Preparing an Academic Writing: Structuring and Development of the Body - Essay Example

 Essay Structure The structure of an essay or rather an essay outline demonstrates the general construction of an essay. It demonstrates the general ideas which would be examined but not necessarily the full details. The outlines are provided for the writer to organize his or her thoughts as well as arranging them into a manner that would be best organized and understood. The structure is broken down into three major parts including; the introduction, the body or the development and finally the conclusion of the essay. The introduction This includes the major information which is encompassed in the introductory paragraph of the essay. The major parts of the introduction part of the essay includes; the introductory statement, the thesis statement, any necessary background information or rather the contextualizing information pertaining the topic of the essay which supports the ideas. Normally the background information of the essay proceeds the thesis statement of the essay (Essay Town, 2009). Thesis statement in general informs the reader the approaches used to interpret the meaning or the significance of the subject matter under scrutiny. It acts as the paper's road map as it informs us of the expectations of the paper. In this way the thesis helps to answer the questions raised by the writer. The development or the body According to Essay Town (2009), the second part of the essay includes the development section. It is the longest as well as the most detailed and complex part of the essay structure. This part is concerned with development, studies and defense of the thesis statement. It contains the first supporting idea of the writer, the transition, the discussion of the topic, relevant examples as well as the results and their analysis. All other supporting ideas have the same details. It further illustrates to the writer the general structure used for creating points regarding the thesis statement. The structure of the development section appears as follows. Every point includes the assertion of the point, followed by its explanation and then the defense of the point's validity. This section can have as mainly points as one wishes. The conclusion Essay Town (2009) asserts that the conclusion part comes out as the last part of the essay. It is basically a comment on the thesis in an approach which synthesizes the information given in the essay as well as arriving at an insight regarding the thesis. The general structure of the conclusion is as follows. a) synthesis of the points provided in the essay; the transition, statement reflecting the back on thesis b) comment regarding the meaning of the essay points as well as restating the major points and finally c) closing marks or the ending statement which provokes thought. The essay can include appendices, which are additional materials added to support the essay. This may include tables, graphs and charts to support the information given as well as assist in analyzing the results and comparison of data for easy making of the conclusion. Annotated Bibliography (the Harvard System). Bibliography refers to a list of books, articles as well as other relevant sources such as Internet sources which provide the information that the writer has consulted and used in the essay writing. This might be composed of things that the writer has not referred to in a direct manner in his essay text. An annotated bibliography refers to a bibliography that has different citations each accompanied by a note which gives description as well as explanation and evaluation of the publication which is being referred to. The said annotations may be comprising of level, style, relevance, scope, bias. Citation , which is usually referred involves the description of a book, article or any other source of the information used. It contains all the details necessary for the correct identification of the material. The abbreviated citations are employed in the in-text references University of Exeter (2001). In text reference is employed in the Harvard system to provide a brief acknowledgment of the source of the certain piece of information provided within the major text of the essay as well as report. This in-text reference is placed in parentheses immediately after the relevant information or passage. It can also be fully integrated into the main text. They ought to be accompanied by a reference list or rather the bibliography providing the full details of the cited work. Referencing from a Book. In case you are obtaining the references from a book, one needs to provide information such as author or editor, followed by the title of the book, the books edition in case it is not the first one, then the volume number in case the book is from a several-volume work. This is followed by the place of publication and finally the publisher. The title of the book is written in the title case (where the first latter of each word is in capital letter form). Referencing from a book is reliable because the reader of the essay can easily refer to the specific book and get the full information. In cases where the writer of the easy quotes directly from the book, then the page number of the source material is indicated (Wells, 2001). This helps one to directly get the desired information. Book referencing is also reliable because it assist writer to prove that the written materials are not his own but were sourced from a certain reference book. Examples: Barnes, R. 1995. Successful Study for Degrees, 2nd edition, London: Routledge. McCarthy, P. and Hatcher, C. 1996. Speaking Persuasively: Making the Most of Your Presentations. Sydney: Allen and Unwin (University of Exeter. 2001). Referencing from a Website For electronic resources used in essay writing, one has provide the author of the website, the year of publication, then the title of the site. This is usually followed by the database sponsor of the said website as well as the URL or rather the address of the web page. This is followed by the date the site was accessed. In cases where the web site author is not indicated, then the title of the web site is quoted. Web pages assist the writer in getting easy access of the source materials for giving strong argument of his essay. The link can easily be accessed for quick information and most of the information in these sites are relevant to the topic under discussion. When using website sources, one needs to choose the most relevant ones because there are several topics provided under that title. Examples as per University of Exeter (2001). Young, C. (2001) English Heritage Position Statement on the Valletta Convention, [Online], Available: http://www.archaeol.freeuk.com/EHPostionStatement.htm [24 Aug 2001]. Wells, D. (2001) Harvard Referencing, [Online], Available: http://lisweb.curtin.edu.au/guides/handouts/harvard.html [14 Aug 2001]. Journal Articles This needs one to quote the name of the author(s). The surname is usually written in full while the other names are written as initials. The year of publication follows this while the title of the article comes third followed by the journal's title. The page number(s) of the article which is in the journal comes afterwards. Other details for journal sources include the volume and the issue numbers. Journal talk about certain issues so the relevant materials can easily be obtained regarding that issue. They are also identified according to certain volumes, issues and titles hence ease to retrieve information from a certain journal source (Wells, 2001). Examples. Muller, V. 1994.‘Trapped in the Body: Transsexualism, the Law, Sexual Identity’, The Australian Feminist Law Journal, vol. 3, August, pp. 103-107. example of a Journal articles that have issue number as well as volume Muller, V. (1994) ‘Trapped in the body: Transsexualism, the law, sexual identity’, The Australian Feminist Law Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, August, pp. 103-107 (University of Exeter. 2001). References Essay Town. 2009. Sample Essay Outline[Online], Available:http://www.essaytown.com/writing/sample-essay-outline [Accessed Dec 2, 2009]. Wells, D. (2001) Harvard referencing, [Online], Available: http://lisweb.curtin.edu.au/guides/handouts/harvard.html [Accessed Dec 2, 2009]. University of Exeter. 2001. Referencing-the Harvard style. http://education.exeter.ac.uk/dll/studyskills/harvard_referencing.htm [Accessed Dec 2, 2009]. Read More