How to outline the structure of an essay
While writing an essay at university, some students take everything they have in mind and pour it all out on paper in their essays.
Essay writing and defense is an important form of independent learning for modern students. An essay is a short oral or written presentation of an academic project, research results, book content, article, and other things. An essay is, to some extent, a report on any subject, written, based on a critical review of literary and other sources. In this regard, an essay on a given topic – is an independent creative work of students, which shows his knowledge of the scientific literature on this topic, understanding of the main approaches to solving scientific and practical problems, as well as reflects their own professional views of the future specialist and demonstrates his skills. to be aware of scientific phenomena on the basis of theoretical knowledge.
Properly structured research work will help you develop a more structured essay that makes sense and is logical for your reader. It can also help you better develop your ideas and save you time in the long run.
What steps do I need to create?
The good news: It’s not difficult to outline your work. Here are the basic steps to follow:
Step №1. Brainstorming and topic selection
Start with a list of all the topics covered. Do not judge the topics you write; just write down as many thoughts as possible on paper. Set a timer for seven minutes and write down any topic that comes to mind.
After creating the list, find the topics that seem to suit you best and the task that was given to you. You can even combine several themes to create one larger, more advanced theme.
Step №2. Come up with more details
Once you’ve chosen a topic, it’s time to make sure you have enough information to support and develop the topic. Brainstorming with ideas can help you understand how your thoughts relate to the main topic of the essay.
Write a topic in the center of the page and circle it. Draw lines and circles to find ideas that support this central theme. Again, do not judge your thoughts; just think about them. You can narrow them down later. Now you want to see if this topic is enough of a selection and if you can relate some ideas to the main topic.
Step №3. Label your ideas. Where will they go in the structure template?
The main format for creating the structure of a scientific work includes an introduction, a collection of ideas, and a summary. Eventually, you will brainstorm and organize this chaos into clear, orderly contours. This will help you to organize your ideas in a logical order and will help to eliminate some ideas that are not so strong or do not correspond to the topic of your essay.
Look at your thoughts on a paper with a network of ideas and mark them as “I” if you think they will help you present your idea, if it is great facts that support your main idea, or if you think they will help you finish your thoughts.
Step №4. Use the example to write an essay
If the above steps intimidate you, you can always take a few minutes to look at general examples to better understand what you are aiming for.
Essay writing is a creative process, and there is a scientific opportunity for scientific self-expression and self-affirmation in front of classmates and teachers. Therefore, before embarking on an essay (of course, if students have a choice), it is important to first understand what your real goal is (to inform others about your original ideas, just get a test, improve your writing of scientific texts, etc.). It is also worth imagining who will be the “reader” of your work (numerous users of the World Wide Web, known in advance a strict and meticulous “opponent”, a friendly supervisor, your classmates.
Essays should be written when there is something to write about and when there is a mood to keep others in their thoughts. The worst are texts written without the appropriate desire and mood. They are created more slowly (or not at all), and the quality is much worse because modern science is a creative field that is based on the right structure. Unfortunately, you can wait for inspiration for too long without doing the right job in time.
Once you have outlined your thoughts, the beginning of the essay writing process will become much smoother and easier for you. Your essay is ready, your thoughts are in order, the details are in order. Most essays are already written in this way, due to a clear pre-planning of the structure of the future work.
The art of writing an essay at first can be amazing. However, using a structure can help organize work in a way that makes writing much easier and much more interesting to read. By spending time brainstorming, plan your thoughts, and logically present them in your structure, it will benefit you in the future, as it will save you time and help create a well-thought-out academic essay.