It’s not easy being a university student when English isn’t your native tongue and you’re required to attend lectures and hand in term papers in a college where English is the medium of instruction. Consequently, many turn to online writing sites for help.

I know I’m strictly in the minority as an educator, but I believe using such services to provide a model for the student to work from when making their own essay isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Nevertheless, there are many bad companies out there offering free research papers online and students don’t realize how easy it is for us to spot a poorly written paper from one of these places.

Here are some of those things that we look for, and easily find!

1. The writing isn’t up to scratch

Let’s start with the obvious: a lot of these services are only in it for the money and will throw out any old garbage just to pull in a quick buck. Work written by a bad or under-qualified writer sticks out a mile and will be spotted within one or two sentences.

2. Formatting is all over the place

The chances are that a professor is going to specify the style in which they want the work written. Quality writing services will ask you if, for instance, your paper should be in the APA or Harvard styles. An absence of formatting is a sure sign that the paper has been written badly.

3. Will it pass the plagiarism test?

One thing that many students don’t realize is that universities use plagiarism detection software. Consequently, it’s as easy as a click of a button to see if an essay has been copied from an online source. The worst online writing services will do this unashamedly, so those of you who are looking for free research papers online should take my advice and be careful to watch out for such work.

4. There’s little or no support

The real deal companies see this as their business and offer round the clock support to their clients. Those academics who like to see draft essays and discuss these with their students will spot immediately when no changes have been made to the final essay, which is often the case when the essay has been bought from a poor online service. Some of the better services offer free revisions, though, which is what makes it more difficult for the professors to spot such work.

Students use these services for understandable reasons. However, poor work is easy to spot, whether written by the student or by a poor online writing service.