Basic Essay Structure

Basic Essay Structure You will save yourself literally days over the course of your university career. They allow you to reference as you write, and you can create and reformat your bibliography and citations at the touch of a button. Finally, make sure you formulate every claim in the strongest possible terms. Make sure you know their arguments reasonably well and have armed yourself with flexible quotes from their work. If you can, familiarise yourself with the people who think they’re wrong and awful. Figure out if there are arguments which are unresolved and see if you can make a contribution towards resolving them. The most important thing to remember after selecting your preferred citation style is that in-text citation must match the work cited list. Citation style also has to be consistent throughout the paper (i.e. you cannot go from APA to MLA). If you use sourcing engines to make your references, always double check their accuracy. Plagiarism is the most serious academic offence. If you are found guilty of plagiarism you can fail the assignment or the class, or be suspended or expelled from university. They might ask you to ‘critically assess’ some claim or concept, or ask you a simple question which you’ll have to answer in a complex way. They’ll make a statement and tell you to discuss it. They might ask you to compare and contrast two different ideas, or say which of two theories is the more accurate. Don’t make your opponent look like they have no arguments, or take the weakest version of their argument. Think about the strongest possible response to the claim you’ve put forward, then beat that. If you’re making a claim, you need to tell me why that claim is correct. Think of a potential response to your argument, perhaps from an author you’re arguing against. Write out that response, then tell me why it doesn’t defeat your argument, or at least why it only mitigates it. This is the stuff that actually makes up your argument. You don’t want to get penalised because you didn’t reference your readings properly after you’ve put in all that effort to make sure that your arguments are founded in the literature. When the assignment says between 6-8 pages, it is better to do 8 than 6. When you have such limited number of pages, you need space to develop your argument. However, don’t just ramble on and on, repeating the same arguments in different ways to fill-up space. Start your intro with the central claim of your essay. If I’m reading it, I want to know within literally five seconds what you’re trying to convince me of. Ninety nine percent of the structure of your essay is exactly the same as you learned in secondary school. You might think you’re too good for Point, Evidence, Explain. How are you going to relate your argument to the existing literature? It could even affect your chances of getting into a grad program, as it remains on your record, and you are required to give an explanation as to what happened . The point is, good citation is really important. You shouldn’t take the risk of being caught of plagiarism and you should give other academics due credit for their work. If you perform poorly at this, you might as well pack up and go home. Next, think about what you need to prove in order to make that claim. What might be the immediate negative reaction of someone reading your central claim? How can you defend yourself against that response? Ideally you want to be able to split your burdens of proof into a few different points. Identify some of the future areas for research that your paper opens up. For more information, check out thishandouton developing a logical argument. Provide background information on your topic, country case, political context, etc. Ask your professor or TA to recommend articles or authors on the topic.