![]() Assessing a historical event in a new way.Identifying the effects of a proposed program, law, or concept.Examining the cause of an existing problem.Interrogating an assumption many people hold about an issue.Critiquing a specific idea within a field.Instead, an argument for a research essay should be a claim, or, more specifically, a claim that requires evidence and analysis to support. It doesn’t have to be something that immediately polarizes individuals or divides an issue into black or white. Your argument doesn’t have to be an argument in the cable-news-social-media-shouting sense of the word. ![]() Where you described the conversation in your literature review, in your research essay you are contributing to that conversation with your own argument. No matter the sources you use, the thesis of a research essay is grounded in evidence that is compelling to the reader. That research can come from fieldwork, laboratories, archives, interviews, data mining, or just a lot of reading. Most research essays attempt to argue a point about the material, information, and data that you have collected. Some essays are more exploratory or creative, while some are straightforward reports about the kind of original research that happens in laboratories. Through writing an essay, your ideas will evolve as you attempt to explore and think through complicated ideas. The word “essay” comes from the French word essayer, or “attempt.” In other words, an essay is an attempt-to prove or know or illustrate something. Rhetorical Considerations: Contributing to the Conversation A good research essay uses the research of others to advance the conversation around the topic based on relevant facts, analysis, and ideas. As you’ll see in the examples below, research can consist of a brief, two-page conclusion or a government report that spans hundreds of pages with an overwhelming amount of original data.Ībove all else, good research is engaged with its audience to bring new ideas to light based on existing conversations. Depending on the course or discipline, research can mean a semester-long project for a class or a few years’ worth of research for an advanced degree. Research takes many different forms in the academic, professional, and public worlds. While this chapter will focus on the kind of research essay you would write in the college classroom, the skills are broadly applicable. We’ll examine the basics of a good thesis and argument, different ways to use sources, and strategies to organize your essay. No matter where you are, this chapter will help you navigate the genre of the research essay. You might still not be sure what you want to argue. Instead, you might need to focus strategically on one or two key pieces of information to advance your argument, rather than trying to learn about the basics of your topic.īut what about a thesis or argument? You may have developed a clear idea early in the process, or you might have slowly come across an important claim you want to defend or a critique you want to make as you read more into your topic. This doesn’t mean that you won’t need to do a little more research. Having the extensive knowledge that you have developed across the first three writing projects will allow you to think more about putting the pieces of your research together, rather than trying to do research at the same time that you are writing. With so much of your research complete, you can now turn your focus to crafting a strong research essay with a clear thesis. It’s now time to contribute to that conversation with your own voice. You’ve established a topic and assembled sources in conversation with one another. During each of these writing projects, your knowledge of your topic grew, and you became much more informed about its key issues. In your literature review, you developed a sense of the larger conversations around your topic and assessed the state of existing research. ![]() This provided a good sense of where you might continue to explore. In your proposal, you organized a plan and developed pointed questions to pursue and ideas to research. You recorded this by summarizing and/or evaluating the first sources you examined. ![]() In your annotated bibliography, you started your inquiry into a topic, reading widely to define the breadth of your inquiry. Research is an ongoing and evolving process, and each of these projects help you build towards the next. Each of these writing projects-the annotated bibliography, proposal, literature review, and research essay-builds on each other. ![]() The goal of this book has been to help demystify research and inquiry through a series of genres that are part of the research process.
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