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12 Ways to Quickly Improve Your Academic Essay Writing Skills

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Written by  Scribendi

Anyone can learn to produce an academic essay if they begin with a few basic essay-writing rules. 

An academic essay must be based upon a solid but debatable thesis, supported by relevant and credible evidence, and closed with a succinct and thorough conclusion.

By adhering to the best way to write an essay, you can create valuable, persuasive papers even when you're under a time crunch!

What Makes a Good Essay?

As previously noted, the foundation of any good academic essay is its thesis statement. 

Do not confuse your thesis with your opening sentence. There are many good ways to start an essay , but few essays immediately present their main ideas.

After you draft your thesis, you can begin to develop your essay around it. This development will include the main supporting points of your essay, which will scaffold its main body. 

Essays also typically include a relevant and compelling introduction and conclusion.

Learn How to Write a Great Thesis Statement .

Understanding How to Write a Good Essay

When writing an academic essay, you must take a number of qualities and characteristics into careful consideration. Focus, development, unity, coherence, and correctness all play critical roles when it comes to distinguishing an exceptional essay from one that is less than perfect.

The following essay-writing tips can help writers organize, format, and support their essays in ways that fit their intended purpose and optimize their overall persuasiveness. Here are 12 essay tips for developing and writing your next academic paper.

1. Know What You Are Going to Write About Before You Start Writing

While untrained writers might just sit down and start typing, educated and experienced writers know that there are many steps to writing an essay.

In short, you should know what you want to say before you type a single word. The easiest way to narrow down a thesis and create a proper argument is to make a basic outline before you begin composing your essay.

Your outline should consist of rough notes that sketch out your introduction (including your thesis), the body of your essay (which should include separate paragraphs that present your main supporting points with plenty of evidence and examples), and your conclusion (which ties everything together and connects the argument back to your thesis).

2. Acquire a Solid Understanding of Basic Grammar, Punctuation, and Style

Before getting into more refined essay-writing techniques, you must have a solid grasp of grammar, punctuation, and style. Without these writing fundamentals, it will be difficult to communicate your ideas effectively and ensure that they are taken seriously.

Grammar basics include subject and verb agreement, correct article and pronoun use, and well-formed sentence structures. Make sure you know the proper uses for the most common forms of punctuation. Be mindful of your comma usage and know when a period is needed.

Finally, voice is tremendously important in academic essay writing. Employ language that is as concise as possible. Avoid transition words that don't add anything to the sentence and unnecessary wordiness that detracts from your argument.

Furthermore, use the active voice instead of the passive whenever possible (e.g., "this study found" instead of "it was found by this study"). This will make your essay's tone clear and direct.

3. Use the Right Vocabulary and Know What the Words You Are Using Actually Mean

How you use language is important, especially in academic essay writing. When writing an academic essay, remember that you are persuading others that you are an expert who argues intelligently about your topic.

Using big words just to sound smart often results in the opposite effect—it is easy to detect when someone is overcompensating in their writing.

If you aren't sure of the exact meaning of a word, you risk using it incorrectly. There's no shame in checking, and it might save you from an embarrassing word misuse later!

Using obscure language can also detract from the clarity of your argument—you should consider this before pulling out a thesaurus to change a perfectly appropriate word to something completely different.

4. Understand the Argument and Critically Analyze the Evidence

While writing a good essay, your main argument should always be at the front of your mind. While it's tempting to go off on a tangent about an interesting side note, doing so makes your writing less concise.

Always question the evidence you include in your essay; ask yourself, "Does this directly support my thesis?" If the answer is "no," then that evidence should probably be excluded. 

When you are evaluating evidence, be critical and thorough. You want to use the strongest research to back up your thesis. It is not enough to simply present evidence in support of an argument. A good writer must also explain why the evidence is relevant and supportive.

Everything you include should clearly connect to your topic and argument.   

5. Know How to Write a Conclusion That Supports Your Research

One of the most overlooked steps to writing an essay is the conclusion. Your conclusion ties all your research together and proves your thesis. It should not be a restatement of your introduction or a copy-and-paste of your thesis.

A strong conclusion briefly outlines the key evidence discussed in the body of an essay and directly ties it to the thesis to show how the evidence proves or disproves the main argument of your research.

Countless great essays have been written only to be derailed by vague, weakly worded conclusions. Don't let your next essay become one of those.     

6. Build a Solid Thesis to Support Your Arguments

A thesis is the main pillar of an essay. By selecting a specific thesis, you'll be able to develop arguments to support your central opinion. Consider writing about a unique experience or your own particular view of a topic .

Your thesis should be clear and logical, but it should also be debatable. Otherwise, it might be difficult to support it with compelling arguments.

7. Develop an Interesting Opening Paragraph to Hook In Readers from the Get-Go

No matter how you begin your essay, you must strive to capture the reader's interest immediately. If your opening paragraph doesn't catch the eye and engage the brain, any attempt at persuasion may end before the essay even starts. 

The beginning of your essay is crucial for setting the stage for your thesis.

8. Always Remember to Edit and Proofread Your Essay

Any decent writer will tell you that writing is really rewriting. A good academic essay will inevitably go through multiple drafts as it slowly takes shape. When you arrive at a final draft, you must make sure that it is as close to perfect as possible.

This means subjecting your essay to close and comprehensive editing and proofreading processes. In other words, you must read your paper as many times as necessary to eliminate all grammar/punctuation mistakes and typos.

It is helpful to have a third party review your work. Consider consulting a peer or professional editing service. Keep in mind that professional editors are able to help you identify underdeveloped arguments and unnecessarily wordy language, and provide other feedback.

Get Critical Feedback on Your Writing

Hire an expert academic editor , or get a free sample, 9. when developing your essay's main body, build strong and relevant arguments.

Every sentence in the main body of your paper should explain and support your thesis. When deciding how much evidence to include in an academic essay, a good guideline is to include at least three main supporting arguments.

Those main supporting arguments, in turn, require support in the form of relevant facts, figures, examples, analogies, and observations. 

You will need to engage in appropriate research to accomplish this. To organize your research efforts, you may want to develop a list of good research questions . 

10. Choose the Format of Your Essay before Writing It

The final shape that your essay takes depends a great deal on what kind of format you use. Popular college essay format types include the Modern Language Association of America ( MLA ), American Psychological Association ( APA ), and Chicago Manual of Style ( Chicago style).

These formats govern everything from capitalization rules to source citation. Often, professors dictate a specific format for your essay. If they do not, you should choose the format that best suits your field.

11. Create Clear Transitions between Your Ideas

Although unnecessary transition words are the enemy of clarity and concision, they can be invaluable tools when it comes to separating and connecting the different sections of your essay. 

Not only do they help you express your ideas but they also bring a cohesive structure to your sentences and a pleasant flow to your writing. Just be sure that you are using the right transition words for the right purpose and to the proper effect.

12. Always Include an Organized Reference Page at the End of Your Essay

As a key component of MLA, APA, and Chicago Style formatting, the reference or Works Cited page is an essential part of any academic essay.

Regardless of the format used, the reference page must be well organized and easy to read so that your audience can see exactly where your outside information came from. 

To produce a properly formatted reference page, you may have to familiarize yourself with specialized phrases and abbreviations, such as " et al ." 

How to Write a Good Hook for an Essay

The key to a good hook is to introduce an unexplored or absorbing line of inquiry in your introduction that addresses the main point of your thesis. 

By carefully choosing your language and slowly revealing details, you can build reader anticipation for what follows. 

Much like an actual worm-baited fishing hook, a successful hook will lure and capture readers, allowing the writer to "reel them in."

How to Get Better at Writing Essays

You can get better at writing essays the same way that you improve at anything else: practice, practice, practice! However, there are a few ways that you can improve your writing quickly so you can turn in a quality academic essay on time.

In addition to following the 12 essay tips and guidelines above, you can familiarize yourself with a few common practices and structures for essay development. 

Great writing techniques for essays include brainstorming and tree diagrams, especially when coming up with a topic for your thesis statement. Becoming familiar with different structures for organizing your essay (order of importance, chronological, etc.) is also extremely helpful.

