The Basics of Writing Academic Essays

Writing academic essays can be difficult when you encounter it during the first few times. This task can even be scary especially if you don't have enough previous experience and exposure to it. For those of you who are wondering what academic papers are, these are basically your critical or persuasive writing essays. They are commonly used in journalism or any type of publication wherein the purpose is to persuade the reader to agree with the writer's opinion or to take action regarding a certain topic.

When I took my first English writing class at a community college, I had no idea that I had to follow a certain structure in writing academic essays. I thought I just write about my opinion and that would be the end of it. I was so proud of my essay when I submitted but when I received it, I found that I got a grade of B minus. You're probably thinking...that's not bad for a first time essay writer but I knew I could do better. So, for those of you who are in this position, I would like to start with the basic parts of the essay and how you can deal with them.

Parts of the Academic Essay

• The Introduction: This is the part where you provide a background or history for your topic when writing academic essays (or any paper). Many teachers will also tell you to write catchy or memorable sentence at the very beginning of your first paragraph. To do this, you can either start with a famous quote or a personal story which your readers can relate to. However, if you can't think of any, then it would be better to go straight to the background of your topic.
• The Thesis: After you have provided your reader with enough history, you can then state your thesis at the end or your first or second (usually the second) paragraph. This is the section wherein you give the reader your reason for writing about the topic and the actions that you want to persuade them need to perform.

  Your thesis should only be one sentence which will be composed of two parts. My advice is to place the opposing view for the first part then counter that view with you own for the second one which you will defend and support with evidence for the rest of your essay. For example, when writing academic essays and you want to persuade your reader that good writing skills comes with practice instead of being inborn (comes naturally), then you can construct your thesis this way: "Although many people believe that having good writing skills is inborn, this ability can also be learned by practicing repeatedly." There are many other ways to format your thesis sentence and this is only one way of doing it.

• Topic sentence: the topic sentence is the very first sentence of every paragraph when writing essays. As the name implies, it tells the reader the topic of your paragraph. Your whole paragraph should talk about the idea that was stated in your topic sentence. For example, if your topic sentence talks about great writers who were able to develop good writing skills, you whole paragraph should talk about examples of popular people who were able to do that.
• Supporting evidence: Providing supporting evidence to your reader is your opportunity to really convince them of your position. This is the part after your topic sentence wherein you talk about your examples either from your own experience or another reliable writer's experience. The key to having good supporting evidence when writing academic essays is to look for trustworthy sources such as a research paper or an article from a popular newspaper. In addition, always remember to properly give credit to other people's work when you put their ideas into your essay. Otherwise, you may be cited for plagiarism and many schools have serious punishment for such an act
• Conclusion: The conclusion is your chance to summarize all the ideas that you have talked about from your introduction to the last paragraph before your conclusion. This is your one last chance to appeal to your reader's opinion and is as important as your first sentence because the words in your conclusion would be the last thought which you will leave your audience with.

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