How to Structure Your Academic Essay

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Knowing how to structure an academic essay properly is an essential skill for every university student. Most universities and even professors have their own specific quirks or ways they would like you to write essays, but the structure generally remains the same.

When an essay is due, you have to adjust your priorities and dial down the partying. But remember that not everything is dark and gloomy you always have two options if you have no idea how to structure your essay.

You can either write the essay yourself or let an essay writing expert do the work for you.

Possible solutions

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If you decide to write an essay on your own, you need to know exactly how to structure it. Here we offer a few useful guidelines on how to write an academic essay effectively.

What is an essay?

The Learning Development center at University of Plymouth defines essays as ‘a piece of academic writing generally between 500 and 5000 words long that looks at different arguments and evidence developing the writer’s perspective’ on a chosen subject. As one of the most common types of assignment at university, its purpose is to provide written evidence of your ability to research a topic, compare arguments, organise your thoughts and express these in a logical, coherent and critical manner reaching logical conclusions.

You should know that there are very much right and wrong ways to structure essays and if you want to get a good result, you need to practice a lot. These are the steps you need to take to plan your essay.

The first thing you need to do is give your paper proper structure. Just like any other type of assignment, your essay needs to have an introduction, main body, conclusion and a list of the sources you got your information from. At this initial stage, you need to decide how long each section is going to be. Here’s what your essay should look like:

Write an introduction

It is the opening section of your assignment and should make a straight point so that it grabs the attention of the reader right away. It’s always shorter in comparison to the other sections, but also straight-to-the-point to answer the main questions that guide your essay. In this section, you need to explain the steps you are planning to take to support your main argument.

The introduction should:

Talk about the topic area with a general, broad opening sentence introducing the question you are aiming to give an answer to
Provide a summary of your essay showing clearly the steps you are planning to follow
Introduce the main ideas preparing an outline and explain how you are going to approach each one and why it is important to do so

The introduction is an integral part of an essay because it introduces your thesis statement. This is a sentence that appears in the beginning of the essay and may be repeated throughout the assignment and offers a brief summary of the academic paper. The thesis statement presents the topic and the purpose of the essay, preparing the reader for what’s to follow.

The main body

This is where you get the opportunity to expand on your subject and provide a discussion. First, you should make sure that you have an interest in the topic you chose, and that you have some arguments to support your own view on the subject. Apart from that, it’s a good idea to come up with conflicting opinions from other authors to show that you have a strong literature review.

It also provides answers to the what, how, and why giving justifications to your main idea starting with a) what? – refers to what evidence do you have to back up your argument, b) how? – refers to how the thesis stand up to the challenge of a counterargument and c) why? – refers to the why your main idea is important or should matter to anyone besides you. Giving an answer to these three questions will help you analyse your thesis statement.

The main body should:

Show knowledge and understanding of the material you have read comparing information from different sources
Offer exposition and evidence to develop your argument coming from your own judgement and the opinion of others
Include relevant examples and authoritative quotes to back up your findings
Present your research results in the correct form depending on your research method (e.g. qualitative, quantitative or both)

Think of your conclusion

After you have completed analysing available data, you are ready to wrap up your material, go back to the start and make a brief analysis of what was being discussed in the previous sections. Here, you can explain the steps you took and what helped you come up with your results, taking into account the experimentation stage e.g. case studies, questionnaires or interviews and your findings. In the conclusion, you need to come up with convincing arguments and try to construct meaning from the research.

The conclusion should:

Restate your answer to your thesis statement and briefly talk about your findings
Re-summarise the main points and refer to their importance to the topic you are addressing
Include a final, broad statement about possible implications, plans for future research and direction, conclusions

Include references

The list of references is essential in academic writing because it is evidence of the work you have carried out to complete the essay.It clearly shows the research you have undertaken, hours you spent on the assignment, range of resources you used and how these have helped you come to your conclusion.

Many students don’t place much emphasis on their bibliography and end up citing information the wrong way. But, this could result in losing lots of marks on your assignment so it’s important to make sure that you follow the referencing rules approved by your school or department.

While it may take you some time to learn to write effective essays, it’s going to be worth it. But, getting a good mark on an essay you wrote yourself has more value than anything else, and it’s always useful to give it a try.Besides, if everything else fails, at least you know that you have the option to order it and get it just as quick from FastEssay!

So what you are you planning to do for your next assignment? Let us know in the comments section below…