Choosing the right topic for an essay is one of the main steps in the work. The whole process of writing an essay depends on the chosen topic — the purpose of the work, the structure, the genre, the style, the form of narration, and the sources of information used by the author. The tutor's job includes helping students formulate their essay topics correctly. After classes with a good tutor, students will not buy custom essays but will prefer to write them themselves.
In our article, we will tell you how to help students choose the right topic and suggest the best essays topics for tutoring.
1. Criteria for choosing a topic
To help students choose a topic for their works, ask them the following questions:
After the student has answered the questions and narrowed down their choice of topics or decided on one, invite them to do the following:
Usually, the teacher provides a list of topics for the student to choose from. Otherwise, students may have a free topic. In any case, they need to take into account the audience that will read the work and their preparedness to perceive the material.
Readers can range from a teacher or admissions committee to a future employer.
If the essay is created to report to the teacher, authors need to understand what aspects will be evaluated by them. Already on the basis of this, the topic should be chosen with the opportunity to show the qualities that need to be demonstrated. It includes the uniqueness of point of view, the ability to form beautiful sentences, spelling, competence in a certain issue, etc.
It is important that the topic appeals to the student personally, as the reader can almost always sense whether the storyteller is passionate about their work or has written it for a tick. Students need to have knowledge of the topic so that they can answer a sudden question from the audience.
If the essay is to be presented before an employer, the topic should be appropriate to the future profession, showing the author as an original, sincere, and intelligent person with character and positive qualities.
Teach your students to form specific topics from broad categories. For example, offer them a category of vitamin supplements. They, in turn, should narrow that broad category down to a more specific topic. They can write about the problem of popularizing uncontrolled vitamin intake or the importance of consuming vitamin supplements during the fall and winter seasons. Once they have narrowed their focus, they will need to formulate their opinions. They should ask themselves how they feel about these practices and write down their thoughts. This may mean doing a little research on the topic so they can formulate a more accurate argument.
Tone: Tone is very important in this paper. You want a reasonable, convincing, attractive, and logical tone.
Viewpoint: Because you are trying to convince the reader you may go with the second-person perspective in your paper ("you" or "us"). However, the first person or the third person is also suitable.
Audience: When writing an essay, it is important to consider the reader's reaction. You need to speak to readers as you speak to your friends but in an academic manner. You need to consider how to persuade readers who have the right to take action on your suggestions or disagree with you. You have to prove your point of view and obtain a reader's interest.
Your main goals are:
4. Best topics for tutoring
As we wrote in the beginning, the success of students' work depends on the choice of topic. You, as a tutor, must teach your student how to choose the right topics and expose them to the reader. That's why the topics you can give your students to write should help them write an essay that:
Thus, the choice of topics for tutoring depends primarily on the needs of your students. So, if your student is applying to college, you will offer him/her the topics of previous years for admission and work through the algorithm of writing. If you need to sharpen your students' essay writing skills, you should give them different topics for different types of essays — descriptive, expository, argumentative, and narrative.
There are no perfect topics that can teach a person to write a top-grade essay in a month. You, as a tutor, simply have to experiment and take into account the characteristics and needs of your students. You can always consult your fellow tutors and come up with interesting topics together.