Here are the most common reasons that we hear from students of why they received poor marks or have failed their essay:-

1. Spelling Mistakes

Spelling is something that students tend to overlook in their rush to complete their essays. Too many of them simply rely on spell checking programmes to do the work for them and this often lets them down.

The best strategy that you can employ for minimising spelling mistakes in your essay is to read carefully through your work yourself.

2. Grammar

It can be extremely difficult to write with such perfect grammar, as there are different rules that have to be followed each time that you write your essay.

One of things that you can follow is to ensure that there is a consistency of tenses. Students often change tenses mid way through an essay without even realising that they have done it and this of course changes the direction of the essay completely.

You can ensure that this does not happen in your essay writing, by getting a friend to read out the essay out loud to you, whilst you listen carefully for ‘tense' mistakes.

3. Repeating Things in your Essay

Even the most experienced academic writer or student can make this mistake and that is repeating the same set of the words throughout the essay.

This is something that can only be eliminated through practice, so get practicing!

4. Keep your Paragraphs Short

Too many students write paragraphs within their essay that are too long and this can make your essay or dissertation ramble and consequently you will lose marks.

As a tip, a paragraph should only contain one idea. As a rule of thumb of one side of A4 paper, your essay should contain at least three or four paragraphs.

5. Organisation of the Essay

Many universities around the world do not teach their students how to structure and organise their essay properly, beyond explaining to them that the essay needs to include an introduction, a body of text and a conclusion.

What you should do is search through the internet for tips on essay writing and in particular essay structure or pop into your university library and there you will find many books offering advice on how best to structure your essay.

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