Feeling lost in the daunting task of writing an academic essay or a research paper? Fear not; these guidelines are here to guide you through the process, ensuring your ideas are expressed with the utmost clarity and professionalism. With these tools at your disposal, you can confidently embark on your writing journey.
You must consider the structure; writing an academic essay differs from writing an email or conversation. Even if the conversation is about the topic you will discuss in your essay, they are in different formats, and you must be clear about the formalities you must consider in an academic essay. If you follow these steps, you will be assured of a high percentage of your success:
- So that you know – the first thing you need to consider is what you want to achieve with your text. Before writing any text (and this advice applies to any text, whether academic or not), you should consider the audience you are addressing and the objective you seek with your writing. Remember that your objective must be realistic and feasible. For example, your objective could be to communicate your research findings or to debate two historical and antagonistic political perspectives and show your point of view concerning the current context of your country.
- Make a writing outline: This is key. Don’t even think about starting to write without creating a writing outline. This will not only make your writing more accessible, but it will also help you organise your ideas and the bibliography you will work with, so the quality of your work will be strengthened from the ground up. Believe me.
Now, let’s see what that outline might look like. A simple and helpful way to start is by writing a basic structure that will allow you to understand your work well. (1) Start by writing a summary of about 100 words where you explain what your essay/research is about. (2) Write the title of your essay. You can change this later, but please remember that this is the first guide for your work. (3) State your thesis. For example, if I want to talk about childhood bilingualism, my thesis could be: In the past, childhood bilingualism was believed to be detrimental to children’s development. However, it has been proven that bilingual children have a more prosperous development in language and neural connections than monolingual children. In this case, I am showing my position in favour of bilingualism, and I am also implying that I have sources of information to support it and that I will show them in developing my work. (4) Write at least 2 or 3 main points, accompany them with supporting statements and consider relevant bibliography. This section is vital since it will correspond to the body of your essay in the future. These main points must include a statement (the main idea) and at least two or three supporting points. These will be sections and subtitles in the future within your essay. Continuing with the example of bilingualism, a main point could be traditional thinking regarding bilingual children: they have disadvantages in terms of cognitive development. My supporting points would be a) bilingual children have a lower IQ than a child who only speaks one language. b) The delay in speech skills in bilingual children. To develop this topic and the two subtopics I propose, I must be guided by the bibliography I have already designated for this section. (5) Write a conclusion paragraph of at least two lines. Remember that the conclusion is often the reformulation of the thesis.
This comprises a basic outline that will make your subsequent writing easier. Having written the summary and thesis of your essay will make the introduction much more straightforward; the main points will become the sections within the development, and the two lines of reformulation of the thesis were part of the advanced work that you began when writing your conclusion. All this work already requires bibliographic research, reading and organisation, but at the same time, it will help you organise your ideas very well.
- Don’t fill your essay with quotes. Remember that you can paraphrase. But never forget to cite your references, or you will be plagiarizing, and we never, ever want to be accused of plagiarism—at least not if you are visiting a website looking for clues to learn how to do a really good job 😉.
- Trust your work. You’re already doing well if you’ve made it this far and followed most of these suggestions. 😊
- Review and send! Don’t obsess over perfection; it’s the enemy of good. Above all, don’t forget to enjoy your work.
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