When you write an essay, more often than not you are required to conduct research. Research is your quest for information so you could have a well-informed opinion on the topic. Even if the prompt sounds as if they wanted to hear your personal thoughts on the matter, believe me, you will have to provide facts to support your statements.
At PaperWritings.com review an essay is something that they often ask us to do. The majority of problems with those essays stem from the fact that they were very poorly researched. To help students with that, here are our proven tips.
Do start early
You might think that a two-page essay is something that you can complete in a few hours, so you put it away for too long. Many freshmen succumb to this fallacy. They think, "How difficult can it be to form an opinion and present it?"
However, I urge you to start early. Ideally, you should schedule your work the day you get the assignment. First, do some preliminary reading to get a grasp on the topic. Then, you may continue detailed research with your plan in mind.
Always keep your thesis in mind
After you’ve done your preliminary reading it’s time to choose the topic and come up with a thesis. Do it carefully, as this will define the direction of your further research. Of course, imagining "the final product" in the early stages is hard, but you must try.
That is not to say that you are forbidden to change your thesis in any way. The thesis statement that will end up on your final draft may be different from the first, working one. However, knowing where you are heading will allow you to toss out everything irrelevant and prevent you from sidetracking in your research and lose precious time. Sometimes students are tempted to put on their essays something interesting but not useful. Do not hesitate to cut such things out.
Record everything
You should keep track of books you’ve read, library sections you’ve gone through, websites you’ve searched and keywords you’ve used. There are several reasons to do that meticulously. First, you will not be going in circles and looking multiple times where you’ve already tried to find something of interest.
Second, you will want to cite your sources properly for bibliography. Referencing your quote in the essay text is one thing and giving the full description of the source is quite another. Moreover, you will need sufficient information to find this source again. What if you want to elaborate the idea you quoted? What if you will need it for similar research in the future? Always save websites, URLs, exactly what journal issue contains the article you used, etc. This will be a foundation of your own database of research possibilities.
Make an outline
You may think that you only need an outline when you are ready to write. However, outlining your work is very beneficial even on the stage of research. By breaking your essay into topic-specific parts, you will be able to identify any gaps that aren’t researched yet.
This way, instead of compromising coherency of your essay or searching for the information you lack in a frenzy the night before the deadline, you will be able to fill the gaps with sound research while you still have enough time at your disposal.
Color code your notes
You should always keep related things together – that is the golden rule of organized work. However, sometimes related things are scattered around the library books, borrowed journals, and your own notes. How will you organize that mess and escape foraging around all those papers losing time?
Color-coding is the answer! Assign each part of your essay (subheading or theme) a different color and then use highlighting, font color, post-its or sticky bookmarks in respective colors to organize your notes, books, and articles.
With these tips, you will have no problem with conducting research and organizing notes. All that’s left to do is sit down and start writing your inspiring essay but will get to that later. Maybe in the next post.