Useful essay writing prompts given below can be extremely helpful when you need to write an American literature essay. These American literature essay topics and African American literature essay topics will come in handy when you get a writing assignment for your class and your professor provides you with no American literature essay prompts or topics on Anglo American literature essay. The literature essay prompts below were devised by experienced academic writers who are well versed in outlining and drafting terrific essays, writing strong argumentative thesis statements, and organizing the papers in a strong and coherent structure.
Useful Essay Writing Prompts to Write a Great Essay:
- Does school teach students the real-world life? What argument do you agree with? Put forward an argument and provide convincing examples to provide your point. You may use this and other persuasive essay writing prompts to make your audience interested in the topic.
- What role does friendship play in your current life? Narrate some examples of how you make friends and how you maintain friendship with them. Do you think the number of friends you have say something about the quality of relationships? What value do you place in friendship? Such narrative essay writing prompts are helpful for you to come up with an interesting and topical issue for your paper that will be interesting for a versatile type of audience.
- How do you define success? What is success personally to you? What role does it play in your life? What are the motivational factors in your striving towards success?
- Every teacher has his/ her own individual teaching style. Besides, he/ she applies specific techniques and approaches students in unique ways. What are the fundamental characteristics a teacher should have to be successful?
- Many youths and even adults are in a constant search of their life and career mission. Often people follow some generally accepted standards and do not know what to do with their lives. Describe three potential career options you might choose for yourself. What benefits will they bring to your life?
- Talk about advertisements that are depicting children in an adult-like way. Why is there a trend of putting children into a sexualized context? What effect does such tendency have on society in general and children in particular?
- Over the last few years, people have acquired constant access to the Internet and online entertainment. What influence does it have on the society and personal self-development of each society member? Do advantages outweigh the disadvantages?
- What is the importance of encouraging and developing creativity in school students? Outline the benefits of creativity and rich imagination for young children.
- How have smart phones, social networking sites and the Internet on the whole impacted educational experience of students? What was different about studying some fifty years ago when the cell phones and the Internet were not used at schools?
- Write an essay providing convincing arguments to somebody who would like to buy a house or flat in your neighborhood.
The above presented essay writing prompts for students will help students develop a topic in a more organized and coherent way
Helpful College Literature Essay Prompts
- Choose a character from a book and focus on the central problem he/ she has. Further, focus on the ways towards solution.
- Provide an explanation and give examples of motifs why a character is behaving in a particular way.
- Select a character who you would like to make friends with and explain what exactly would make him a good friend.
- After you have read a specific story, make some predictions on what might happen next.
- Provide convincing arguments why you would (or would not) like to live in the epoch of your favorite character.
- Do the events taking place in the story or do the conflicts revolving around the main characters remind you of some recent real-life events.
- How would one the book characters fit into the modern period of life?
- Rewrite a conflicting scene in the story you do not like at all (for example, if you do not like how the character solved the conflict).
- What personal traits do you value most in your favorite character? Why would you like to introduce them into your daily life?
- What techniques does the author use to make the story seem realistic?
English Literature Essay Tips
- Select a Topic
If you are assigned a topic by your professor, all you need to do is read the required materials, conduct a thorough research, and provide a proper layout of the paper. However, if you have been left with a chance to come up with a topic yourself, then you might need some literature analysis essay tips. In particular, you will need to select a topic that is relatively easy and interesting to analyze. The benefit of choosing a topic on your own is that you will be able to write about what really interests you.
When choosing a topic, follow such literature essay writing tips:
- when choosing a literature essay topic, define the purpose of writing
- think of the target audience and whether the topic will be interesting to them
- think of the core points you could include in the paper with your chosen topics
- brainstorm some ideas to have a clear picture of what you can write about
- think of the essay type (if you have not been assigned one specifically): will it be an argumentative essay, a research essay, an analytical essay, a reflection essay, a descriptive essay or a personal essay? In which type of the essays can you develop the chosen topic in the best way?
- Start writing an outline for the paper
Although many students do not place much value into this part of essay preparation, outline can be really helpful as it will structure your thoughts and help you organize the ideas in a logical way. As such, the information presented will not be fragmented.
- Come up with a strong and clear thesis statement
The thesis statement should briefly and concisely communicate the main message of your essay and convey the central idea. When writing a thesis statement, it is important not only to inform what the essay is about but also what it argues.
