A+ Essays: A Structured Approach to Successful Essay Writing

Learn the tips and tools of successful writers from a college professor with twenty years of experience grading essays.

4.47 (1415 reviews)

Udemy

platform

English

language

Career Development

What you will learn

By the end of this course students will be able to ...

Analyze an essay assignment to determine exactly what is being asked and how to proceed.

Organize and manage your time to complete your essay assignment well in advance of the deadline.

Break down and analyze an essay in terms of its structural parts.

Write essays that follow standard academic rules and conventions.

Write good introductions and conclusions.

Construct an argumentative essay that follows good structural form.

Choose a writing style that is suitable for your essay.

Use a variety of software tools to help manage different stages of the writing process.

Deal with writer's anxiety and writer's block.

Conduct research and build a reference list for your essay.

Cite sources properly to avoid plagiarism.

Distinguish between different citation styles and how they're used.

Why take this course?

Many students become anxious at the prospect of having to write an essay or term paper. They don't understand the conventions for organizing essays, and they don't know how to manage their time and the writing process.

The result is that many students enter college without the skills necessary to succeed simply because they were never properly taught how to write essays.

This course aims to overcome this problem by offering a systematic framework for essay writing that removes the mystery and presents a clear path for moving from idea to outline to completed first draft.

A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO SUCCESSFUL ESSAY WRITING

The most efficient way to improve your essay writing is to focus on the key structural features that define successful writing at the essay level. An essay can be written beautifully, but if it's missing key structural elements (like a well defined thesis statement), it will fail as an essay.

This course provides a set of concepts and tools for thinking about, analyzing and fixing problems with the structural elements of your essay.

CONTENTS AND OVERVIEW

Students in this course will learn how essay writing skills are related to "deep reading" and "deep thinking" skills, and why this is increasingly important in today's world. You will also learn how standards of good essay writing are related to standards of good written communication more broadly. You'll learn why academic essays are structured the way they are, how essay style is related to essay structure, how to approach the writing process, and how to organize your time so that you can actually get the work done before the deadline.

But the centerpiece of the course is two detailed case studies. In one of them I take a short student essay that has some serious problems, analyze the structural issues and rewrite that essay from start to finish.

In another case study I take an actual essay assignment from an actual college class, that I don't teach, and take that essay from initial brainstorming and researching to a detailed outline to a completed first draft with a reference list and inline reference citations.

At the end of this course you will feel more confident about your ability to successfully complete essay assignments in school, and you will have a greater understanding of the skills and habits of successful writers.

NOTE: ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS LOVE THIS CONTENT

I have a lot of positive feedback about this content over the years. College and universities from around the world have paid me thousands of dollars to license the use of these videos on their institutional servers (libraries, academic integrity programs, etc.).

Here are some of the institutions that have purchased copies of these videos for use on their own institutional servers:

Michigan State University
University of South Florida
Forest Train Academy
Harvard Kennedy School
Lawrence High School
Wayland Public Schools
Wentville School District

… among others.

But I would like to share this content with as wide an audience as possible, and Udemy is a fabulous platform for hosting it.

Screenshots

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Reviews

Jared

February 14, 2024

It's all just talk at this point and I feel left out. Perhaps a writing module between these videos would be beneficial, something to keep me engaged? Now that I'm halfway, I'm still feeling like there's nothing for me to do except absorb information and take notes. Again, I think the course would benefit from a writing module to practise some of these things followed up by a video that asks you to go through it to make sure you added them into your own work. I'm not saying I know how it could all work, but I just feel like I'm passively learning and I would like more active learning.

Laura

February 5, 2024

Very eloquently put together. Makes the student excited to get to work and write with learned skills.

