of your marking criteria.

Read and incorporate your feedback ✅

Often, when you’re writing essays as practice for yourself, you don’t always get feedback from teachers and other peers. But when you do receive an opportunity to have your essay marked, use the feedback!

I know this sounds super cliché and repetitive but it’s crazy how much improvement you can see in your next essay when you properly apply your feedback. Quite frequently, students tend to believe that looking at feedback is a waste of time, and it is better spent writing another essay, but doing this is kind of like shooting yourself in the foot before a race. You are more likely to repeat the same mistakes again in your next essay. The best way to actually improve is to ask someone to read over your essay and provide actionable feedback. So yes, essentially one of the best things you can do for yourself to ‘study smart and not hard’ is to use your feedback effectively.

Rewrite the same essay ✍️

Another reason why you might not see improvements in your essays could be because you’re not that familiar with certain aspects of essay writing. For instance, you may not be that great at integrating audience positioning in your writing. Acknowledging this is the first step to improvement. So, instead of ignoring this fact and jumping to the next essay, it's best to pause. I highly recommend developing one skill at a time for immediate improvement. In this circumstance, the best approach would be to rewrite the essay again with a focus on directly improving your ability to seamlessly integrate audience positioning.

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Send it through to us now and we'll return your essay to you with detailed marking and feedback. Don't forget to also attach the original prompt! We'll even compare it to any criteria or rubric you've been given to make sure it aligns with your marking standards 🔥