essays

What kind of tips are you looking for? Like on organization, facts to use, so on and so forth? What do you really want to know/what do you know about them already?

Hmm, you really need to use your best judgment for that. Try to put plenty in, but also remember that you need to tie it all togeather. It's all well and good if you're able to sling hard facts at the readers, but if you aren't able to connect them back to your main point, they're worthless. You have to make sure that you have a balance between facts and analysis. Is what I'm trying to say helpful and making sense to you?

Have any of your English teachers ever told you about AEC? It's a very simple and successful essay writing tip, in any class.

AEC stands for Assertion, Evidence, Commentary. It's a standard format for body paragraphs.

First, you make an assertion. This is the statement you will be proving, and it usually relates to your thesis. Second, you provide evidence. This is where you figure out what facts you need to back up your assertion. Finally, you add commentary - this is analysis that "connects the dots" between your evidence and your assertion. All you have to do is provide a logical progression from the cold hard facts to the conclusion you've drawn for them.

For example: If your thesis was "Although slavery provided economic security for the South, it caused much tension and disagreement and led to the Civil War, proving itself to be more of a curse than a blessing", your first assertion might be "The South's booming economy owed much to the institution of slavery", and your evidence could be a few facts like "Cotton and other crops were the main staple of the economy in the south, and they could not be produced without slave labor." Then, your commentary would explain WHY slave labor's product of cotton was essential to the economy of the South. You can continue with another body paragraph about the cons of slavery, then a concluding paragraph.

This format should help you balance fact with analysis and make a more cohesive essay. Hope it helps!

EDIT: I forgot! If you want to include more pieces of evidence that are unrelated, just repeat the EC. For example, if I proved two separate points in one assertion with two different groups of evidence, I would follow the format AECEC for that paragraph.