Michael

December 29, 2023

I am an adult learner and a returning college student. I haven't written an essay in over 25 years, and I have been nervous about this aspect of being a college student. For this reason, I had high hopes this course could help me, and it delivered. I especially appreciated the ideas and explanation of the writing process and the dissecting of real college essays. I am analytical and often overanalyze while I am learning new ideas. This is especially true when it comes to my writing, but the way the writing process was taught in this course was very beneficial to me. I immediately began to relax when thinking about writing an essay. I even told myself I could do this while watching the videos about the writing process. My only wish is that I had teachers like this in high school and my first attempt at community college. Maybe it wouldn't have taken me 25 years to make a real run at my college degree.

高島

June 26, 2023

学生だけでなく一般人にもやくにたちそうだから。 This course sounds helpful not only for students but also for people who finished their school long time ago.

Larry

April 4, 2023

I, too, wish they had this when I was in college. It would have made my academic life a lot easier. Thank you for making this course.

Jihaan

March 14, 2023

In the beginning, I had difficulty comprehending the scheme being presented. Yes, Kevin was using basic terms, but I still struggled to grasp the idea. However, as I continue learning, this course becomes engaging and easier to understand. I think it has something to do with how the lessons are presented and organized to sink in gradually.

Ondrej

January 19, 2023

Hi my name is Ondrej, 30 years old but unfortunately I’m very poor reader and writer, I’ve been neglecting writing and reading and I can see now in my 30s how that affecting my life, at the same time English is my second language so that makes it even better, but with this course already I can see some hope in me, with all the information that I’ve already gotten. Thank you for putting such a work into this course ao that can help me improve.

James

December 19, 2022

I'm eager to transform deep reading and deep thinking into deep writing. My confidence is growing...

Leo

December 9, 2022

As a person who's written a few essays in the past but have forgotten almost everything I learnt, this course taught me more than what was taught at school. He goes over pretty everything you need to know on essay writing. Such as: different writing styles, avoiding plagiarism and writers block, how to cite references, how to provide logical arguments in your essay, how to write effective introductions and conclusions and so much more. I'm looking forward to redoing the course in the future. Thanks, a lot.

Melody

November 7, 2022

I know how important writing is. I just wanted to take a course to refresh my memory with the actual structure of writing an essay. So far, I have skipped to end of each lecture hoping the next lecture would begin teaching something instead of talking about why it is important to take this course.

Evan

August 14, 2022

Very theoretical. Talked more about why certain things were they way they were instead of actually giving tips and showcasing ways to write.

May 9, 2022

Great course. A lot of interesting and useful information you have shared. I can definitely say that after completing this course, my papers will improve a lot. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

Amer

March 30, 2022

Funny how this course talks about the structure of the essay but the headline of the topic is NOT so Structured. CONS: 1. initially i had a hard time being convinced how practical this course is, i guess let’s forget about session1-2, summarize session 3 to one sentence. And optimize the session title plz! 2. In addition, i have a hard time to comprehend the session title and structure an outline in my mind, due 1) it is an question 2) it is long so not so readable as chapter outline 3) unclear about the logic (i cannot easily connect each subtitles). This result in me not being able to take efficient notes initially. PROS: 1. Although it is lengthy and some initial content could be cut, i love the anxiety management part because it has been the primary cause of me being stuck in the discovery mode. 2. Understand the writing process IS VERY USEFUL so I do not blame myself using half of time collecting evidence, organize my thoughts. FACT that collecting thoughts is a necessity. Understanding the procedure of writing also in reverse helps soothing the anxiety of not getting papers done. OVERALL THE CONTENT IS REALLY GOOD SO FAR. DO APPRECIATE A GOOD WRITER SHARIN THE SKILL BUT WISH THE CHAPTER OUTLINE IS MORE LOGICAL AND LESS LENGTHY.

Zach

December 30, 2021

I am really enjoying this course so far, this course has expanded how I think about writing and encouraged me to think in a new way that I can understand.

Maria

December 27, 2021

To much description on what the course is about. Also seems like an advertisemet for Scrivener just a little info on essay writing.

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