Essay Tips

sunflower

ESSAY WRITING TIPS
So you want to continue your formal education abroad.  As an Asian student, the best opportunity to explain your own reasons to the admissions committee for this academic endeavor will be through the written essays.  In these essays, you will also be able to explain how you will utilize your differences to add to learning experience of the other students at the university.  In fact, it is very important for you to recognize and acknowledge these differences in your essays.  In doing this, you will succeed in attracting the attention of the admissions committee.  To help you decide on topics for your essays, the following are some tips that we consider important when preparing your essays for the university application.

1. Writing in English
As an Asian applicant, writing in English is probably not a common, every day experience for you.  Indeed, writing these essays in English may be the most difficult aspect of preparing your application.  So, it is very important that you prepare yourself for this challenge.  Before you even begin writing the essays, you should spent two to three months in preparation.  Read as many English articles as possible.  Pay attention to how these articles are organized and structured.  Pay attention to the sentence structure.  When you come across vocabulary that you think you could use to describe yourself or your past experiences, write them down in a separate notebook.  Memorize the sentence organization.
After you have read a fairly large number of different articles in English, practice writing some sentences about yourself.  To begin with, write two or three simple sentences to describe yourself.  These sentences need not be complex in structure; stay with the structure you are comfortable with.  Then, list your skills, your interests, and your favorite movies. Write some short paragraphs about people or events that have influenced you.   In this writing practice, focus more on the "what" than on specific details.  For the purpose of this practice writing is to gain a familiarity with simple English sentences, and forming paragraphs, all done under the topic of you.

After a few months, you will have accumulated much vocabulary and several sentences that all deal with the theme of you.  It may be difficult at first.  But after a while, you will see that you have made much progress.  You will have compiled much information about you, in English, to draw upon later when completing your formal essays.

Remember the reasons that the admissions committee is requesting these essays.  They want to learn more about you personally.  They are very capable of reading test scores and quantitative results.  In these essays, they hope to find out what kind of person you are.  So, in this pre-writing practice, you will become familiar with the idea of talking about yourself, in English.

2. Selecting a Theme
Each essay you submit to the admissions committee should have a specific theme.  In some cases, the university requests that you answer a very specific question; other times, you will have more freedom to select your own topic.  In both cases, however, you will need to identify a theme that will be easily found in the first paragraph, and is carried out through the entire essay.  

This theme is crucial to attracting the reader's attention.  If no theme is present in the essay, the reader will wonder what the purpose of the essay is.  Worse still, the reader may become quickly bored.  Do not force your reader to work to understand your point in the essay.  

In this respect, the opening paragraph of the essay will in fact determine how much time and attention your reader will give to your essay.  If the opening paragraph shows no clear theme or purpose, the reader's attention will quickly wane.  Begin your essay with something to peak the reader's interest: use a personal anecdote, an analogy, a quote, a thought-provoking question.  Any of these will be highly personal, and thus, should serve to get the reader's attention and hold it.

3. Thinking in English
If you prepared for writing these essays by reading other English articles (as suggested in point 1), then you will have recognized that a certain flow and structure exists in a well-written essay.  Of course, one language may have a different structure than the next.  So do not attempt to write your essay in your native language, and then translate it into English.  Attempting this will only frustrate you.  You will quickly realize that certain ideas easily expressed in your native tongue are not so easily expressed in English.  You will also depend too much on a dictionary, thus making the flow of your writing awkward.  Only use English vocabulary that you are familiar with and comfortable with using.  The English native reader of your essay will very quickly recognize if you have resorted to a dictionary, and used words beyond your full comprehension.

Rather than translating, you need to think in English if you are to write in English.  Look back at the articles you read.  How are they structured?  You will probably notice that the opening paragraph of an article will state the main objective or purpose of the writer.  Whatever the writer wants to convey to the reader will be easily found in the first paragraph.  The paragraphs that follow only serve to expand on that original statement.  These are known as developing paragraphs.  In the same way, each opening sentence will state the intent of that paragraph.  And the final paragraph acts as a conclusion, to wrap up and reiterate the main point.

Not all languages follow this essay structure and organization.  Take, for example, an essay written in Chinese.  The theme is located in the middle of the essay.  The writer seems to be writing in a circle shape, with the theme or objective found in the center of the circle.  The writer will move around the theme.  If you attempt such a structure in English, your reader will be very frustrated to determine your meaning.  So, avoid translating.  Instead, think in English.

4. Be Personal, Interesting, and Sincere
If we agree that the admissions committee is requesting these essays to learn more about you as a person, then it is important that you write in a personal and sincere manner.  Use your essays to convey your idea of what adjusting to a new culture and environment means to you personally.  Use your essays to show how your presence at the university will be a benefit to others.  In fact, this is the most important factor for admissions committees to consider when reviewing the foreign students' applications.  They want to know how foreign students can contribute to the diversity of the university.  If the admissions staff is convinced that you will make a positive contribution in this area, then you can be assured of a positive review of your application.  

However, you need to be aware that Asian students make up the greatest number of foreign student applicants to the universities.  So if you are going to discuss how your cultural background will add to the diversity, you will need to be highly personal.  It is not a good idea to be general and broad.  Avoid making statements that you will bring, for example, Chinese culture to the university.  For there very well may be literally thousands of other applicants with a Chinese background.  Be more personal.  How will you as an individual personally bring positive diversity to the school?