Academic essays, a cornerstone of higher education, are more than just homework assignments. They shape your academic success and play a vital role in your academic journey. However, writing an academic essay requires a lot more than simply putting together a few words and sentences. It calls for your careful planning, deep research and critical thinking skills to craft a well-structured essay that meets the reader’s expectations.
That’s why writing an academic essay is a daunting task, especially for novice writers who have yet to grasp the basics of academic essay writing. The written academic tasks are supported by hours of research and structured writing to fit the essay’s specific format requirements. This article will help you understand what an academic essay is, the steps involved in writing an academic essay and how to write an academic essay in APA format.
What Is an Academic Essay?
An academic essay is a formal, nonfiction piece of writing that serves to explain the writer’s perspective on a specific subject. It supports the argument with existing data and information gathered from deep research. Research is a key component of academic essay writing. It provides the necessary evidence and support for the writer’s argument.
For university and tertiary-level learning institutions, the style of essay writing is expected to be very formal in language, structure and presentation. This formality necessitates precision and professionalism in your writing. Academic essays are often part of school assignments that play a big role in the student’s final score of the semester.
Due to all these intricacies, newbie students find academic essays challenging. It takes some time and practice to develop academic essay writing skills and learn to structure the paper with proper arguments and concise, cohesive and logical flow. This comprehensive guide will show you how to start and finish an academic essay while following the expected structure.
Academic Essay Writing 101: How to Start an Academic Essay
Before you start writing your academic essay, it’s crucial to understand your professor’s expectations. This understanding will not only prepare you for the task ahead but also instil a sense of confidence in your writing.
Academic essays vary in length, format and citation styles, and knowing these details will prepare you better. Generally, the essays are shorter for college students, and the length increases as you progress in your education. Therefore, you will need to master longer writing as you achieve greater educational progress, but you always start with short and simple essay assignments.
Here is a step-by-step process of how to start an academic essay.
Choose an Appropriate Essay Topic
A topic is the main concept of the essay; therefore, choosing a topic you’re interested in and have a deep knowledge of is the first and most important step in writing an academic essay. Ensure you carefully assess your academic essay guidelines or instructions and follow the prompts. Here is a handy checklist to help you find the topic’s scope quicker:
- What is the specific question that the professor requires you to address?
- Does your essay expect you to present a critical or rhetorical analysis of your original thoughts or source data?
- Is the goal of the essay to present your original thoughts based on original research, or is it a review of existing literature?
- Do you need to compare or analyse two or more works of literature?
Research Your Topic
Research is a vital part of an academic essay because it provides the writer with the information needed to support their thoughts and arguments. As a writer, you should explore a variety of research sources such as books, encyclopaedias, academic journals, surveys, interviews, online publications, experiment databases and other reliable sources to gather supporting data on your topic.
Create an Essay Outline
An essay outline is a roadmap that guides your writing process. A good outline should have an introduction, body and conclusion. Each paragraph in the body of the outline should include a topic sentence, supporting evidence and a transition sentence that connects one paragraph to the next.
Write Your Essay Introduction
The introduction is the first impression your reader has of your academic essay, so it should be catchy and impressive. The introduction should provide the background information on the topic, capture the reader’s attention, raise the key question of the essay and present the thesis statement.
Once you have a clear picture of what you want to discuss in your essay, you’re ready to start writing.
How to Structure an Academic Essay
An academic essay typically follows a prescribed, structured format to convey ideas and arguments effectively. Here is a breakdown of the key elements of an academic essay format.
Introduction
Start your essay with a strong, captivating question, story or fact to engage your reader from the start. The hook of your essay should not only capture the reader’s attention but engage them long enough to keep reading the next paragraphs to the end. In this section, you should also provide the necessary information to set the context for your further academic discussion and argumentation. Here, you also clearly formulate the thesis statement, which highlights the purpose of the essay.
Body Paragraphs
This is where the academic essay comes to life through strong arguments and the expression of opinions. The key tactic is to present your arguments and evidence clearly by creating a natural flow between paragraphs and ensuring easy comprehension. Start each paragraph with a clear topic sentence that relates to your thesis and include evidence, data and examples to support your points.
Analyse and interpret each piece of evidence and explain its significance and relationship to your argument. Remember to use transition words and phrases to create a smooth flow from one point to another. You should also address opposing points and refute counterarguments to reinforce your opinions to avoid accusations of bias and sound credible in your writing.
