10 Secrets of Writing a Good Hook for a College Essay

The ability to write an essay requires a fairly high level of knowledge of the language. It is also very important to comply with certain requirements. In particular, requirements for writing a hook. If you can’t write a good essay, or you have difficulties with the correct execution of the work, entrust your essay to ENL specialists, providing professional essay writing services 24/7. You will definitely get help and will be pleased with the work.

In this article, we will tell you 10 secrets of writing a good hook for a college essay.

1. The preparatory stage

The sooner you begin to think about the topic of an essay, the more time you will have to collect material. First of all, it’s best to outline what you know about the topic. This will give you ideas in which direction to move on. You should act persistently, make a plan and formulate a set of questions. When you start to study the material, you will get new, more specific questions, and you can already search for answers to them.

2. Overcoming indecisiveness

Even the most famous writer sometimes feels indecision and fear at the beginning of the work. But the main thing is not in desire and not in skill. The main thing does not stop writing and for the time being, do not worry about style and spelling. You need to make the basic sketches of the main thoughts and after that proceed to the structure of your future creation.

3. The general components of the essay

You should follow the basic requirements for the structure. Thus, an essay usually consists of a hook, the main part, conclusion and bibliography.

4. What is a hook?

For writing a good work, it is important to know that a hook is an introduction to the essay. This part of the text plays a very important role because after reading a hook, the reader either continues to read the main part or not. Therefore, the introduction should attract the reader, reflect the main idea of the whole work.

5. The commentary on the theme

The hook should contain some commentary regarding the topic of the essay. It may include the definition of key concepts or the explanation of your understanding the question. In this section, you need to emphasize which aspects of the theme you will consider and why. It is necessary to remember that an essay is not a novel, so you should choose only a few basic arguments that reveal the topic.

6. The clear idea of the theme

The hook for a college essay should give a clear idea of what will be discussed later, and the educator should see that you are giving an answer to a specific set of questions.

7. The structure of a good hook

Thus, a good hook for a college essay should:

• demonstrate your intention to answer the question;
  
• confirm that you understand the theme;
  
• outline the structure of your answer and the basic aspects that you will consider (your plan);
  
• confirm that you have conducted some research, and refer to one of your sources;
  
• consistent with the theme;
  
• be concise and occupy about 8-9% of the total text volume (for example, 115-125 words in an essay of 1,500 words).
  

8. The key phrase

Start the essay with a key expression that will indicate the direction of your response. For example:

• This essay deals with…;
  
• This essay will examine…;
  
• This essay is about…;
  
• This report will analyze…
  

9. The same wording

Use the same or similar wording as in the essay topic. If the question sounds like “Discuss the specificity and perspectives of the modern tourism”, then in the hook you can write: “This essay is about specificity and perspectives of the modern tourism”.

10. Emphasize the structure of an essay

You can also use the following words and phrases in order to emphasize your work plan, for example:

• The essay is divided into two chapters…;
  
• This essay consists of two main parts…;
  
• The third part compares…
  

Therefore, we considered 10 secrets of writing a good hook. If you will adhere to these recommendations, then you will definitely get an excellent hook. But you should not forget about the importance of other components of the essay.

Thus, the main part should reveal each of the arguments using examples and illustrations. Information should be clearly divided logically (the text is divided into paragraphs). You need to think through the structure of the essay and make sure that the main part logically leads to a conclusion.

The conclusion should summarize the expressed ideas. Here it is necessary to give an answer to the question formulated in the topic of the essay. Or, depending on the topic, indicate the perspectives or consequences of the problem in question. Here you can demonstrate that you have a good command of the material and thoughtfully approached the consideration of the problem.