How to Write a Good Introduction for an Essay

To learn how to write a good essay, you must also learn how to write a good introduction. 

Most effective essay introductions begin with relatively broad and general subject matter and then gradually narrow in focus and scope until they arrive at something extremely specific: the thesis. This is why writers tend to place their thesis statements at the very end of their introductory paragraph(s).

Because they are generally broad and often relate only tangentially to an essay's main point, there is virtually no limit on what the beginning of a good introduction can look like. However, writers still tend to rely on somewhat cliché opening sentences, such as quotations and rhetorical questions.

How to Write a Good Conclusion for an Essay

Briefly put, a good conclusion does two things. It wraps up any loose ends and drives home the main point of your essay. 

To learn how to write a good conclusion, you will want to ensure that no unanswered questions remain in the reader's mind. A good conclusion will restate the thesis and reinforce the essay's main supporting points.

Take Your Essay from Good to Great

About the author.

Scribendi's in-house editors work with writers from all over the globe to perfect their writing. They know that no piece of writing is complete without a professional edit, and they love to see a good piece of writing turn into a great one after the editing process. Scribendi's in-house editors are unrivaled in both experience and education, having collectively edited millions of words and obtained nearly 20 degrees collectively. They love consuming caffeinated beverages, reading books of various genres, and relaxing in quiet, dimly lit spaces.

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"The Complete Beginner's Guide to Academic Writing"

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The Complete Beginner's Guide to Academic Writing

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This page continues from our page: Planning an Essay , the essential first step to successful essay writing.

This page assumes that you have already planned your essay, you have taken time to understand the essay question, gathered information that you intend to use, and have produced a skeleton plan of you essay – taking into account your word limit.

This page is concerned with the actual writing of your essay, it provides some guidelines for good practice as well as some common mistakes you'll want to avoid.

Structuring Your Essay

An essay should be written in a flowing manner with each sentence following on logically from the previous one and with appropriate signposts to guide the reader.

An essay usually takes the following structured format:

• The introduction
• The main body: a development of the issues
• A conclusion
• A list of references of the sources of information you have used

The Introduction

The function of the introduction is simply to introduce the subject, to explain how you understand the question, and describe briefly how you intend to deal with it.

You could begin by defining essential terms, providing a brief historical or personal context if appropriate, and/or by explaining why you think the subject is significant or interesting.

Some people are far too ambitious in writing their introductions. Writing a lengthy introduction limits the number of words available for the main body of the assignment.

Keep the introduction short, preferably to one or two paragraphs and keep it, succinct, to the point.

Some students find it best to write a provisional introduction, when starting to write an essay, and then to rewrite this when they have finished the first draft of their essay. To write a provisional introduction, ask yourself what the reader needs to know in order to follow your subsequent discussion.

Other students write the introduction after they have written the main body of the essay – do whatever feels right for you and the piece of work you are writing.

The Main Body: A Development of the Issues

Essays are generally a blend of researched evidence (e.g. from additional reading) and comment.

Some students' essays amount to catalogues of factual material or summaries of other people's thoughts, attitudes, philosophies or viewpoints.

At the opposite extreme, other students express only personal opinions with little or no researched evidence or examples taken from other writers to support their views.  What is needed is a balance.

The balance between other researchers’ and writers’ analysis of the subject and your own comment will vary with the subject and the nature of the question.   Generally, it is important to back up the points you wish to make from your experience with the findings of other published researchers and writers.

You will have likely been given a reading list or some core text books to read. Use these as your research base but try to expand on what is said and read around the subject as fully as you can. Always keep a note of your sources as you go along.

You will be encouraged and expected to cite other authors or to quote or paraphrase from books that you have read. The most important requirement is that the material you cite or use should illustrate, or provide evidence of, the point you are making. How much evidence you use depends on the type of essay you are writing.

If you want a weight of evidence on some factual point, bring in two or three examples but no more.

Quotations should not be used as a substitute for your own words. A quote should always have an explanation in your own words to show its significance to your argument.

When you are citing another author's text you should always indicate exactly where the evidence comes from with a reference, i.e. give the author's name, date of publication and the page number in your work.  A full reference should also be provided in the reference list at the end.

See our page: Academic Referencing for more information.

A Conclusion

At the end of an essay you should include a short conclusion, the purpose of which is to sum up or draw a conclusion from your argument or comparison of viewpoints.

In other words, indicate what has been learned or accomplished. The conclusion is also a good place to mention questions that are left open or further issues which you recognise, but which do not come within the scope of your essay.

Neither the conclusion, nor the introduction, should totally summarise your whole argument: if you try this, you are in danger of writing another assignment that simply repeats the whole case over again.

You must include a reference list or bibliography at the end of your work.

One common downfall is to not reference adequately and be accused of plagiarism. If you have directly quoted any other author's text you should always indicate exactly where the evidence comes from in a reference. If you have read other documents in order to contrast your argument then these should also be referenced.

See our page: Academic Referencing for a more comprehensive look at the importance of referencing and how to reference properly.

Signposting or Guiding your Reader

When writing an essay it is good practice to consider your reader.

To guide the reader through your work you will need to inform them where you are starting from (in the introduction), where you are going (as the essay progresses), and where you have been (in the conclusion).

It is helpful to keep the reader informed as to the development of the argument. You can do this by using simple statements or questions that serve to introduce, summarise or link the different aspects of your subject.

Here are a few examples:

There are two reasons for this:  first,... second,...

Moreover, it should not be forgotten that...

With regard to the question of...

Another important factor to be considered is...

How can these facts be interpreted? The first point...

There are several views on this question. The first is...

Finally, it is important to consider...

Constructing Paragraphs

One important way of guiding the reader through your essay is by using paragraphs.

Paragraphs show when you have come to the end of one main point and the beginning of the next.  A paragraph is a group of sentences related to aspects of the same point.  Within each individual paragraph an idea is introduced and developed through the subsequent sentences within that paragraph.

Everyone finds it easier to read a text that is broken into short paragraphs.

Without paragraphs, and the spaces between them, the page will appear like an indigestible mass of words.

You should construct your essay as a sequence of distinct points set out in a rational order.

Each sentence and paragraph should follow logically from the one before and it is important that you do not force your reader to make the connections. Always make these connections clear signposting where the argument or discussion is going next.

Although the points you are making may seem obvious to you, can they be more clearly and simply stated?

It is also worth bearing in mind that the marker of your work may have a lot of other, similar pieces of work to mark and assess. Try to make yours easy to read and follow – make it stand out, for the right reasons!

Essay Style

There are two general misconceptions about essay style:

• One is that a good essay should be written in a formal, impersonal way with a good scattering of long words and long, complicated sentences.
• The other misconception is to write as we talk. Such a style is fine for personal letters or notes, but not in an essay. You can be personal, but a certain degree of formality and objectivity is expected in an academic essay.

The important requirement of style is clarity and precision of expression.

Where appropriate use simple and logical language and write in full or complete sentences.  You should avoid jargon, especially jargon that is not directly connected to your subject area. You can be personal by offering your own viewpoint on an issue, or by using that view to interpret other authors' work and conclusions.

Drafts and Rewriting

Most essays can be improved by a thorough edit.

You can cross out one word and substitute another, change the shape or emphasis of a sentence, remove inconsistencies of thought or terminology, remove repetitions and ensure there is adequate referencing.

In short, you are your first reader, edit and criticise your own work to make it better. Sometimes it is useful to read your essay out loud.

Another useful exercise is to ask someone else to read the essay through. A person proofreading the essay for the first time will have a different perspective from your own and will therefore be better placed to point out any incoherence, lack of structure, grammatical errors, etc.

Ideally find somebody to proofread who has a good grasp of spelling and grammar and at least a casual interest in your subject area.

One or two edits should be sufficient. It is best not to become involved in an unproductive multiplicity of drafts. The remedy is to analyse the question again and write another, simple, plan based on how to organise the material you are not happy with in the draft of your essay. Rewrite the essay according to that revised plan and resist the tendency to panic in the middle, tear it up and start all over again. It is important to get to the end and then revise again. Otherwise you will have a perfect opening couple of paragraphs and potentially the rest of the essay in disarray.

