How to Write an Essay: Structure Details

In general, an essay is an argument on a given topic (and within a particular discipline, of course) in a fairly free form. But this form, nevertheless, is not free from a certain general idea that unites the entire text. And it is this very idea that must be reflected in the outline of the essay. The outline is a kind of core consisting of a logically composed list of theses and/or hypotheses to be disclosed in the paper.

Students in college get a lot of writing assignments. And most of them struggle with it. Some students don’t have the skill of expressing their thoughts. It’s not a problem nowadays, because there are a lot of worthy online services like WritingAPaper that will write your essay, research paper, dissertation, capstone or any other writing assignment for a reasonable price. And there are also students that can easily write a creative paper but simply don’t know the right structure and requirements for it.

To answer the question of how to write an essay and how to do it correctly, you need to understand the peculiarities of its structure.

Introduction

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Regardless of what topic you are writing on, at the very beginning, you should briefly state what the topic is interesting (or, alternatively, relevant) and why you are writing about it in the first place. Some teachers even recommend formulating the purpose of the essay (sometimes with objectives). But still, a properly written essay does not imply an overly strict and scholarly style of presentation. Rather, it should be publicistic, popular, more lively, allowing epithets, allegorical expressions, description of one’s emotions (within reasonable limits), etc. But the main idea of the introduction remains: it is necessary to briefly introduce the reader to the case and even try to arouse his interest.

The main part

A well-written essay is, as with most other written student work, first and foremost a well-written body of work. This is where it is especially important to understand the teacher’s requirements – what exactly he or she wants to see in your writing. It should be noted, however, that some teachers themselves do not know this, but only ” race” the student, constantly coming up with new remarks. A general recommendation here can be a reminder that it is not strictly a scientific text, which, nevertheless, must fully disclose the given topic.

If, for example, you were asked to reflect on Western European sociology in the first half of the 20th century, you should answer this question. But you should not copy textbook excerpts into your essay or even (very important in an essay!) recite their content in your own words. What is required of you is free reasoning about how and why European sociology emerged, what socio-political phenomena and factors required and therefore stimulated its development, who among the scholars and why you think contributed most to it, etc.

It should also be noted that the main part should be the most significant not only in content but also in size because it reveals the essence of the topic. Of course, essays are different, and it is necessary to listen carefully to the requirements of a particular teacher, but if, say, 10% of the volume in your essay is occupied by the introduction, another 10% – the conclusion or conclusions, and the rest – the main part, it is unlikely that someone will consider it a mistake. In any case, the main part cannot occupy less than half of the entire volume of the essay.

So, as you see, essay writing takes a lot of time. That is why you have to manage your time better for more productive study and the balance between your college and personal life.

Conclusion

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It is absolutely clear that no meaningful text can simply stop halfway through, even if it is just a letter to a friend. And all the more so when it comes to student mini-research (which is essentially an essay), it is imperative to summarize at least briefly what you have written.

Applied to the above-mentioned Western European sociology of the first half of the last century one could write that, yes, it appeared as a response to the need for new research approaches in the social sciences, caused by rapid qualitative changes in the social structure of society, the mechanisms and factors of its development, the need for more accurate forecasts of the coming social processes. We might also add that this direction in sociology laid the foundation for the emergence, development, and improvement of all modern sociological concepts.

References list

It is not always required in essays, but rather frequently. Moreover, one should distinguish between two types of sources: simply scientific, scholarly, or reference literature, and that which is actually analyzed in the paper.

In the first case, the essay can be on subjects that do not require analysis of the sources themselves, such as “History of Economic Thought” (as literature are used textbooks on the discipline, as well as the works of leading academic economists of the past) or “Demography” (sources are statistical compilations or reference books).

In the second case, the essay examines exactly the content of the source, the meaning of what is written there, and examples of such courses could be “Archeology” (then the sources are ancient documents, manuscripts, etc.) or “European Literature” (the sources are the very literary works of European writers and poets).

There may also be the third case when literature is not required at all when what is needed is simply a description of the socio-economic, political, or cultural processes going on around us.

Mistakes when writing an essay

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This is actually a very important question, without a correct answer to which it is very difficult to understand how to write an essay in order to please a teacher. Once again, all essays are very different, the teachers who assign them are also different, there are no standards here, but, nevertheless, at least one common mistake can ruin all your efforts. The point is that you should not insert fragments of textbooks, scientific articles, or books into your essay (except for some important quotations, which you just can’t do without).

Moreover, you are probably not required to retell scientific or scholarly literature even in your own words. The essay is not just a test of your knowledge, not only and not so much control of what and how you have learned. First of all, it is a demonstration of your skills and abilities to reason, beautifully and competently express your thoughts and feelings, to present your own point of view (maybe even different from the prevailing scientific literature), to analyze the surrounding processes and phenomena, which this particular discipline studies. And a simple presentation of the material you have studied is not capable of showing all of these skills.

As you can see, an essay is not the easiest kind of student written work that requires a significant creative component in its preparation, which means a considerable expenditure of time and effort, which is usually catastrophically lacking. But do not worry! If you don’t have time or the subject on which you are required to write an essay is not the main one for your future professional activity, you can always find cheap services on Reddit, and they will do everything in the best way on any subject, on any topic, and in the time frame, you need.