Article Categories
What Contestants Should Focus on in Student Essay Contests
In order to praise good writing skills, many educational institutions conduct student essay contents to determine the best writing talents. If you are interested in entering a student essay contest, most likely you are not going to need the guidelines this article will provide. Nevertheless, some ideas might interest experienced writers as well as beginners, new to student essay contests.
Organization
Student essay contests focus on many aspects in the submitted essays. Some of these aspects are common and easy to follow such as clarity and grammar. Others might be little tricky to implement. The first aspect that we will try to cover is related to essays’ focus. Usually student essay contests establish a limit of 400 to 500 words on the submitted papers, which is rather short. In that regard, students are obliged to write on the selected topic within such limit, without focusing on a single aspect only, and at the same time covering all the elements of the topic.
Thus, a suggestion can be made for the potential applicants of the student essay contest to make a detailed outline. This outline should not be necessarily submitted to the student essay contest, rather than serving a personal purpose for checking the essay’s organization.
Attractive Hook
This aspect can be considered as one of the most important and overlooked in essays in general, and the entries of student essay contests in particular. Well organized essays, which are grammatically correct, but at the same time ordinary, banal, and boring, are likely to be ignored in student essay contests. This part is also tricky because it is hard to teach someone to write with a “hook”.
The general guideline is to make the reader attached to a particular element in the essay. Such element might be a story, an interesting view, or an innovative idea on a traditional aspect. The point is to submit to the student essay contest a paper the readers want to read, not to finish.