You will learn and improve much more through criticising and correcting your work than by simply starting again.

Don't Panic!

A few students can get so anxious about an assignment that they find themselves unable to write anything at all.

There are several reasons why this can happen. The primary reason is usually that such students set themselves too high a standard and then panic because they cannot attain it. This may also be due to factors such as the fear of the expectations of others or placing too high an expectation on themselves.

Whatever the reason, if you cannot write an assignment, you have to find a way out of your panic.  If you find yourself in this position, do not allow the situation to drift; try to act swiftly.  Discussing your worries with your tutor and/or peers, or simply writing them down, will help you clarify why you might feel stuck.

Another trick is to dash off what you consider to be a 'bad' essay, hand it in and see what happens, or decide to write the assignment in two hours without notes or references and see how that goes. You can always come back to enter the references later.

Students often say that their hurried and most casual essay got a higher mark than one which they struggled with for weeks; in fact this happened because they got down to essentials and made their points quickly.  The experiment might be worth a try.

If, despite study and good intentions, you cannot seem to get your essay written, or even started, you should let your tutor know as soon as possible.

Your tutor will have encountered such problems many times, and it is part of his/her job to help you sort them out.

Continue to: Assignment Finishing Touches Academic Referencing

See also: The Do’s and Don’ts of Essay Writing Effective Reading Note-Taking for Reading

A clear, arguable thesis will tell your readers where you are going to end up, but it can also help you figure out how to get them there. Put your thesis at the top of a blank page and then make a list of the points you will need to make to argue that thesis effectively.

For example, consider this example from the thesis handout : While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake”(54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well”(51) is less convincing.

To argue this thesis, the author needs to do the following:

• Show what is persuasive about Sandel’s claims about the problems with striving for perfection.
• Show what is not convincing about Sandel’s claim that we can clearly distinguish between medically necessary enhancements and other enhancements.

Once you have broken down your thesis into main claims, you can then think about what sub-claims you will need to make in order to support each of those main claims. That step might look like this:

• Evidence that Sandel provides to support this claim
• Discussion of why this evidence is convincing even in light of potential counterarguments
• Discussion of cases when medically necessary enhancement and non-medical enhancement cannot be easily distinguished
• Analysis of what those cases mean for Sandel’s argument
• Consideration of counterarguments (what Sandel might say in response to this section of your argument)

Each argument you will make in an essay will be different, but this strategy will often be a useful first step in figuring out the path of your argument.  

Strategy #2: Use subheadings, even if you remove them later  

Scientific papers generally include standard subheadings to delineate different sections of the paper, including “introduction,” “methods,” and “discussion.” Even when you are not required to use subheadings, it can be helpful to put them into an early draft to help you see what you’ve written and to begin to think about how your ideas fit together. You can do this by typing subheadings above the sections of your draft.

If you’re having trouble figuring out how your ideas fit together, try beginning with informal subheadings like these:

• Introduction  
• Explain the author’s main point  
• Show why this main point doesn’t hold up when we consider this other example  
• Explain the implications of what I’ve shown for our understanding of the author  
• Show how that changes our understanding of the topic

For longer papers, you may decide to include subheadings to guide your reader through your argument. In those cases, you would need to revise your informal subheadings to be more useful for your readers. For example, if you have initially written in something like “explain the author’s main point,” your final subheading might be something like “Sandel’s main argument” or “Sandel’s opposition to genetic enhancement.” In other cases, once you have the key pieces of your argument in place, you will be able to remove the subheadings.  

Strategy #3: Create a reverse outline from your draft  

While you may have learned to outline a paper before writing a draft, this step is often difficult because our ideas develop as we write. In some cases, it can be more helpful to write a draft in which you get all of your ideas out and then do a “reverse outline” of what you’ve already written. This doesn’t have to be formal; you can just make a list of the point in each paragraph of your draft and then ask these questions:

• Are those points in an order that makes sense to you?  
• Are there gaps in your argument?  
• Do the topic sentences of the paragraphs clearly state these main points?  
• Do you have more than one paragraph that focuses on the same point? If so, do you need both paragraphs?  
• Do you have some paragraphs that include too many points? If so, would it make more sense to split them up?  
• Do you make points near the end of the draft that would be more effective earlier in your paper?  
• Are there points missing from this draft?  
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What Makes a Good Essay?

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

Four Steps for STEM Majors to Rock that Next Paper

STEM students everywhere feel the pain of writing assignments. As people who would rather spend their time working with numbers and figures, sitting down to write a paper can seem so tedious and boring. But effective communication is one of the most important skills we can learn in college, as it’ll help us stand out when we express ourselves. STEM students with writing abilities are super valuable!

Even if you are only required to take one writing class, it’s important that you use this opportunity to enhance your skills and build confidence in your own writing. With online tools like the BibMe Plus grammar and plagiarism tool , writing becomes much less intimidating.

While you’re working on your writing, approach the assignment like any other math problem you would tackle. You can work out your writing using four steps: identify the problem, show your work, cut out unnecessary steps, and check your final answer.

1. Identify the problem

The most crucial part of your paper is your argument or the problem to be considered. When thinking through your thesis, go through and review several, peer-reviewed sources. Academic sources can be scary, but they contain the research you need to make your points.

After you’ve done research, craft your thesis statement to capture the essence of the problem. One trick is to rephrase the assignment as a question and then make sure your thesis answers that question. Clearly identify the problem or discussion that is of interest and communicate that you understand the problem from all angles.

Writing your paper will be so much more exciting if you can find a topic that interests you, too. You might even be able to find a subject that relates to science or math in some way.

2.     Show your work

Showing your work means that you provide clear and reasoned evidence as to how you are developing your argument while incorporating outside information. This evidence should come from outside sources and try to show various views of an argument.

This will make the stated claims clear and your writing easy to understand. Clearly point your reader in the correct direction, using logical steps that follow one another.

Also important: cite your sources so others can confirm or read more on the evidence you’ve used. If you don’t know which citation style to use, ask your professor. Commonly used citation styles include MLA format , APA format , and Chicago Manual of Style .

3. Cut out unnecessary steps

It’s tempting but don’t try to impress your teacher by using the biggest words or the longest, most complicated sentences you can think of. This will make the paper hard to follow. Simple and clear is always better, just like when solving an equation.

Even if you have a gigantic assignment, you still have to cut out the fluff. This means actively checking for lengthy or wordy sentences and avoiding passive voice. For example, instead of:

The cake was baked by Mary.

You’d write:

Mary baked the cake.

Writing assignments in college require active voice, which can be a tough transition from the lab reports that require passive constructions. After you’ve written your draft, read it aloud. Listen for passive voice, and circle any words that you’re not quite sure about. After that, cut out any words that are unnecessary and revise until your writing is as clear as you can make it.

4. Check your final answer

Any time you solve a math problem, it is a good idea to check your work to make sure that your answer makes sense. Writing is no different!

Nailing a smooth flow and good writing transitions on the first try can be tough. Try making a flowchart with one-word descriptors of each paragraph, and rearrange them until you find the order that makes the most sense if your organization doesn’t seem right. Your topic sentences should serve as your roadmap, so ensure that these follow each other logically. Reviewing the flow of your argument is always a great last step in writing!

Being a mathematician or a scientist means that you will have to explain your work to the world, and mastering writing is the key to spreading your ideas and your accomplishments. The good thing is that there’s likely no need to drastically change or enhance your writing. Approaching your assignments like any STEM exercise is a great way to make you feel more at ease. And don’t be afraid to ask for help, whether that be from your TA, a tutor, or your campus writing center. Just take the assignment one step at a time.

Trying to remember how linking verbs work? Need a refresher on what is a prepositional phrase ? Looking for an interjection to use in your next paper? Check out our BibMe grammar guides for help with the above and more!

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13 Rules for Writing Good Essays

To write a good essay, you have to make your message clear..

Posted March 7, 2018 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

To write a good university essay you have to make your message clear. This means organizing your key points, supporting them with a series of evidence-based arguments, and wrapping it all up at the end so the reader knows what they've learned. To do this well, you need to take the reader's perspective. If you can see what might trip them up as they read your work, then you can avoid pitfalls that will confuse or bore them. Here are some tips to help you avoid the easy pitfalls. Once understood, these rules can be broken. But if you're unclear on how to approach your writing, these tips can help.

