“When am I ever going to use that?” It’s one of the most common questions educators hear, and with good reason: Many of what we learn in school never comes up in real life. Most of us work in a particular career field and don’t encounter the need for much information beyond that field, but schools need to prepare students for a wide range of careers especially it concerns LGBT students. Consequently, we learn a lot of stuff we’ll never use. Too many students, however, think that essay writing is one of those academic skills that they’ll never use again once they leave school. However, that’s not the case, and building strong writing skills can benefit you now and in the future.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the reasons you might want to improve your essay writing skills while studying in Los Angeles, and we’ll talk about how to make that process more fun and engaging. After all, the more enjoyable you find improving your writing skills, the more likely you are to follow through.
Why Students Need Better Writing Skills
One of the most essential skills each student needs in college is essay writing, but it is also an ability that many students lack when they arrive on campus. According to recent surveys, most colleges and universities now require most incoming first-year students to complete either a remedial or introductory college writing course because they are entering school without the skills to register at the college level. The question is why.
There are several reasons that students don’t have the writing skills that they need to succeed at the college level. One reason is that high schools aren’t teaching writing the same way they used to decades ago. In the past, schools would teach their students how to write for college, assuming that students would be taking those skills to college. Thanks to decades of efforts to make standardized testing a priority for schools, college readiness skills have taken a backseat to teaching to the test. Most standardized tests are multiple-choice and don’t involve essays.
The upshot is that students aren’t prepared for college-level work and often need extra help.
Getting Essay Writing Help
Because so many students are unprepared for college writing, they turn to professional academic writers online from an essay writing service to help them craft custom papers. Many students use these custom-written papers as a stopgap when they can’t complete their work. They can help see how a professional writer approaches the essay topic and develops the assignment to fully address the essay question, meeting or exceeding expectations for undergraduate writing. While it can be a legit way to get essay writing assistance, students also need to develop their essay writing skills to write their essays.
Making Skill Development Fun
There are many ways to develop essay writing skills, but students are unlikely to make an effort if they are too hard, too boring, or take too much time. To help improve essay writing skills, it helps to have a little fun. But how can you make writing more fun? There are a few ways to make skill-building more enjoyable. Let’s take a look.
- Make it a competition.
Students can have more fun building their writing skills by working with a partner and doing skill-building exercises in a match. For example, you might have a friend challenge you to a vocabulary contest and score how many words you can each come up with on a topic. Or you might compete against each other to see how fast you can type and how accurate your typing is using an online typing tracking program. However you choose to compete, the thrill of competition can encourage you to stay on topic and get more done than working alone.
- Make it a team effort.
You don’t need to compete to get the benefits of working with friends. You can make learning a team effort and work together with one person or an entire group to help develop your skills. Learning is more fun when you work with others to support, encourage, and entertain each other. You might, for example, have a dorm event where you and your floormates all learn a new writing skill together.
- Set writing rewards.
Another way to have more fun while building writing skills is to reward yourself for specific accomplishments. Performing skill-building tasks like completing grammar lessons, practicing punctuation, studying vocabulary, or doing daily freewriting activities can be a grind, but creating a schedule of rewards for finishing tasks can make it more fun. After all, earning a treat is more likely to get you to put in the work than thinking about it purely as misery and boredom. Don’t overdo the treats—too many too often can make it hard to focus on the task at hand.
- Make writing skill-building into a game.
Yes, there is an app for that. Some apps help you build writing skills using a fun, game-like structure. Many students enjoy building writing abilities with a video game-style learning process rather than a more traditional drill-and-kill approach. When you make learning into a game, you are more likely to enjoy the learning process and put in the work to build your skills.
- Practice through free writing activities.
Many students don’t like to write because essay topics can be tedious. To help make writing more fun, set aside time each day for freewriting to write about whatever comes to mind or something you enjoy. When you unleash your creativity and permit yourself to write about things that interest you, you’ll be more likely to follow through with practicing different writing types, different formats, and different approaches that you can later apply to your academic essays.
To conclude, each LGBT student in Los Angeles can improve your essay writing skills professionally in a fun way. Don’t hesitate to choose the most appropriate method to write a stellar essay faster, easier and better.
