Essay writing is something many individuals enjoy. For adults and professionals, there are myriad issues to explore and discuss, and an essay contest offers a platform to express the individual’s views on and knowledge of the issue of choice. The Internet presents a vast collection of contests sites that promise exposure and competition on an international scale.

Essays are of various kinds: descriptive, analytical, persuasive, and narrative among others. In this paper, we will discuss the persuasive essay example. It needs a definite topic that enables you to take a stand; neither questions, nor vague statements starting with “maybe,” “perhaps” can serve as argument topics. The argumentative essay attempts to persuade the reader to the writer’s point of view through strong argument, rationalizing, and examples.

The essay rubric is an important tool in evaluating students’ essays against specific criteria. It helps assess students’ writing skills in a fair and universal manner and also enables peer and self assessment. The rubric is a significant method of judging your own failure and achievement and those of others vis-à-vis the requirements put down in the rubric.

Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero’s “Rubrics and Self Assessment Project” site provides a rubric for the persuasive essay by Heidi Goodrich Andrade. The rubric is graded 1 to 4 against eight different criteria for assessment. The criteria are: the claim, reasons in support of the claim, reasons against the claim, organization, voice, tone, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions (http://www.pz.harvard.edu/Research/RubricsSelfPE.htm). This rubric gives a clear idea of what is expected of the student for the persuasive essay. The importance of each criterion can be judged according to its place in the list.

Essay editing sounds simpler than it may actually be. In the process of writing, you may get so familiar with your ideas and thoughts, language and words that you may fail to notice the tiny spelling error or the shift in tense or number. You may not notice that you overlooked an example or a connecting sentence. Therefore, an extra pair of eyes scrutinizing your writing may help refine your essay further.

There are many professional editing sites on the Internet. They edit and proofread your essay for a fee and ensure a clean paper. They proofread and edits papers written by undergraduate and graduate students. Students need to focus on their requirements and look for those sites that cater to their specific needs. An MBA aspirant may not get information on the same site as an undergraduate student does. These sites provide suggestions for better grammar or word usage and promise to ensure that the paper is neatly written, logically structured, and appropriately formatted.

Why would anybody want to write the essay online? That’s a simple question to answer. It gives you freedom freedom from the restrictions of writing at one place and within a specific time duration. It also gives you the freedom to read and reread your essay, edit it, proofread it as many times as you would like to, and submit it at your leisure when you think it is ready for submission. Of course, this does not mean that there is endless time for you to submit the paper because it is online. However even within the specific time limit, it is worlds away from the restrictive limits of writing the paper in the classroom.

Essay questions are meant to make you think. They help you analyze and understand issues by using some key words that prompt you to think in a particular direction and manner. The Internet is a good place to begin searching for sample questions that help you prepare for them in advance.

Many Internet sites help you prepare for the questions. Specific courses and academic levels would have specific suggestions on this subject. So as you search for help, you would need to be focused and look for exactly that information that pertains to you.

The essay competition is an integral part of a student’s life. However, national and international level get tougher than the average school or college essay. So here is a recap of how they are judged.

1. Focus: Are you focused? Every competition sets out a topic. So what do you have to do? Focus, understand the topic well. This is the first step.

What does the subject given require from you? What does it mean? What is its significance? Does it have regional, national, international, social, economic, environmental, political, or ethnic importance? Given your focus on the topic, you will need to do relevant research that helps you address all the questions asked within the subject. Ensure that you have addressed all the aspects asked for and your essay is a complete exploration of the subject within the word limit specified.

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