1. Your opening paragraph should clearly describe what you are going to discuss in the essay. These three things are vital: What’s the thesis (or problem), why is it important, and how are you going to address it? If you have each of those items in your opening paragraph your reader will know what they are reading, why they are reading it, and what they can expect to get out of it.

2. Organize the essay so that it covers a set list of subtopics that each support your main thesis. If it's a long essay, you should break it up into sections with headings that focus on specific subtopics. Introduce these topics in the opening paragraph of the essay (see 1 above). Overall, you want to organize information so it is easy to understand and remember.

3. Start paragraphs with opening sentences that explain what the paragraph is going to say. Then write sentences that follow one from the other and are easy to read. Avoid paragraphs that are too long, that read like lists, or that have no main thesis. Summarize complex paragraphs with concise sentences that explain what the paragraph said.

4. Create transitions between paragraphs so that one paragraph follows from the next. You are trying to make it all easy to understand for your reader. The more organized your writing, the more clearly you will understand and communicate your own ideas.

5. Make your sentences work. Avoid long sentences. When in doubt, break long sentences into smaller sentences. Avoid sentences that are repetitive and don't provide new information. Throw away weak and empty sentences ("Angioplasty is an important procedure." "Emotions are a central element in people's lives."). Sentences also need to be crystal clear. You can check for clarity by making sure they read well. Read them out loud to yourself or have someone else read them out loud to you.

6. Explain novel terms (jargon) when you introduce them . Don’t assume your reader knows what terms mean. Avoid jargon except where it communicates key concepts. Imagine the reader knows less about the topic than you do.

7. In science writing, you can use synonyms for key concepts only when you are first explaining them. After that, use the same word every time to refer to the idea. For example, you might want to write, 'affect,' and then 'emotions,' and then 'feelings.' If you use different words every time you refer to an idea, your reader will get confused. Define a term and then use it consistently.

8. Be careful when you use words like ‘this’ or ‘that’ or ‘their’ or ‘those’ or 'these' or 'they.' These words are often not as tightly connected to what they reference as you think. Check every one of them and see if you can rewrite it more clearly. When you use *these* words carelessly, your reader will need to think more to understand what you are referring to. *That* will break the flow and make it harder to understand what you're actually try to say. *They* (the readers) won't know who you're referring to. By simply stating what you are referring to specifically, you make your writing clear. It is better to be repetitive than unclear.

9. Use concrete information. Concrete information is powerful, is appealing, it is easier to understand, and it sticks in people's memory . Concrete information includes things like examples, statistics, quotes, facts, and other details. The more sentences that go by without communicating new concrete information or ideas that develop your thesis, the more likely your reader is to get bored .

10. If you have an interesting idea, check to see if someone else has already had it. If they have, cite them. Chances are someone has at least hinted at your clever insight, and you can use them as a springboard to say something even more interesting. This will demonstrate scholarship and an understanding of the broader context.

11. Make sure everything is relevant. Don’t include random facts that are not relevant. Don't include extra words that you don't need ("actually," "very," "in many ways," "the fact that"). Don't include paragraphs that have lots of cool facts if they aren't related to your central thesis. These slow down your reader and confuse them because they expect to hear content that is related to your theme. After you write a first draft (where you are just trying to get ideas down on paper), see what you can cut out to focus your argument on what matters.

12. The very best essays provide their own critique. End with something like this before the final summary: Provide criticism of your key point (appropriately referenced). Then provide criticism of the criticizer that you referenced (with another reference). If you can do this well, then in most instances you will have demonstrated thorough understanding of the issues. After this, provide your conclusion.

13. In the conclusion, take a position, make a prediction, or propose some future actions (an experiment, an implication, a new question to be addressed, etc). Summarize your thesis and the evidence you’ve provided in a concise way without being wishy-washy.

You might also be interested in my top 10 job interview tips or top 10 science-based study skills.

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Thomas T. Hills, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at University of Warwick.

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A (Very) Simple Way to Improve Your Writing

• Mark Rennella

It’s called the “one-idea rule” — and any level of writer can use it.

The “one idea” rule is a simple concept that can help you sharpen your writing, persuade others by presenting your argument in a clear, concise, and engaging way. What exactly does the rule say?

• Every component of a successful piece of writing should express only one idea.
• In persuasive writing, your “one idea” is often the argument or belief you are presenting to the reader. Once you identify what that argument is, the “one-idea rule” can help you develop, revise, and connect the various components of your writing.
• For instance, let’s say you’re writing an essay. There are three components you will be working with throughout your piece: the title, the paragraphs, and the sentences.
• Each of these parts should be dedicated to just one idea. The ideas are not identical, of course, but they’re all related. If done correctly, the smaller ideas (in sentences) all build (in paragraphs) to support the main point (suggested in the title).

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

Most advice about writing looks like a long laundry list of “do’s and don’ts.” These lists can be helpful from time to time, but they’re hard to remember … and, therefore, hard to depend on when you’re having trouble putting your thoughts to paper. During my time in academia, teaching composition at the undergraduate and graduate levels, I saw many people struggle with this.

• MR Mark Rennella is Associate Editor at HBP and has published two books, Entrepreneurs, Managers, and Leaders and The Boston Cosmopolitans .  

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• Front Psychol

Is a Long Essay Always a Good Essay? The Effect of Text Length on Writing Assessment

Johanna fleckenstein.

1 Department of Educational Research and Educational Psychology, Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, Kiel, Germany

Jennifer Meyer

Thorben jansen.

2 Institute for Psychology of Learning and Instruction, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany

Stefan Keller

3 School of Education, Institute of Secondary Education, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Brugg, Switzerland

Olaf Köller

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

The assessment of text quality is a transdisciplinary issue concerning the research areas of educational assessment, language technology, and classroom instruction. Text length has been found to strongly influence human judgment of text quality. The question of whether text length is a construct-relevant aspect of writing competence or a source of judgment bias has been discussed controversially. This paper used both a correlational and an experimental approach to investigate this question. Secondary analyses were performed on a large-scale dataset with highly trained raters, showing an effect of text length beyond language proficiency. Furthermore, an experimental study found that pre-service teachers tended to undervalue text length when compared to professional ratings. The findings are discussed with respect to the role of training and context in writing assessment.

Introduction

Judgments of students’ writing are influenced by a variety of text characteristics, including text length. The relationship between such (superficial) aspects of written responses and the assessment of text quality has been a controversial issue in different areas of educational research. Both in the area of educational measurement and of language technology, text length has been shown to strongly influence text ratings by trained human raters as well as computer algorithms used to score texts automatically ( Chodorow and Burstein, 2004 ; Powers, 2005 ; Kobrin et al., 2011 ; Guo et al., 2013 ). In the context of classroom language learning and instruction, studies have found effects of text length on teachers’ diagnostic judgments (e.g., grades; Marshall, 1967 ; Osnes, 1995 ; Birkel and Birkel, 2002 ; Pohlmann-Rother et al., 2016 ). In all these contexts, the underlying question is a similar one: Should text length be considered when judging students’ writing – or is it a source of judgment bias? The objective of this paper is to investigate to what degree text length is a construct-relevant aspect of writing competence, or to what extent it erroneously influences judgments.

Powers (2005) recommends both correlational and experimental approaches for establishing the relevance of response length in the evaluation of written responses: “the former for ruling out response length (and various other factors) as causes of response quality (by virtue of their lack of relationship) and the latter for establishing more definitive causal links” (p. 7). This paper draws on data from both recommended approaches: A correlational analysis of a large-scale dataset [MEWS; funded by the German Research Foundation (Grant Nr. CO 1513/12-1) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant Nr. 100019L_162675)] based on expert text quality ratings on the one hand, and an experimental study with untrained pre-service teachers on the other. It thereby incorporates the measurement perspective with the classroom perspective. In the past, (language) assessment research has been conducted within different disciplines that rarely acknowledged each other. While some assessment issues are relevant for standardized testing in large-scale contexts only, others pertain to research on teaching and classroom instruction as well. Even though their assessments may serve different functions (e.g., formative vs. summative or low vs. high stakes), teachers need to be able to assess students’ performance accurately, just as well as professional raters in standardized texts. Thus, combining these different disciplinary angles and looking at the issue of text length from a transdisciplinary perspective can be an advantage for all the disciplines involved. Overall, this paper aims to present a comprehensive picture of the role of essay length in human and automated essay scoring, which ultimately amounts to a discussion of the elusive “gold standard” in writing assessment.

