Essays and research – that’s what students’ lives are made of!
Do essays and research well – your grades and final result depend on this performance.
Partying and hanging out with friends go right out of the window, when you are asked to focus on the essays and research that you have to do at college or university. This is an integral part of student life and it is necessary to get into the groove and come up with the right kind of writing. If you really think about it, there is nothing that should intimidate you where writing of any kind is concerned. If you are able to go about your work in a systematic way, you will find that writing is a joy and can be as much fun as anything else you want to do.
The component of a course:
In many universities today, writing an essay or doing a research paper is a mandatory part of the entire course. It is important for the student to understand the entire syllabus in order to know which areas are to be focused upon, while writing essays and research.
In order to understand this better, it would be good to use the example of a course in Literature. If the student is doing an undergraduate course in Literature, African American Literature is usually one of the subjects or papers. In the course of his study, he could be asked to do an essay based on a play by an African American author like Lorraine Hansberry. Another possibility is that he is asked to do a complete research paper on the poetry of Black American author, Langston Hughes. Hence, it is obvious that an essay or a research paper has to be written at some point in the course or the other.
Types of essays:
There are different kinds of essays that a student would have to write. Narrative, argumentative, informatory, exploratory, investigative, expository and just plain descriptive essays could be written, depending upon the level and the course too. Each of these essays has a specific format and it is necessary for the teacher to insist that these rules are adhered to. It is also important for students to go through well written samples of essays so that the right kind of product is produced at the end of the course.
Model of a good research paper:
Since research paper writing involves a lot more work and time, it is necessary that the student is informed about the need to do extensive reading and collection of facts. The word research denotes that there is some investigative work to be done. It means that one has to study the subject in depth before finding out what can be done on a specific topic. No generalizations can be accepted in a research paper and the student would have to give suitable examples and case studies to support his argument.
Grades:
Most universities insist on a minimum amount of marks that have to be earned by a student as part of his overall performance. Marks awarded for all essays and research are counted in the final tally and grades are awarded based on this performance.
