In the article all you need to know about research papers, we highlighted the basic information about research papers such as the different types of research papers – which was further explore in the article types of research papers – and the structure of a research paper. We then covered the process of choosing a topic for your research paper, determining if your chosen research paper topic is relevant and academically valid, and the process formulating a thesis statement for your research paper. If you have reviewed all the articles, you are by far much informed on the process of research paper writing, structuring types of research papers and the process of thesis formulation.
With that said, how do you start your essay? You know the type of research paper you will be working on, you have chosen your essay topic, and have formulated your thesis statement. How then do you proceed?
The beautiful thing is that you already have all the information you need to know to start your research topic. Nonetheless, we know you are probably facing a writers’ block – not knowing what to do next now that you have your essay topic and thesis statement.
The truth is that starting your research paper is the most challenging stage of your research writing process. You are not sure the approach to take or even if your points will connect in a manner that has logical progression.
All we will be doing in this article is to restate some of the crucial steps to help you internalize the process of starting your essay.
The Process of Starting of Your Research Paper
We are of the assumption that by this stage, you already have a topic for your essay: either it was given or you choose the topic. Once you have a topic, it’s time we start off your research paper writing in the following steps:
- Do a Preliminary Research: The best way to start of your preliminary research is breaking down your research paper topic into several keywords without much thinking actually. Use the keywords to research on the internet any information you might get for each of the keywords you generated. You might want to take some notes as they may prove beneficial while writing your paper.
Your preliminary research should involve skimming through the sources you get noting major points. The process shouldn’t take much of your time if you have the necessary research skills.
- Formulate Your Thesis Statement: Using the information you have gained, develop a thesis statement for your research paper. We earlier highlighted an article that can assist you in thesis statement formulation. You might want to review it.
- Conduct Your Final Research: Using your thesis statement to guide you, select academically credible and relevant sources that you will use to write your essay.
How Do You research for Sources to Use on Your Research Paper Writing Process?
There are various ways to undertake your research. Most students use their college’s library or even the public library. Others use online databases provided by your college such as EBSCOhost and ProQuest.
The one thing you should know is that how well you do your research and how fast you do it depends on your research skills.
Unless specified otherwise, we like to encourage students to either use online databases or the internet – specifically Google scholar and Google books (where applicable). Even in case when you are required to use library resources, checking online for relevant sources will give you a head-up on where to start looking while doing a search on the library – best applicable where the library does not have an online search portal or when you can request for provision of a certain source from the library.
The beauty about use of internet and databases to research is that you get access to unlimited number of sources that you can use to get you started off on your research paper.
The Process of researching to help you start your research paper
Now that we know of the places to research on, it is time we understood the process of researching to get information to use while starting your essay.
- Brainstorm on your research paper topic/prompt: Using the ideas you got during preliminary research and other materials such as the rubric, think about aspects such as:
- What is/are the objective(s) of the research paper?
- How best do I cover all the objectives?
- What is/are the best approach(es) to use for the research paper?
- What are some of the areas I might face difficulties?
- How do I address the challenges I might face?
The best way to brainstorm is by activating your subconscious thinking. Do whatever helps you to activate your subconscious thinking such as walking, listening to music or eve bird watching.
The use of subconscious mind is very beneficial especially when working on a challenging topic. It is a key to good writing – as much as you might want to doubt this, maybe you should review its use in making discoveries by great scientists such as Marconi, Einstein and Edison.
No matter what you do to activate your subconscious thinking, you should have a place to quickly note down the ideas you get.
- Use Keywords to research valid and relevant scholarly sources to use: Use your keywords to research on the internet especially the Google Scholar. There are numerous resources available in the platform for you to use. In case you have access to an online database such as EBSCOhost and ProQuest, check for possible sources you did not access while using Google Scholar.
Be sure to have more sources by the end of your research than you need so that you can then filter to remain with only the very best. Remember that we have not yet started our essay. We are researching information to help us start the essay. We do not want to do research again once we start writing the essay.
You might also want to keep the sources that you filtered out as they may prove imperative in expanding your discussion while writing your paper. You can also get some ideas to use in your discussion as you start your essay.