- Move on to writing the main body of the paper
When developing body paragraphs, make sure that you follow the rules of proper structure and organization: each paragraph must begin with a topic sentence that is supported by sufficient evidence. Besides, a body paragraph should be logically complete and end with a closing sentence.
When presenting information in the main body, make sure it clearly describes/ discusses/ analyzes or evaluates the topic (depending on the purpose of the paper).
- Write the introductory paragraph
As soon as you have developed the thesis statement and written main body paragraphs, switch over to writing the introduction. Here you should provide background information on the topic and make sure it is appealing and interesting to the reader.
- Write a conclusion
Identify the core points that are worth to be mentioned again. As a rule, these points are the central ones that you want your readers to be attentive to. You should sum up the ideas discussed without repeating them word-for-word.
- Brush up your paper
Look through the paper again from the beginning to the end. Double-check whether the paper is logical in structure and whether the main body paragraphs you have developed properly address and discuss the points mentioned in the thesis statement. Check on whether you have topic sentences, sufficient citations and supporting material and closing-up sentences. Are there logical transitions between different paragraphs and ideas and do the ideas overall make sense?
Useful Tips on Grammar, Style, and Punctuation
- When you present different ideas, make sure you have parallel constructions in a sentence or throughout paragraphs. For example, if you are providing a list of something, it is better not to mix verb structures with nouns or phrases with gerunds, etc.
- Read other people’s essay to get more acquainted with academic style. If it seems to you sometimes that academic style is boring, read others’ essays and you will see how versatile it can be. This technique will help you notice your own flaws in writing and it may even enrich you will some new approaches towards writing papers.
- Enrich your vocabulary and use it properly. Learning academic vocabulary is a must if you want to sound knowledgeable and proficient. Moreover, acquiring new vocabulary structures makes you more competent in writing. You will learn how to express what you need in a more concise and clear way. You will not use excessive words that only confuse your readers and listeners but will be able to communicate your thoughts more clearly. When writing, use thesauruses or dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms. These are really helpful if you want to learn new words without any wordlists. Moreover, pay special attention to word formation: learn prefixes and suffixes and their meanings.
- Learn words, phrases, and transitions that help you develop your argument. There are specific phrases that are useful when you need to emphasize on some important point or draw readers’ attention to a specific issue.
- Pay attention to syntactic structures. To succeed in writing academic papers, you need to strike a balance between writing in a sophisticated manner but at the same time making your argument clear and understandable. Writing in a sophisticated manner will make you sound intelligent and well versed in academic writing. Therefore, develop your thoughts in full sentences, but do not get obsessed with flowery language that will be clear to no one but you.
- Mind punctuation. Punctuation is also greatly important, so make sure you learn the rules and proofread your paper for potential mistakes before submitting it.
- Pay special attention to the tone of writing. You are not allowed to use contractions, colloquialisms, slang language and other words that are more characteristic of informal style. Academic style is always about formal vocabulary.
Do’s and Don’ts of Academic Essay Writing
- Do:
- ensure that your essay is easy to read. Convey your idea strictly to the point, avoid excessive words and phrases that serve no informative meaning. It is clear to professors when students are not good at the topic and just write in some general sentences at least to write something. Such approach is unacceptable – you should make sure the idea is clear
- always include a thesis statement into the introductory paragraph. The role of a thesis should never be undermined as it serves the backbone of the essay development. Preferable, the thesis statement should be written as the last sentence of the introduction
- use transitions between paragraphs. The logical connection between ideas and paragraphs should be clear. Make sure you provide the role of each sentence/ idea, etc. that you write (is it for contrasting the previous idea? Adding additional information? Using comparison? Providing an outcome?)
- always cite information that is taken from outside sources. When you provide examples research findings or others’ opinions, always make sure to provide in-text citations
- address each point mentioned in the essay prompt. If you have clear requirements, make sure you meet them all and do not overlook any aspect.
- Don’t:
- don’t cram your essay with facts and findings. Remember that your paper should be a piece of original writing and not just a compilation of citations or findings taken from the academic sources. Data and findings are used as supporting evidence and to illustrate what point you make
- don’t overlook proper essay formatting. Make sure you follow the style given by the professor. Double-check whether you have properly formatted your reference page and in-text citations. Check on each comma, full stop, and parentheses
- don’t use clichéd phrases. They do not demonstrate your rich vocabulary at all
- don’t let misprints ruin your paper. When proofreading the paper, pay attention not only to language proficiency and grammar but also to typos.
