Writing A Research Essay 101

All students have written an essay in their lives. Some enjoy the process, others find it futile. The former would most probably end up studying arts and humanities (or social sciences in general), while the latter most probably would end up in the engineering and science programs. As for me, I do like writing. But the process has not always been smooth. I don't have any problem with creative writing per se, but I do struggle with writing a research essay. Just for context, creative writing is something that you write based on what you know about the topics and you are not required to do prior research. Even if you do, you don't necessarily have to cite your sources. This is a completely different story for a research essay. Not only you are required to do prior research but also the quality of your essay often depends on how much research you do. In other words, the more sources you cite, the better your essay would become. 

In this blog post, I would like to share my experience navigating my way around research essays. Luckily for me, doing research and writing have been my routine for the past one and a half year as I am currently doing graduate school.

As I reflect on my writing process, I now realise how little we are taught in school about essay writing. Often, teachers just instruct us to write the essay. But very rarely they walk us through the 101 of writing an essay. Honestly, I learn about everything I am about to share in this blog post by doing. So, hopefully, this will be helpful for you and for me, in case I forget about them in the future. 

Here we go! 

I always go through four steps when writing an essay: Brainstorming, Researching, Writing and Editing. Let's talk about them one by one. 

Brainstorming 

Whenever I start working on an essay, I always try to understand the question first. This is particularly important and is relevant regardless of your field,  but more so if you study international relations in which the essay questions are often very vague. So, what I would do is that I would break down the question. For example, here is the essay question that I have to work on: "The Rising Power is Prone to Be Predatory During Power Transition!". As you can see, this is quite a chunky question. Rather than an answer, you are often left with more questions. Don't panic. That's actually quite normal. In fact, what you have to do next is to tend to those questions and try to digest them slowly. These are the questions that I have in mind about "the essay question". 

"The Rising Power is Prone to Be Predatory During Power Transition!

• What is rising power? 
• What is power transition? 
• What Predatory rising power?

The terms used in this question may sound foreign to most people who don't study international relations (IR). But most IR students are familiar with them. If you already have preexisting knowledge about the question, then good. You can start vomiting your ideas into a piece of paper or you can also type them if you prepare typing than writing. Some people like to use mind map, that is good as well. Use whatever platform that works best for you.  I would recommend everyone to rely on their preexisting knowledge first before jumping into the researching step. What I mean by that is that just write anything that you have in mind first, then use that as the first step in your essay writing. Afterwards, you can continue doing the research. 

If you don't have any clue about the question, that is okay too. At least you have broken down the questions into smaller pieces, now you can start looking them up on google, google search or whatever sites you find helpful. 

Researching

The next step is doing the actual research. There are so many websites out there where you can do your research, but I find google scholar to be the best. Everything is pooled there. Even if you have to go to the original website to access the article, at least you can do that from one outlet. In a way, google scholar is a Skyscanner for the academic world. You just have to put in the keywords and viola everything will appear at your disposal. 

Another website that I regularly go to is my university search engine. It offers the same services as google scholar. Plus, by signing to the site, it instantly gives me free access to the article and online books. And, it also informs me if the printed copies happen to be available in the university library. I know for some people reading printed copies are old school. But for me, I often get tired and overwhelmed reading from the screen all the time. So, if I know I have access to the printed copies, I always opt for that option. Also, I try to read the articles from my laptop as much as I can. But if it overwhelms me too, to the point that I can't work at all, I would not hesitate to print them. Luckily, my university offers A$44 printing balance every semester which has been very helpful. And if you don't want to spend too much money on printing, I have a trick for you. Just print 2 pages per sheet. I do that all the time. And you save tons of money from it. 

Also, doing the research can be very overwhelming and time consuming. The question then how can you make sure that the time you invest is worth it? There are actually ways to make it less stressful. 

Three things you can do to avoid stress while doing some research: 

1. Only Read the Introduction and the Conclusion 

You don't actually have to read the book/article from cover to cover. For a starter, just read the introduction and conclusion part. Most of the time, doing this helps you save a lot of time. Plus, the core message of the article are always summarised there. So, you can instantly know if the article is relevant or not to your research from the introduction and the conclusion. 

2. Search for the Keyword 

If you think that is not enough, you can use your control + f and search the keyword you are looking for. If you find it in the middle of the article, then good. If not, just move on. 

3. Take Notes 

Note-taking is very important. For me, every time I start working on an essay I always prepare three blank word documents: one for an essay plan, one for note-taking, and one for the references. Everybody has a different style when it comes to note-taking. Some people like to make an annotation, which I think is good. But it will become a bit of a challenge, you are short with times. Another note-taking method is simply just to write down the references on the top and start writing your note underneath. Some people even just copy-paste the points that they find relevant and save them in the document. Later during the writing process, they will paraphrase them. The last method is to use a spreadsheet. Prepare four columns. The first column is for the references. The second column is for the page number. The third is for the quote. The last column is for the paraphrased version of that quote. 