Conclusion and Citations
Always summarise your main arguments before introducing new points and properly cite your sources using the required citation style as specified by your instructor. For instance, when writing an academic essay in APA format, use APA citation styles to reference your sources and choose the proper font style and size, as well as margins and spacing. Adhering to the requested format ensures that you create a well-organised and coherent academic essay that communicates your ideas effectively and wins you a high grade due to compliance with the professor’s instructions.
How to End an Academic Essay
The conclusion of your academic essay is your chance to create a lasting final impression and reinforce your key insights. In this paragraph, you restate your thesis statement and summarise the main points addressed in your essay. A well-written conclusion paragraph wraps your main ideas up, leaving the reader with full comprehension of the topic and a sense of resolution. The main goal is to leave the reader fully convinced that your point of view on the subject is logical and significant.
How to Write an Academic Essay Outline
An academic essay teaches you to think deeply, research widely and effectively communicate your thoughts on a particular topic. To achieve that, you need to follow a specific structure, which is typically predetermined by an essay outline. The purpose of an academic essay outline is to help you organise your thoughts to ensure a logical flow of ideas.
To achieve this, you need first to understand the essay instructions and determine the type of essay that you should write. Carefully assess the requirements to establish the required word count, formatting style and any other specified guidelines. Then, organise your key points using headings and subheadings by ensuring that your ideas connect flawlessly.
Here is a simple example of an academic essay outline:
- Introduction. This part includes the hook, background information and thesis statement.
- Body Paragraph 1. Each paragraph should have a simple flow that starts with a topic sentence followed by supporting evidence and a breakdown or interpretation of the evidence.
- Body Paragraph 2. The same as for paragraph 1.
- Body Paragraph 3. The same as for paragraph 1.
- Conclusion. In the concluding statement, you should restate the thesis statement and summarise the key points, thus communicating your final thoughts or the study’s implications.
How to Write an Academic Essay Introduction
As mentioned earlier, the introduction sets the tone for your academic essay. Therefore, it should grab your reader’s attention and interest and paint a clear picture of what to expect. Your introduction generally covers 10-20% of your academic essay. Here is how to create a winning introduction to your essay.
- Hook your reader. The first line of your academic essay should hook your readers by piquing their interest and curiosity. That is why that first line is called the hook. You can pose it as an intriguing question, bold statement or surprising fact that emphasises the relevance of your topic of choice.
- Provide the background of the topic. The next important step is to provide context that will help your reader understand the concept of your essay and comprehend your argument. You can achieve this by providing background information and an overview of important academic resources that support your topic while explaining the difficult terms. Keep your introduction short because you will expound more on the topic in the body of your essay.
- Present the thesis statement. The thesis statement is the central argument of your essay. It provides the focus of your topic and is typically one or two sentences long.
- Map the structure of your essay. For longer essays, you can map out your structure at the introduction stage of the essay. This part of the content should be placed at the end of your introduction by briefly describing what your essay will cover and giving your reader a preview of how your argument will develop.
How to Structure Your Academic Essay Body
The body of your academic essay is where you express your opinions, formulate the arguments relevant to your thesis, develop your ideas and provide your evidence. The purpose of this section of your essay is to present evidence, interpret data, analyse the gathered information and state the sources of your data and information.
The length of the body section depends on the type of academic essay and instructions given by the professor. To give your essay a good structure, you need to arrange your academic essay into paragraphs.
Ideally, each paragraph should present one main point and its supporting evidence to avoid information overload in one paragraph. Each idea is introduced in a topic sentence, which is a transition from the previous paragraph to the new one, creating the proper flow in the academic essay. Transition words can help you create flawless connections between paragraphs.
Ensure that you present evidence in each paragraph in the form of data, examples or quotes from relevant sources. To make your argument more convincing, interpret and explain the evidence and illustrate how it relates to the overall argument.
How to Write a Powerful Academic Essay Conclusion
Each academic essay ends with a conclusion paragraph, which generally takes up 10-15% of the essay length. A strong conclusion paragraph should reflect on the arguments and evidence presented in the essay by returning to the thesis and tying the main points together to create a comprehensive flow and end to the essay. It should also show the reader why the arguments matter and leave the reader with a memorable, strong final impression.
To make your essay’s conclusion as powerful as possible, you should avoid raising new arguments or evidence in the final paragraph or undermining your arguments by using blanket statements like “this is just one approach of many…” when you have spent your time expressing your unique opinions in the body of the essay.
Hopefully, this guide with make your essay writing journey smoother and simpler. If you need more help with academic assignments, welcome to RoyalWriter.co.uk. We’re always on standby, ready to assist you with valuable tips and paid writing aid.