Theoretical Background

Writing assessment is about identifying and evaluating features of a written response that indicate writing quality. Overall, previous research has demonstrated clear and consistent associations between linguistic features on the one hand, and writing quality and development on the other. In a recent literature review, Crossley (2020) showed that higher rated essays typically include more sophisticated lexical items, more complex syntactic features, and greater cohesion. Developing writers also show movements toward using more sophisticated words and more complex syntactic structures. The studies presented by Crossley (2020) provide strong indications that linguistic features in texts can afford important insights into writing quality and development. Whereas linguistic features are generally considered to be construct-relevant when it comes to assessing writing quality, there are other textual features whose relevance to the construct is debatable. The validity of the assessment of students’ competences is negatively affected by construct-irrelevant factors that influence judgments ( Rezaei and Lovorn, 2010 ). This holds true for professional raters in the context of large-scale standardized writing assessment as well as for teacher judgments in classroom writing assessment (both formative or summative). Assigning scores to students’ written responses is a challenging task as different text-inherent factors influence the accuracy of the raters’ or teachers’ judgments (e.g., handwriting, spelling: Graham et al., 2011 ; length, lexical diversity: Wolfe et al., 2016 ). Depending on the construct to be assessed, the influence of these aspects can be considered judgment bias. One of the most relevant and well-researched text-inherent factors influencing human judgments is text length. Crossley (2020) points out that his review does “not consider text length as a linguistic feature while acknowledging that text length is likely the strongest predictor of writing development and quality.” Multiple studies have found a positive relationship between text length and human ratings of text quality, even when controlling for language proficiency ( Chenoweth and Hayes, 2001 ; McCutchen et al., 2008 ; McNamara et al., 2015 ). It is still unclear, however, whether the relation between text length and human scores reflects a true relation between text length and text quality (appropriate heuristic assumption) or whether it stems from a bias in human judgments (judgment bias assumption). The former suggests that text length is a construct-relevant factor and that a certain length is needed to effectively develop a point of view on the issue presented in the essay prompt, and this is one of the aspects taken into account in the scoring ( Kobrin et al., 2007 ; Quinlan et al., 2009 ). The latter claims that text length is either completely or partly irrelevant to the construct of writing proficiency and that the strong effect it has on human judgment can be considered a bias ( Powers, 2005 ). In the context of large-scale writing assessment, prompt-based essay tasks are often used to measure students’ writing competence ( Guo et al., 2013 ). These essays are typically scored by professionally trained raters. These human ratings have been shown to be strongly correlated with essay length, even if this criterion is not represented in the assessment rubric ( Chodorow and Burstein, 2004 ; Kobrin et al., 2011 ). In a review of selected studies addressing the relation between length and quality of constructed responses, Powers (2005) showed that most studies found correlations within the range of r = 0.50 to r = 0.70. For example, he criticized the SAT essay for encouraging wordiness as longer essays tend to score higher. Kobrin et al. (2007) found the number of words to explain 39% of the variance in the SAT essay score. The authors argue that essay length is one of the aspects taken into account in the scoring as it takes a certain length to develop an argument. Similarly, Deane (2013) argues in favor of regarding writing fluency a construct-relevant factor (also see Shermis, 2014 ; McNamara et al., 2015 ). In an analytical rating of text quality, Hachmeister (2019) could showed that longer texts typically contain more cohesive devices, which has a positive impact on ratings of text quality. In the context of writing assessment in primary school, Pohlmann-Rother et al. (2016) found strong correlations between text length and holistic ratings of text quality ( r = 0.62) as well as the semantic-pragmatic analytical dimension ( r = 0.62). However, they found no meaningful relationship between text length and language mechanics (i.e., grammatical and orthographical correctness; r = 0.09).

Text length may be considered especially construct-relevant when it comes to writing in a foreign language. Because of the constraints of limited language knowledge, writing in a foreign language may be hampered because of the need to focus on language rather than content ( Weigle, 2003 ). Silva (1993) , in a review of differences between writing in a first and second language, found that writing in a second language tends to be “more constrained, more difficult, and less effective” (p. 668) than writing in a first language. The necessity of devoting cognitive resources to issues of language may mean that not as much attention can be given to higher order issues such as content or organization (for details of this debate, see Weigle, 2003 , p. 36 f.). In that context, the ability of writing longer texts may be legitimately considered as indicative of higher competence in a foreign language, making text length a viable factor of assessment. For example, Ruegg and Sugiyama (2010) showed that the main predictors of the content score in English foreign language essays were first, organization and second, essay length.

The relevance of this issue has further increased as systems of automated essay scoring (AES) have become more widely used in writing assessment. These systems offer a promising way to complement human ratings in judging text quality ( Deane, 2013 ). However, as the automated scoring algorithms are typically modeled after human ratings, they are also affected by human judgment bias. Moreover, it has been criticized that, at this point, automated scoring systems mainly count words when computing writing scores ( Perelman, 2014 ). Chodorow and Burstein (2004) , for example, showed that 53% of the variance in human ratings can be explained by automated scoring models that use only the number of words and the number of words squared as predictors. Ben-Simon and Bennett (2007) provided evidence from National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing test data that standard, statistically created e-rater models weighed essay length even more strongly than human raters (also see Perelman, 2014 ).

Bejar (2011) suggests that a possible tendency to reward longer texts could be minimized through the training of raters with responses at each score level that vary in length. However, Barkaoui (2010) and Attali (2016) both compared the holistic scoring of experienced vs. novice raters and – contrary to expectations – found that the correlation between essay length and scores was slightly stronger for the experienced group. Thus, the question of whether professional experience and training counteract or even reinforce the tendency to overvalue text length in scoring remains open.

Compared to the amount of research on the role of essay length in human and automated scoring in large-scale high-stakes contexts, little attention has been paid to the relation of text length and quality in formative or summative assessment by teachers. This is surprising considering the relevance of the issue for teachers’ professional competence: In order to assess the quality of students’ writing, teachers must either configure various aspects of text quality in a holistic assessment or hold them apart in an analytic assessment. Thus, they need to have a concept of writing quality appropriate for the task and they need to be aware of the construct-relevant and -irrelevant criteria (cf. the lens model; Brunswik, 1955 ). To our knowledge, only two studies have investigated the effect of text length on holistic teacher judgments, both of which found that longer texts receive higher grades. Birkel and Birkel (2002) found significant main effects of text length (long, medium, short) and spelling errors (many, few) on holistic teacher judgments. Osnes (1995) reported effects of handwriting quality and text length on grades.

Whereas research on the text length effect on classroom writing assessment is scarce, a considerable body of research has investigated how other text characteristics influence teachers’ assessment of student texts. It is well-demonstrated, for example, that pre-service and experienced teachers assign lower grades to essays containing mechanical errors ( Scannell and Marshall, 1966 ; Marshall, 1967 ; Cumming et al., 2002 ; Rezaei and Lovorn, 2010 ). Scannell and Marshall (1966) found that pre-service teachers’ judgments were affected by errors in punctuation, grammar and spelling, even though they were explicitly instructed to grade on content alone. More recently, Rezaei and Lovorn (2010) showed that high quality essays containing more structural, mechanical, spelling, and grammatical errors were assigned lower scores than texts without errors even in criteria relating solely to content. Teachers failed to distinguish between formal errors and the independent quality of content in a student essay. Similarly, Vögelin et al. (2018 , 2019) found that lexical features and spelling influenced not only holistic teacher judgments of students’ writing in English as a second or foreign language, but also their assessment of other analytical criteria (e.g., grammar). Even though these studies do not consider text length as a potential source of bias, they do show that construct-irrelevant aspects influence judgments of teachers.

