Writing an academic essay is a milestone that every student must meet in one of their formative stages. Especially at higher education levels, it is a type of writing that is usually used quite normally.
Characteristics of an Academic Essay
Although it must be taken into account that the characteristics of an academic essay may vary depending on each school or university, the truth is that there are a series of general characteristics common to all essays.
Structure of an Essay
The typical structure of any academic essay is usually made up of three parts: first, an introduction that works as a preliminary and contextualizing part, secondly the thesis or body of the essay, where all the research is exposed, and, finally, the final part, where the conclusions and bibliographical aspects are collected.
How Should the Introduction or Exordium Be?
The introduction serves to present, in general terms, what is the theme and objective of the essay itself. Within this part, the acknowledgments, the summary or abstract, the keywords of the study, or the main question that the essay tries to answer are usually included. In addition, this part also usually includes a methodology section, where the techniques used to prepare the essay are exposed. We could say that this introductory part is a preamble to the presentation of the subject and the structure of the work.
The Main Development
Within the main part of the essay is where all the ideas that affect the thesis must be fully developed, that is, the main idea of the work. Starting from more general aspects, which serve to contextualize the subject, it then goes on to a section on data analysis and, finally, the novel arguments that support the proposed thesis are presented. This is, without a doubt, the most important part of the work, where we will generate original content, exclusively extracted from our own research and that will finally allow us to draw the pertinent conclusions.
The End or Conclusion
The last part of any academic essay is the conclusion. In this section, you must include a series of subsections that will serve to extract the results of the study, as well as to complement all the information that has been included in it. In general, all academic essays must include in their final part a section where they reflect on the author’s point of view and the personal conclusions that may have been drawn from the creation of the essay and another section where the bibliographic sources are collected, the documentation used, or the references that have been used in the writing.
How to Create Your First Academic Essay
Finally, in addition to meeting all the requirements already mentioned about the structure that an academic essay should have, here we want to leave you with a series of tips that will be very useful if you are starting to create your first academic essay.
Raise or limit the topic: although the choice of the topic is always a motivational point to start writing an academic essay, the truth is that sometimes we can get carried away by this passion and not know how to narrow the topic well. The main thing is to find a piece of research that you like, and then try to drill down to find those little details that you want to focus on.
Document yourself, gather relevant information: in addition to all the technical information you will need to develop your own academic essay, a good tip is to try to gather the maximum amount of information on the subject even before you start writing. Having a general and real context on the subject in your head will later help you to have a good background to start with.
Create a first draft with all the information collected: as if it were a brainstorm, it is best to always leave everything in writing. You still do not know which ideas will help you the most and which ones you will have to discard, so the smartest option is to create a first draft in which to dump all the information you can get, to later have a source of filtered content and own elaboration.
Contrast and correct to generate an official version of the essay: every good academic essay must be governed by some basic rules of information contrast, correction, and editing. In this sense, it can be very useful to have a teacher or a specialized partner who can help us see errors that we are not capable of seeing. For this, it is best to create a provisional version of the completed essay and pass it on to a colleague in the sector, who can give his version and refine details for the final version.
Present your essay and defend it if necessary: Finally, an academic essay is useless if it is not presented correctly. To present it, for example, before a court, try to have complements and audiovisual resources that support your speech and favor explanations and understanding. Also, do not be afraid to defend your ideas by answering the questions they ask you and even contradicting a member of the court, since this way you will demonstrate not only a deep knowledge of the topic you have chosen but also the ability to assume critique and counterarguments.
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