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What To Avoid When Writing A 6-Paragraph Compare And Contrast Essay?

There are many tips and tricks about writing compare and contrast essays that can be found on the web. However, you want to be careful where you get your information from and make sure it’s a reliable source. Keep reading to find out what to avoid when writing your paper.

What to avoid

  1. Not reading your assignment thoroughly and carefully. This is a downfall because there are often specific tips or requirements you must include in your 6-paragraph essay. If you miss some of these, you will surely be docked marks. Use your assignment as a checklist, and tick off each item as you do it in your paper.
  2. Not knowing what constitutes a compare and contrast essay. If you don’t know what details you need to include and the process of how to set it up, you won’t be very successful. Take into consideration that comparing two things means finding similarities and then highlighting them side by side to note the similarities. Contrasting two things means finding opposites and putting them side by side to show how polar-opposite they are.
  3. Not asking questions. If there’s something you don’t understand or you are having difficulties with, you should ask your teacher right away. If you don’t do this, you risk doing something wrong and losing marks because of it.
  4. Always avoid procrastinating the writing. Leaving it until the last minute because you are overwhelmed by it only increases your level of anxiety. It also doesn’t allow you time to write more than one draft and correct your initial mistakes.
  5. Avoid failing to make good comparisons and contrasts. Really think through the details you are going to present to your reader. What kind of critical thinking do you need to put into this? What kind of thought provoking ideas do you want to instill in your reader related to your topic?
  6. Failure to ask yourself pertinent questions, like why would this comparison be of interest? What are the consequences of this contrast? Why is it significant to compare or contrast these two items?
  7. Not developing a good strong thesis. You must make an argument that lets the reader know why it’s useful to compare or contrast these two subjects; otherwise there is no purpose to the work you are doing.
  8. Failure to highlight similarities and differences and get the reader thinking about them.

 

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