This Research

Against this research background, it remains essential to investigate whether the relation between essay length and text quality represents a true relationship or a bias on the part of the rater or teacher ( Wolfe et al., 2016 ). First, findings of correlational studies can give us an indication of the effect of text length on human ratings above and beyond language proficiency variables. Second, going beyond correlational findings, there is a need for experimental research that examines essay responses on the same topic differing only in length in order to establish causal relationships ( Kobrin et al., 2007 ). The present research brings together both of these approaches.

This paper comprises two studies investigating the role of essay length in foreign language assessment using an interdisciplinary perspective including the fields of foreign language education, computer linguistics, educational research, and psychometrics. Study 1 presents a secondary analysis of a large-scale dataset with N = 2,722 upper secondary school students in Germany and Switzerland who wrote essays in response to “independent writing” prompts of the internet-based Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT). It investigates the question of how several indicators of students’ English proficiency (English grade, reading and listening comprehension, self-concept) are related to the length of their essays (word count). It further investigates whether or not essay length accounts for variance in text quality scores (expert ratings) even when controlling for English language proficiency and other variables (e.g., country, gender, cognitive ability). A weak relationship of proficiency and length as well as a large proportion of variance in text quality explained by length beyond proficiency would be in favor of the judgment bias assumption.

Study 2 focused on possible essay length bias in an experimental setting, investigating the effect of essay length on text quality ratings when there was (per design) no relation between essay length and text quality score. Essays from Study 1 were rated by N = 84 untrained pre-service teachers, using the same TOEFL iBT rubric as the expert raters. As text quality scores were held constant within all essay length conditions, any significant effect of essay length would indicate a judgment bias. Both studies are described in more detail in the following sections.

This study investigates the question of judgment bias assumption vs. appropriate heuristic assumption in a large-scale context with professional human raters. A weak relationship between text length and language proficiency would be indicative of the former assumption, whereas a strong relationship would support the latter. Moreover, if the impact of text length on human ratings was significant and substantial beyond language proficiency, this might indicate a bias on the part of the rater rather than an appropriate heuristic. Thus, Study 1 aims to answer the following research questions:

• (1) How is essay length related to language proficiency?
• (2) Does text length still account for variance in text quality when English language proficiency is statistically controlled for?

Materials and Methods

Sample and procedure.

The sample consisted of N = 2,722 upper secondary students (11th grade; 58.1% female) in Germany ( n = 894) and Switzerland ( n = 1828) from the interdisciplinary and international research project Measuring English Writing at Secondary Level (MEWS; for an overview see Keller et al., 2020 ). The target population were students attending the academic track of general education grammar schools (ISCED level 3a) in the German federal state Schleswig-Holstein as well as in seven Swiss cantons (Aargau, Basel Stadt, Basel Land, Luzern, St. Gallen, Schwyz, Zurich). In a repeated-measures design, students were assessed at the beginning (T1: August/September 2016; M age = 17.34; SD age = 0.87) and at the end of the school year (T2: May/June 2017; M age = 18.04; SD age = 0.87). The students completed computer-based tests on writing, reading and listening skills, as well as general cognitive ability. Furthermore, they completed a questionnaire measuring background variables and individual characteristics.

Writing prompt

All students answered two independent and two integrated essay writing prompts of the internet-based Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT ® ) that is administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton. The task instruction was as follows: “In the writing task below you will find a question on a controversial topic. Answer the question in an essay in English. List arguments and counter-arguments, explain them and finally make it clear what your own opinion on the topic is. Your text will be judged on different qualities. These include the presentation of your ideas, the organization of the essay and the linguistic quality and accuracy. You have 30 min to do this. Try to use all of this time as much as possible.” This task instruction was followed by the essay prompt. The maximum writing time was 30 min according to the official TOEFL iBT ® assessment procedure. The essays were scored by trained human raters on the TOEFL 6-point rating scale at ETS. In addition to two human ratings per essay, ETS also provided scores from their automated essay scoring system (e-rater ® ; Burstein et al., 2013 ). For a more detailed description of the scoring procedure and the writing prompts see Rupp et al. (2019) and Keller et al. (2020) . For the purpose of this study, we selected the student responses to the TOEFL iBT independent writing prompt “Teachers,” which showed good measurement qualities (see Rupp et al., 2019 ). Taken together, data collections at T1 and T2 yielded N = 2,389 valid written responses to the following prompt: “A teacher’s ability to relate well with students is more important than excellent knowledge of the subject being taught.”

Text quality and length

The rating of text quality via human and machine scoring was done by ETS. All essays were scored by highly experienced human raters on the operational holistic TOEFL iBT rubric from 0 to 5 ( Chodorow and Burstein, 2004 ). Essays were scored high if they were well-organized and individual ideas were well-developed, if they used specific examples and support to express learners’ opinion on the subject, and if the English language was used accurately to express learners’ ideas. Essays were assigned a score of 0 if they were written in another language, were generally incomprehensible, or if no text was entered.

Each essay received independent ratings by two trained human raters. If the two ratings showed a deviation of 1, the mean of the two scores was used; if they showed a deviation of 2 or more, a third rater (adjudicator) was consulted. Inter-rater agreement, as measured by quadratic weighted kappa (QWK), was satisfying for the prompt “Teachers” at both time points (QWK = 0.67; Hayes and Hatch, 1999 ; see Rupp et al., 2019 for further details). The mean text quality score was M = 3.35 ( SD = 0.72).

Word count was used to measure the length of the essays. The number of words was calculated by the e-Rater scoring engine. The mean word count was M = 311.19 ( SD = 81.91) and the number of words ranged from 41 to 727. We used the number of words rather than other measures of text length (e.g., number of letters) as it is the measure which is most frequently used in the literature: 9 out of 10 studies in the research review by Powers (2005) used word count as the criterion (also see Kobrin et al., 2007 , 2011 ; Crossley and McNamara, 2009 ; Barkaoui, 2010 ; Attali, 2016 ; Wolfe et al., 2016 ; Wind et al., 2017 ). This approach ensures that our analyses can be compared with previous research.

English language proficiency and control variables

Proficiency was operationalized by a combination of different variables: English grade, English writing self-concept, reading and listening comprehension in English. The listening and reading skills were measured with a subset of items from the German National Assessment ( Köller et al., 2010 ). The tasks require a detailed understanding of long, complex reading and listening texts including idiomatic expressions and different linguistic registers. The tests consisted of a total of 133 items for reading, and 118 items for listening that were administered in a multi-matrix-design. Each student was assessed with two rotated 15-min blocks per domain. Item parameters were estimated using longitudinal multidimensional two-parameter item response models in M plus version 8 ( Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2012 ). Student abilities were estimated using 15 plausible values (PVs) per person. The PV reliabilities were 0.92 (T1) and 0.76 (T2) for reading comprehension, and 0.85 (T1) and 0.72 (T2) for listening comprehension. For a more detailed description of the scaling procedure see Köller et al. (2019) .

General cognitive ability was assessed at T1 using the subtests on figural reasoning (N2; 25 items) and on verbal reasoning (V3; 20 items) of the Cognitive Ability Test (KFT 4–12 + R; Heller and Perleth, 2000 ). For each scale 15 PVs were drawn in a two-dimensional item response model. For the purpose of this study, the two PVs were combined to 15 overall PV scores with a reliability of 0.86.

The English writing self-concept was measured with a scale consisting of five items (e.g., “I have always been good at writing in English”; Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ; Trautwein et al., 2012 ; α = 0.90). Furthermore, country (Germany = 0/Switzerland = 1), gender (male = 0/female = 1) and time of measurement (T1 = 0; T2 = 1) were used as control variables.

Statistical Analyses

All analyses were conducted in M plus version 8 ( Muthén and Muthén, 1998–2012 ) based on the 15PV data sets using robust maximum likelihood estimation to account for a hierarchical data structure (i.e., students clustered in classes; type = complex). Full-information maximum likelihood was used to estimate missing values in background variables. Due to the use of 15PVs, all analyses were run 15 times and then averaged (see Rubin, 1987 ).

