For some students writing an essay in English language can be a bit difficult, especially if they are learning English as a second language. For students who have just never had an easy time in school with this subject, there are some tips and tricks that can be followed to ensure an acceptable and, hopefully, high grade paper.

First, the Internet should never be neglected for its useful hints and tips. There are many websites that can check grammar, spelling, content and formatting structures. If you are writing this for a college class, chances are that college has a library that can be used if you do not have personal Internet access. Using these websites is an important asset that should not be dismissed, especially since the college libraries that are offered will provide academically useful information in the form of articles, journals and books pertaining to your specific subject of study.

The first thing that someone writing a paper for college should do is put together their idea on paper. An outline is not always necessary but it is extremely useful. This will organize your thoughts in a way that will make it presentable and understandable to the college instructor. An outline can be changed as it is used but its original draft should not need to be modified too much if you have put a lot of thought into the content and topics you need to cover for your paper.

Making a list of each topic that should be covered is a good idea to start with, as well. The topics will need to be presented in subtopic or paragraph headings anyway, so having them in the order you wish to present them in early is a terrific idea. It will help the paper stay organized and allow you to follow your original thoughts without having to memorize what it is you wanted to cover.

You should check to make sure that you have cited all of your references. When you use a copy and paste procedure to write your paper, you are risking high plagiarism reports. Plagiarism is unacceptable and should be as unacceptable to the student as it is to their institution of learning. Give credit where credit is due by citing all of your references.

If you are unfamiliar with the proper way to format or structure your paper, you should remember a few key things. You should have an introduction paragraph and a conclusion paragraph. The body of the paper should be left justified and only the paragraph headings or subject headings should be centered.

Your paper should have a cover page with the title on it and it should also follow whatever code the instructor is using for formatting. This could be MPA or APA formatting and there are a few others that are often used in colleges.

These academic formatting structures have specific rules that should be followed, so putting your paper through a checker to make sure it is formatted is a wonderful idea. Headers are also a requirement for most papers. Writing an essay in English language is not too difficult if you familiarize yourself with how it is done. After several tries, it should be old news and not too hard to remember.