Maria Rosa Varotto

The first thing I would say is that developing effective analytical essay technique starts the moment you begin your studies at college or university: you MUST go to all of your lectures and workshop (lessons) because a lot of what you need to know for your assessment will actually be taught to you. Moreover, it is also imperative for you to do the reading and the work that your lecturers (teachers) require you to do as part of your homework outside of class in your own time because this will supplement what you are learning in class and will help to get you in the ‘academic mindset’.

Discursive essay topics are a favourite form of assessment at university, as the writing process develops a students critical and analytical skills. Further writing ability is acquired as a student is tested in terms of his/her critical, analytical, integrative and problem solving abilities.These skills, honed by writing on discursive essay topics are crucial for higher level university tests; literature reviews and dissertations. Acquiring these academic writing skills are key to leaving university with a decent grade.Of course, these skills are desirable in real world settings too. The development of such skills is one reason why employers are willing to employ people from university regardless of subject studied.In order to write an effective discursive essay it is essential to understand the question correctly. The question will have some form of instructional phrase intended to advise the student as to how the essay should be structured in regard to the question.The instruction make be simply ‘discuss’ or could involve a combination of instructions ‘compare and contrast’ or even a phrase ‘while referring to X study, discuss’.

The APA essay format is not complicated as thought by many. It just needs to be followed carefully with proper mention of the citations and references. Headers and title page is also given importance in the APA format of writing essay. The pagination must be done correctly with the title page at the beginning, the abstract on the next page and the main essay should start from the third page onwards. Systematic way of writing is required in this format of essay writing.