That’s why Research Essays are divided up into sections. Each section is basically a chapter. It has its own prompt, which makes it easy for you to a mini-essay, with its very own introduction, body, and conclusion.
So when you write a Research Essay, you are basically writing a series of little essays, that are all about your thesis statement!
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Section 1: Abstract : An Abstract is a very short section, that explains what your essay is about. It’s kind of like the summary of a movie on Netflix, or the blurb on the back of a novel. It gives the audience a taste of your essay, which helps them decide if they want to read the rest of it!
Since this section is an overview, you should not write it until you have completed the rest of your essay. It should literally be the last section that you write.
Section 2: Introduction: This section should pique the audience’s interest, and get them primed to read the rest of the essay!
Section 3: Preliminary Suppositions: This section should explain how you started this essay, before you read — or even found — any of your sources. It’s basically the “before” in the “Before & After.”
Section 4: Literature Review: Before you explain your thesis statement to the audience, you need to get them caught up to speed. This section should basically recap all of the sources that helped you this semester, and explain how they helped you.
Section 5: Discussion: In the previous section, you covered everything that your sources taught you. Now it’s your turn to teach us! Tell the audience how you put the pieces together, to discover an original thesis statement, that no one has ever thought of before! Since this is a mini-essay about your thesis statement, it will feel a lot like the 5-paragraph essays that you wrote, back in high school.
Section 6: Limitations: This one is gonna hurt, but… pretend that your thesis statement is wrong.
It’s heartbreaking, I know. You just spent an entire semester, trying to get this right! Trying to discover just 1 sentence! And you did it! And you typed up the first 5 sections of the essay!
But then, before you could start Section 6 — all of a sudden — God Himself appears in your room! And He says, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your thesis statement is wrong.”
So you ask, “What did I get wrong?”
And He says, “I’m not gonna tell ya! It might be something big! It might be something little! It might be a bunch of different things! You’ve gotta figure it out for yourself!”
Bearing that in mind: how do you think that your thesis statement — and the essay that you’ve written about it — could (hypothetically) be wrong?
Section 7: Future Scope: In this section, you’re basically brainstorming a bunch of sequels to this essay!
Section 8: Conclusion: Pretend that you printed out the first 7 sections of your essay. You handed them to me. You watched me, as I read every single page.
Then I finished reading. Paused for a moment. Looked you in the eyes, and I said, “I understand your point. I agree with everything that you’ve said. But… so what? Why should I care? What does this have to do with me?”
Whatever your answer is… that is what you should write in this section.
Section 9: Annotated Bibliography
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