Design by Adhari Koara 

I don't have a favourite. I always try all of them. Sometimes, the first one works. But other times, the second one works better for me. So yes, try all of them and see which one works best for you. 

Writing 

Here is a thing about writing, you don't have to worry about being right and grammatically correct the first time around. Just write whatever comes to your mind. You will lose a lot of energy and time if you worry too much about the wording and grammar. As long as you know what you write, just write. I don't know about you, but I am someone who relies on motivation to get me working. If I am in the mood, I feel like I have a very clear vision of what I am writing about. But if I am not in the mood, no matter how hard I try, I can't barely get anything out of my brain. So yes, when I am in the mood I try to vomit every single idea I have in my brain because I am worried that I may run out of it before I could get all the ideas out. I always feel like I am being timed to get it out. So, if the time is out, no matter how hard I try I won't be able to get it out. 

Use A template 

That is that. Another thing is, I find it quite helpful you have a template. All my essay always start with the same template. 

 "The Rising Power is Prone to Be Predatory During Power Transition!

Introduction 

Supporting Argument 1 

Supporting Argument 2 

Supporting Argument 3 

Conclusion 

Having this template helps me think about what I have to actually do in this research. So, when I start I am not completely blank. I know the parts that I have to complete. 

A Good Composition for An Essay 

I was told that a good essay has an even composition. For example, if you are tasked to write a 3000-word essay, the composition would be: 300 words or 10% each for the introduction and conclusion, and the rest would be divided among the three arguments (2400/3= 800). So, 800 words per supporting argument. It does not have to be exactly like that. But in between is good. 

Once you have done your research, obviously you now have a clear idea of what kind of position you are taking and what the supporting arguments are that lead you to such a conclusion. First, if you think moving between screens are too much for you, you can begin by just focusing on writing whatever you have in mind. Later, you can match the quotes that you have saved with each point you have written. Just continue doing that until you get a fully formed essay. By that, what I mean is that, when all the parts in your essay template are fully completed. If you manage to get there, the next step you have to do is editing. 

Editing

This is the most important and the most laborious part. This is where you as they often say "kill your darling babies." Not everything you write should remain in the essay. If during the editing you find them weird and incoherent, just delete them. Not so fast, though. You don't want to regret it later. What I always do is that I never edit in the same word document. So I always open a new blank page when I edit. This way I still have access to the all versions of my essay. If you see my course folder, it is full of so many different versions of my essay writing process. You would see things like: INTR8052 Research Essay Ver. 1, INTR8052 Research Essay Ver. 2, INTR8052 Research Essay Ver. 3, and so on.

Print Out Your Draft

The next thing that is often misunderstood is that we don't actually have to edit on the screen all the time. If you get tired of the screen, just print your draft and edit it there. Use colourful pens to see where you get things wrong. It may double the job, but it helps me a lot. So, it is still worth it.

Check Your Draft on Turnitin Practice Site 

The last thing I often do is to check my draft on Turnitin practice site. Thankfully my university provides it. It's very helpful to check if the parts that I paraphrase was right. I don't want to unintentionally end up doing some plagiarism. 

Also, my university offers services where we can send our draft to be checked by the Academic Skills Department. They generally give very good feedback. It could be about the grammar, incoherent argument or etc. We can either meet the couch face to face (or via zoom, you know why) or we can also request writing comments. This is the one part that I like about my university.

Important Tools

Just to sum up, these are the tools (websites, application) I cannot get away from when writing an essay:

 

1. google docs or office 365. Basically any software or website that can integrate your writing. This is so helpful because if you can still access your essay even if you don't have your device/laptop with you. Say, you go to the lab computer in your university. You just need to log in to your google doc or office 365, you are all good to go. Plus, always store all your file/data on either one drive or google drive. That way you don't have to worry if your laptop is broken.
2. Google translate and thesaurus.com. The thing about being a second language speaker is that you sometimes lose the ability to think in your second language, or even in your first language. So, if you happen to only remember the words in your native language or even in your third language, you can just look it up on google translate and voila, you find the world that you are looking for again. Similarly for thesaurus, sometimes it gets too redundant to use the same words over and over. Look it up on thesaurus, and you get yourself some of the most sophisticated words. 
3. Google scholar and university-owned searching site. These are probably the most important tools in writing an essay. You literally can't write an essay without doing research. Also, I feel like this is so overlooked, but these sites can help you with your referencing. Just click the (") symbol and you get yourself a generated citation. So you don't have to write the citation manually ever again. But watch out, not all of them are correct.  
4. Endnote and Mandeley. Some people use E and M. But personally, I never use them. I find downloading the file and then upload it to these softwares a bit too much. 
5. Turnitin practice site. So important to check that you do not unintentionally do some plagiarism. 
6. Grammarly. If you are studying in a second language, it may be helpful to use Grammarly. Also, I am generally very clumsy. I make typos all the time. Having Grammarly is very helpful that regard. But then again, Grammarly is not always right. Having a good knowledge of grammar is a must when using Grammarly. 

That is it. That's how I navigate my way around essay writing. I hope it can be helpful for you.