How to Write a Good Research Essay
Most of the students freeze when hear about a research essay that should be prepared in a short period of time. It is pretty clear why – a good research essay involves a lot of investigations and numerous hours spent for reading a great variety of sources followed by analysis and interpreting the researched topic on paper. This is a huge piece of work that college students can face with any moment. In order to be ready when your professor assigns to write a research essay – we recommend to read our writing tips and guidelines. From this article you will learn step by step how to write a good research essay and organize your work better. Writing a research essay should not cause any troubles if follow these simple to perform steps.
Step One: Brainstorm a topic
What should your topic look like? The answer is pretty close – find a topic that would interest and make you dig more information from different sources. First of all your topic should be interesting to you. Then ask yourself if you have already know something about selected item. If the answer is positive – you can be sure that you have just found a topic that is close to ideal for you. Also an additional question to be asked can be – "do I know where to get the proper sources on this topic?". If all these requirements are done – be sure that you are on a half of way to the success.
Step Two: Investigate
It goes without saying that a research essay involves a thorough research. In order to create a good research essay you should understand that it is not enough to perform a common research just like in case of 5-paragraph or other essay type. You should do an in-depth research using the variety of accurate sources that were approved by your professor. Just using the Internet would be not enough for a good research essay. The best way you can do – is to visit your college library and take several sources related to your topic. Talk with your professor and ask for advice – he can recommend you a good and accurate books that will help you to do your essay much faster. Also doing a research you should state the certain goals and questions that have to be covered by your essay. Make sure that each issue of the selected problem were covered and you have an accurate information for writing a body section.
Step Three: Outline
We do not recommend you to start writing a research essay without a good outline even if you are going to do a draft. As we said – a research essay should cover a big amount of questions and issues that makes it pretty lengthy piece of writing. Writing it without an outline can cause a lot of troubles, such as confusing yourself and your reader. Your paper should be structured logically, each thought and paragraph flow one from another creating a logical chain of thoughts and ideas. It is impossible to write it that way without a well-prepared outline. So start doing an outline beforehand. When you have your research done – do an outline basing heading and subheadings on gained information.
Step Four: Draft
Start writing your essay – make a draft. Writing research essays remember that they requires not only summing up the information from books, but also analyzing and synthesizing your own thoughts and conclusions. Compare them with other author's conclusions and points. Finally you should prepare the unique yours paper that would meet all your professor's requirements. Proofread your draft and start writing clean copy.
A research essay is challenging for students of all levels but we hope our writing tips were helpful and they made some contribution to your knowledge. Check our website for writing guidelines on any academic writing.
