See the important elements English teachers look out for in students' essays

I have read so many English essays on social media and on print; essays that are applaudable because of the writers' use of complex or rare vocabulary and orderly presentation of thoughts. However, those essays lacked the vital elements which English teachers look out for in any essay.

It is important to state that a good essay is not solely judged by the use of rare or complex vocabulary. There are vital elements every English teacher looks out for in any English essay, and if these elements are missing, your use of complex or rare vocabulary is as useless as using a basket to fetch water from a drum of water. These elements include:

1. Content

Content simply means that the message of your essay should tally with the topic you are writing on. In other words, your essay should explain its topic. Sometimes, some persons write off point, and when this happens, your essay becomes irrelevant.

2. Organisation

Every essay is made up of paragraphs, and each paragraph explains an idea, that is, the topic sentence. The number of paragraphs in your essay is determined by the number of points you have in store. There is penalty for explaining two or more ideas in a paragraph. Unfortunately, so many students and even English graduates are oblivious of this so they tend to write as the spirit leads. "LOL!"

3. Expression

Under expression, English teachers look at your good use of sentences (simple, complex and compound), subject - verb agreement (concord), use of figurative expressions and use of contracted forms. It is unfortunate that the use of social media has affected the English essays of most students and English users. Most English users now use "am", "your" to mean the contracted form of "I am" and "you are" respectively. Compound words like "in fact" and "a lot" are now written as "infact" and "alot". Too bad! Some even write the first person singular pronoun "I" in lower case.

4. Mechanical accuracy

This is where your use of punctuation marks is checked. If your essay is well punctuated, your reader finds it very easy to comprehend its message. However, some persons write their essays without giving a second thought to this vital element. "Essay" is not something you do haphazardly. There is a penalty for the so called "I don't care" attitude.

In sum, do not be satisfied with the praises you received from friends as a result of one article you wrote or posted online. If that article lacks the aforementioned elements, it is important you retrace your step in subsequent ones.