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to specify a latent proficiency factor. All four proficiency variables showed substantial loadings in a single-factor measurement model (English grade: 0.67; writing self-concept: 0.73; reading comprehension: 0.42; listening comprehension: 0.51). As reading and listening comprehension were measured within the same assessment framework and could thus be expected to share mutual variance beyond the latent factor, their residuals were allowed to correlate. The analyses yielded an acceptable model fit: χ 2 (1) = 3.65, p = 0.06; CFI = 0.998, RMSEA = 0.031, SRMR = 0.006.

The relationship between text length and other independent variables was explored with correlational analysis. Multiple regression analysis with latent and manifest predictors was used to investigate the relations between text length, proficiency, and text quality.

The correlation of the latent proficiency factor and text length (word count) was moderately positive: r = 0.36, p < 0.01. This indicates that more proficient students tended to write longer texts. Significant correlations with other variables showed that students tended to write longer texts at T1 ( r = -0.08, p < 0.01), girls wrote longer texts than boys ( r = 0.11, p < 0.01), and higher cognitive ability was associated with longer texts ( r = 0.07, p < 0.01). However, all of these correlations were very weak as a general rule. The association of country and text length was not statistically significant ( r = -0.06, p = 0.10).

Table 1 presents the results of the multiple linear regression of text quality on text length, proficiency and control variables. The analysis showed that proficiency and the covariates alone explained 38 percent of the variance in text quality ratings, with the latent proficiency factor being by far the strongest predictor (Model 1). The effect of text length on the text quality score was equally strong when including the control variables but not proficiency in the model (Model 2). When both the latent proficiency factor and text length were entered into the regression model (Model 3), the coefficient of text length was reduced but remained significant and substantial, explaining an additional 24% of the variance (ΔR 2 = 0.24 from Model 1 to Model 3). Thus, text length had an incremental effect on text quality beyond a latent English language proficiency factor.

Linear regression of text quality on text length, English language proficiency, and control variables: standardized regression coefficients (β) and standard errors (SE).

Study 1 approached the issue of text length by operationalizing the construct of English language proficiency and investigating how it affects the relationship of text length and text quality. This can give us an idea of how text length may influence human judgments even though it is not considered relevant to the construct of writing competence. These secondary analyses of an existing large-scale dataset yielded two central findings: First, text length was only moderately associated with language proficiency. Second, text length strongly influenced writing performance beyond proficiency. Thus, it had an impact on the assigned score that was not captured by the construct of proficiency. These findings could be interpreted in favor of the judgment bias assumption as text length may include both construct-irrelevant and construct-relevant information.

The strengths of this study were the large sample of essays on the same topic and the vast amount of background information that was collected on the student writers (proficiency and control variables). However, there were three major limitations: First, the proficiency construct captured different aspects of English language competence (reading and listening comprehension, writing self-concept, grade), but that operationalization was not comprehensive. Thus, the additional variance explained by text length may still have been due to other aspects that could not be included in the analyses as they were not in the data. Further research with a similar design (primary or secondary analyses) should use additional variables such as grammar/vocabulary knowledge or writing performance in the first language.

The second limitation was the correlational design, which does not allow a causal investigation of the effect of text length on text quality ratings. Drawing inferences which are causal in nature would require an experimental environment in which, for example, text quality is kept constant for texts of different lengths. For that reason, Study 2 was conducted exactly in such a research design.

Last but not least, the question of transferability of these findings remains open. Going beyond standardized large-scale assessment, interdisciplinary research requires us to look at the issue from different perspectives. Findings pertaining to professional raters may not be transferable to teachers, who are required to assess students’ writing in a classroom context. Thus, Study 2 drew on a sample of preservice English teachers and took a closer look at how their ratings were impacted by text length.

Research Questions

In Study 2, we investigated the judgment bias assumption vs. the appropriate heuristic assumption of preservice teachers. As recommended by Powers (2005) , we conducted an experimental study in addition to the correlational design used in Study 1. As text quality scores were held constant within all essay length conditions, any significant effect of essay length would be in favor of the judgment bias assumption. The objective of this study was to answer the following research questions:

• (1) How do ratings of pre-service teachers correspond to expert ratings?
• (2) Is there an effect of text length on the text quality ratings of preservice English teachers, when there is (per design) no relation between text length and text quality (main effect)?
• (3) Does the effect differ for different levels of writing performance (interaction effect)?

Participants and Procedure

The experiment was conducted with N = 84 pre-service teachers ( M Age = 23 years; 80% female), currently enrolled in a higher education teacher training program at a university in Northern Germany. They had no prior rating experience of this type of learner texts. The experiment was administered with the Student Inventory ASSET ( Jansen et al., 2019 ), an online tool to assess students’ texts within an experimental environment. Participants were asked to rate essays from the MEWS project (see Study 1) on the holistic rubric used by the human raters at ETS (0–5; https://www.ets.org/s/toefl/pdf/toefl_writing_rubrics.pdf ). Every participant had to rate 9 out of 45 essays in randomized order, representing all possible combinations of text quality and text length. Before the rating process began, participants were given information about essay writing in the context of the MEWS study (school type; school year; students’ average age; instructional text) and they were presented the TOEFL writing rubric as the basis for their judgments. They had 15 min to get an overview of all nine texts before they were asked to rate each text on the rubric. Throughout the rating process, they were allowed to highlight parts of the texts.

The operationalization of text quality and text length as categorical variables as well as the procedure of selecting an appropriate essay sample for the study is explained in the following.

Text Length and Text Quality

The essays used in the experiment were selected on the basis of the following procedure, which took both text quality and text length as independent variables into account. The first independent variable of the essay (overall text quality) was operationalized via scores assigned by two trained human raters from ETS on a holistic six-point scale (0–5; see Study 1 and Appendix A). In order to measure the variable as precisely as possible, we only included essays for which both human raters had assigned the same score, resulting in a sample of N = 1,333 essays. As a result, three gradations of text quality were considered in the current study: lower quality (score 2), medium quality (score 3) and higher quality (score 4). The corpus included only few texts (10.4%) with the extreme scores of 0, 1, and 5; these were therefore excluded from the essay pool. We thus realized a 3 × 3 factorial within-subjects design. The second independent variable text length was measured via the word count of the essays, calculated by the e-rater (c) scoring engine. As with text quality, this variable was subdivided in three levels: rather short texts (s), medium-length texts (m), and long texts (l). All available texts were analyzed regarding their word count distribution. Severe outliers were excluded. The remaining N = 1308 essays were split in three even groups: the lower (=261 words), middle (262–318 words) and upper third (=319 words). Table 2 shows the distribution of essays for the resulting combinations of text length and text score.

Distribution of essays in the sample contingent on text quality and text length groupings.

Selection of Essays

For each text length group (s, m, and l), the mean word count across all three score groups was calculated. Then, the score group (2, 3, or 4) with the smallest number of essays in a text length group was taken as reference (e.g., n = 22 short texts of high quality or n = 15 long texts of low quality). Within each text length group, the five essays being – word count-wise – closest to the mean of the reference were chosen for the study. This was possible with mostly no or only minor deviations. In case of multiple possible matches, the essay was selected at random. This selection procedure resulted in a total sample of 45 essays, with five essays for each combination of score group (2, 3, 4) and length group (s, m, l).

A repeated-measures ANOVA with two independent variables (text quality and text length) was conducted to test the two main effects and their interaction on participants’ ratings (see Table 3 ). Essay ratings were treated as a within-subject factor, accounting for dependencies of the ratings nested within raters. The main effect of text quality scores on participants’ ratings showed significant differences between the three text quality conditions ( low , medium , high ) that corresponded to expert ratings; F (2, 82) = 209.04, p < 0.001, d = 4.52. There was also a significant main effect for the three essay length conditions ( short , medium , long ); F (2, 82) = 9.14, p < 0.001, d = 0.94. Contrary to expectations, essay length was negatively related to participants’ ratings, meaning that shorter texts received higher scores than longer texts. The interaction of text quality and text length also had a significant effect; F (4, 80) = 3.93, p < 0.01, d = 0.89. Post-hoc tests revealed that texts of low quality were especially impacted by essay length in a negative way (see Figure 1 ).

