Explain Structure of Academic Writing

Have you seen a house being constructed? You must have seen how construction workers dig up the ground first and fill it with concrete to make a bed for the construction. Then, the pillars are erected and concrete is filled inside them. Once the pillars are ready, they start putting down bricks to fill the concrete structures. Then comes the final laying down of the roof and following constructions. 

You must have noticed how the structure of the process is. If a pillar is erected before laying the foundation, the pillar will get weaker, and vice versa. Similarly, academic writing follows a definite structure that must be followed to get best results. 

In the following video, you will learn about the structure of academic writing and some tips that you must remember before going ahead to write your academic essay. 

In this video, you learnt about some tips that must be remembered while writing an academic essay. These tips are as follows:

• Use the thesis statement in the introduction. 
• Use formal language only. 
• Your opinion must be supported by appropriate evidence and academic sources.
• Referencing your sources is mandatory.
• There are different referencing formats - understand which referencing format has to be used in the essay. 
• Divide your work into paragraphs - introduction, two or more paragraphs for the body and conclusion.
• Do not plagiarise your essay. 

You also learnt about the thesis statement, which is an integral part of your academic essay. Let’s understand what a thesis statement is through the following points:

1. A thesis statement is the most important part of the introduction, as it indicates the writer’s position on the given subject.
2. The thesis of the write-up talks about the writer’s opinion on the subject, which is largely shaped by the audience and format of the document.
3. A thesis statement can be referred to as a general statement written in a precise manner, promoting a controlling idea about the subject.
4. A thesis statement must be a general statement because already stated facts and figures do not require extensive write-ups and research.
5. It should be opinion statements - as they require facts, examples and evidence to back them up.

Now that you have learnt about the thesis statement, let’s understand how you can structure your thesis statement in the following video. 

In this video, you learnt how you can structure the thesis statement in the following ways:

• Use precise and comprehensible terms so that the readers have a clear idea about the subject being talked about.
• Avoid the use of broad and ambiguous terms.
• Provide an idea or a set of ideas that give the direction to the write-up.
• Provide a controlling idea without which the write-up runs at a chance of beating about the bush. 
• The thesis statement will be a simple precise idea that would largely answer this question.

Having understood the key ways to structure your thesis statement, in the following video, let’s understand how the academic essay should be structured. 

In this video, you learnt that there are four to five key components of a good academic essay. These are as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Paragraph 1 and paragraph 2
3. Conclusion
4. References

In the introduction, you must include the pointers as mentioned in the following image.

You must include at least two paragraphs after the introduction that talk about your work and interests. These paragraphs should include the pointers as mentioned in the image below.

After these paragraphs, your conclusion should come. The conclusion paragraph should include the following pointers as mentioned in the image below.

Now that you have understood how to structure your academic essay, it is time to understand the same through a well-written example. In the next video, you will learn how to structure your essay from an example. 

In this video, you learnt about structuring your academic essay through an example. You can read in detail about the example from the images given below. 

With this, you have come to the end of the session on academic writing. In this session, you learnt about various characteristics of academic writing, its purpose and the ways in which to structure the academic essay.