- Make an Outline or a Mind Map: Your essay ought to show logical progression and good transition from one section/point to another. The best way to achieve this requirement is to develop an outline or a mind gap. The outline or the mind gap is the framework that will guide the flow of your essay once you start writing it.
Your outline need to have the strategy you are going to use to write your introduction, the topic sentences for each paragraph and ideas to use to support your point and how your will conclude your paper. You should also indicate the source of each idea so that when you start writing you will not need to recheck the source. You want to be as swift as possible while writing your essay.
- It’s Time to Write Your Essay: Once you are done with your outline, the next thing is simply to start writing your essay.
How then do you write your essay?
How to Start Writing Your Essay
We have all the information we need for out essay and have acquired all the information needed to write the essay. It is time we do the write-up.
- How to Start Your Essay Introduction
Writing a good introduction in essential in capturing the attention of the reader. You definitely want to attract the attention of the reader and make the desire to read the whole paper. A good introduction should also be written in a manner that lays ground for your paper. While starting to write your essay, you should ensure that your introduction meets these requirements.
There are various strategies to start your introduction. For instance, you can state an interesting fact about the topic you are exploring, you can also give a dramatic description on your topic, you can also highlight a recent discovery on your topic that is intriguing or even pose a question. For in-depth information on how to write a good introduction and its diverse dynamics, review the article on ‘how to write an excellent introduction.’
- How to Start Your Body Paragraphs
The body of your essay is the trunk that serves to clarify, support and oppose conflicting ideas where necessary. Your body paragraphs should start with the topic sentence- the argument/point supporting or opposing your thesis statement. Your topic sentence should be your own inference on the topic. Your should then support your topic sentence using your research while including citations appropriately. Each of your paragraphs needs to be about 150 words.
- How to Start Your Conclusion
The concluding paragraph is your opportunity to restated and prove your point based on your research. Often, you should restate your thesis statement followed by brief summaries of major findings. You should consider incorporating excellent transitioning phrase such as ‘in summation’, ‘in conclusion’ or ‘in light of the discussion above’ and many others that can be applied.
Things You Should Avoid While Starting Off Your Essay
When you want to start writing your essay, there are things and/or practices that you need to avoid. Here are some of the major issues we have found to cause trouble to most students when starting of their essays.
- Failure to do a preliminary research and brainstorm on your essay before you start – the problem with this approach is that it limits your understanding of the premise of your paper. The scope of your discussion is also greatly limited as well as failure to consider different approaches to your essay. Subsequently, you deny yourself the ability to choose the best approach to use that guarantees you high chances of getting a good grade.
- Failure to have an outline – unless you have good mastery of essay writing, you should never start your essay without having developed an outline. Failing to have an outline for your essay has dire consequences. For instance, you might end up exhausting all your points without having met your required essay length or you could even digress from your area of focus while starting your essay.
- Ensure good transition throughout your essay – having good transition will enable your reader to easily understand the flow of your ideas. The reader will appreciate the logical flow of ideas by reading through the whole paper.
- Ensure your arguments are backed by sufficient literature – the worst thing you can do while starting your essay is to base it on opinion unless that’s the objective of the essay. Your paper should be well supported by previous literature to avoid being disregarded due to possible fallacies – opinions in that matter.
- Don’t rush – take time to plan how you are going to work on your essay!
Can CustomEssayExpert Help in Starting My Essay?
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So what help can CustomEssayExpert offer to you as you start your Essay?
There are numerous ways we can help you to start your essay. The first thing that our professional academic writers can do is to help you choose a topic in case you haven’t chosen one. Our writers know which topics work and which one don’t. They will help you choose the best essay topic that will give you an upper hand in passing in your essay and having sufficient information to write and support your arguments.
You can also pay our writers to help you conduct research for your essay. In this case, our writers will do research and provide a list of credible and relevant sources you can use to start off your essay. A brief explanation on why the source is essential can also be included if you direct so. Moreover, your list can be provided in terms of an annotated bibliography.
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