Participants’ ratings of text quality: means (M) and standard deviations (SD).

Visualization of the interaction between text length and text quality.

The experiment conducted in Study 2 found a very strong significant main effect for text quality, indicating a high correspondence of pre-service teachers’ ratings with the expert ratings of text quality. The main effect of text length was also significant, but was qualified by a significant interaction effect text quality x text length, indicating that low quality texts were rated even more negative the longer they were. This negative effect of text length was contrary to expectations: The pre-service teachers generally tended to assign higher scores to shorter texts. Thus, they seemed to value shorter texts over longer texts. However, this was mainly true for texts of low quality.

These findings were surprising against the research background that would suggest that longer texts are typically associated with higher scores of text quality, particularly in the context of second language writing. Therefore, it is even more important to discuss the limitations of the design before interpreting the results: First, the sample included relatively inexperienced pre-service teachers. Further research is needed to show whether these findings are transferable to in-service teachers with reasonable experience in judging students’ writing. Moreover, further studies could use assessment rubrics that teachers are more familiar with, such as the CEFR ( Council of Europe, 2001 ; also see Fleckenstein et al., 2020 ). Second, the selection process of essays may have reduced the ecological validity of the experiment. As there were only few long texts of low quality and few short texts of high quality in the actual sample (see Table 2 ), the selection of texts in the experimental design was – to some degree – artificial. This could also have influenced the frame of reference for the pre-service teachers as the distribution of the nine texts was different from what one would find naturally in an EFL classroom. Third, the most important limitation of this study is the question of the reference norm, a point which applies to studies of writing assessment in general. In our study, writing quality was operationalized using expert ratings, which have been shown to be influenced by text length in many investigations as well as in Study 1. If the expert ratings are biased themselves, the findings of this study may also be interpreted as pre-service teachers (unlike expert raters) not showing a text length bias at all: shorter texts should receive higher scores than longer ones if the quality assigned by the expert raters is held constant. We discuss these issues concerning the reference norm in more detail in the next section.

All three limitations may have affected ratings in a way that could have reinforced a negative effect of text length on text quality ratings. However, as research on the effect of text length on teachers’ judgments is scarce, we should consider the possibility that the effect is actually different from the (positive) one typically found for professional human raters. There are a number of reasons to assume differences in the rating processes that are discussed in more detail in the following section. Furthermore, we will discuss what this means in terms of the validity of the gold standard in writing assessment.

General Discussion

Combining the results of both studies, we have reason to assume that (a) text length induces judgment bias and (b) the effect of text length largely depends on the rater and/or the rating context. More specifically, the findings of the two studies can be summarized as follows: Professional human raters tend to reward longer texts beyond the relationship of text length and proficiency. Compared to this standard, inexperienced EFL teachers tend to undervalue text length, meaning that they sanction longer texts especially when text quality is low. This in turn may be based on an implicit expectation deeply ingrained in the minds of many EFL teachers: that writing in a foreign language is primarily about avoiding mistakes, and that longer texts typically contain more of them than shorter ones ( Keller, 2016 ). Preservice teachers might be particularly afflicted with this view of writing as they would have experienced it as learners up-close and personal, not too long ago. Both findings point toward the judgment bias assumption, but with opposite directions. These seemingly contradictory findings lead to interesting and novel research questions – both in the field of standardized writing assessment and in the field of teachers’ diagnostic competence.

Only if we take professional human ratings as reliable benchmark scores can we infer that teachers’ ratings are biased (in a negative way). If we consider professional human ratings to be biased themselves (in a positive way), then the preservice teachers’ judgments might appear to be unbiased. However, it would be implausible to assume that inexperienced teachers’ judgments are less biased than those of highly trained expert raters. Even if professional human ratings are flawed themselves, they are the best possible measure of writing quality, serving as a reference even for NLP tools ( Crossley, 2020 ). It thus makes much more sense to consider the positive impact of text length on professional human ratings – at least to a degree – an appropriate heuristic. This means that teachers’ judgments would generally benefit from applying the same heuristic when assessing students’ writing, as long as it does not become a bias.

In his literature review, Crossley (2020) sees the nature of the writing task to be among the central limitations when it comes to generalizing findings in the context of writing assessment. Written responses to standardized tests (such as the TOEFL) may produce linguistic features that differ from writing samples produced in the classroom or in other, more authentic writing environments. Moreover, linguistic differences may also occur depending on a writing sample being timed or untimed. Timed samples provide fewer opportunities for planning, revising, and development of ideas as compared to untimed samples, where students are more likely to plan, reflect, and revise their writing. These differences may surface in timed writing in such a way that it would be less cohesive and less complex both lexically and syntactically.

In the present research, such differences may account for the finding that pre-service teachers undervalue text length compared to professional raters. Even though the participants in Study 2 were informed about the context in which the writing samples were collected, they may have underestimated the challenges of a timed writing task in an unfamiliar format. In the context of their own classrooms, students rarely have strict time limitations when working on complex writing tasks. If they do, in an exam consisting of an argumentative essay, for example, it is usually closer to 90 min than to 30 min (at least in the case of the German pre-service teachers who participated in this study). Thus, text length may not be a good indicator of writing quality in the classroom. On the contrary, professional raters may value length as a construct-relevant feature of writing quality in a timed task, for example as an indicator of writing fluency (see Peng et al., 2020 ).

Furthermore, text length as a criterion of quality cannot be generalized over different text types at random. The genres which are taught in EFL courses, or assessed in EFL exams, differ considerably with respect to expected length. In five paragraph essays, for example, developing an argument requires a certain scope and attention to detail, so that text length is a highly salient feature for overall text quality. The same might not be true for e-mail writing, a genre frequently taught in EFL classrooms ( Fleckenstein et al., in press ). E-mails are usually expected to be concise and to the point, so that longer texts might seem prolix, or rambling. Such task-specific demands need to be taken into account when it comes to interpreting our findings. The professional raters employed in our study were schooled extensively for rating five-paragraph essays, which included a keen appreciation of text length as a salient criterion of text quality. The same might not be said of classroom teachers, who encounter a much wider range of genres in their everyday teaching and might therefore be less inclined to consider text length as a relevant feature. Further research should consider different writing tasks in order to investigate whether text length is particularly important to the genre of the argumentative essay.

Our results underscore the importance of considering whether or not text length should be taken into account for different contexts of writing assessment. This holds true for classroom assessment, where teachers should make their expectations regarding text length explicit, as well as future studies with professional raters. Crossley (2020) draws attention to the transdisciplinary perspective of the field as a source for complications: “The complications arise from the interdisciplinary nature of this type of research which often combines writing, linguistics, statistics, and computer science fields. With so many fields involved, it is often easy to overlook confounding factors” (p. 428). The present research shows how the answer to one and the same research question – How does text length influence human judgment? – can be very different from different perspectives and within different areas of educational research. Depending on the population (professional raters vs. pre-service teachers) and the methodology (correlational analysis vs. experimental design), our findings illustrate a broad range of possible investigations and outcomes. Thus, it is a paramount example of why interdisciplinary research in education is not only desirable but imperative. Without an interdisciplinary approach, our view of the text length effect would be uni-dimensional and fragmentary. Only the combination of different perspectives and methods can live up to the demands of a complex issue such as writing assessment, identify research gaps, and challenge research traditions. Further research is needed to investigate the determinants of the strength and the direction of the bias. It is necessary to take a closer look at the rating processes of (untrained) teachers and (trained) raters, respectively, in order to investigate similarities and differences. Research pertaining to judgment heuristics/biases can be relevant for both teacher and rater training. However, the individual concerns and characteristics of the two groups need to be taken into account. This could be done, for example, by directly comparing the two groups in an experimental study. Both in teacher education and in text assessment studies, we should have a vigorous discussion about how appropriate heuristics of expert raters can find their way into the training of novice teachers and inexperienced raters in an effort to reduce judgement bias.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ministry of Education, Science and Cultural Affairs of the German federal state Schleswig-Holstein. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

JF analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. TJ and JM collected the experimental data for Study 2 and supported the data analysis. SK and OK provided the dataset for Study 1. TJ, JM, SK, and OK provided feedback on the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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