Every student is guilty of this, don’t deny it. How many times have you waited to write out your home work the night before it was due? When you were finally done, what did you do?
If you’re like most students, you shoved it into your bag and went to sleep, totally exhausted and relieved that you won’t get shouted at. Then in the morning, sitting at your desk in class, you re-read what you had written the night before and realised what you wrote was basically unreadable.
You knew that rushed work is always sub-standard work, but you hadn’t realized how awful it actually was! If only you had set aside the time to revise.
Okay you’ve learnt your lesson, now here’s where you learn to better your self. Once you’ve made your 1st draft don’t forget about it and never speak of it again after handing it in, this is when you create the truly great pieces of work.
Read through your work and annotate is (draw arrows or circles on areas and write what’s good/bad about it) now follow these 6 steps:
1. Research
As soon as you have completed your first draft, put it away. You should also be sure to consider your audience, jot down who your target is, if it’s the examiner (the case of coursework) then ask your teacher for long gone students course work that got top grades and then integrate they style of writing into your own work (not copy word for word but the style if it’s layer out in key points with explanations and it got an A then maybe you can use this style with your own).
2. Imagine You Are Your Audience
Picture your self as your teacher or as the examiner, now ask your self does your work hit what your teacher of the examiner is looking for, is it clear, precise correct grammar and spelling, If not time to correct it.
3. Simplify, Simplify
Give order to your work, introduction first then onto key point1, 2, 3 compare if contrasting ideas and so on then conclude don’t do 1, 3, 5 compare point 1 and 2 then write about point 2, simplicity is key.
4. Use a Thesaurus
I said previously simplicity and I’m not falling over my self, just because your giving a nice simple layout it doesn’t mean you need to use simple language, in your subject there is always specialist jargon.
In law when your asked to define and offer you don’t say “when a person asks for something in exchange for something” no, you say ‘An offer must be clear and precise in all its terms and capable of an unconditional acceptance’ USE THE JARGON, it makes the examiner think you know what your on about and impresses your teacher.
5. Don’t Get So Tense!
Okay maybe you didn’t learn your lesson and your doing all this last minute take a moment to relax lay back, don’t do all these steps at once, go check out our free offer section or something for 10 min’s and come back. If you try and do 30 pages in one day and reflect on them, you’ll only get a 1 day perception of your work if you have a few hours or a days break and come back to it you’ll have fresh new ideas to use.
6. Proofread
Read it over, read it over, read it over.