Academic essay beginning

Question

I want to ask for your advice with my academic essay. I already googled it and I found only https://pro-academic-writers.com/blog/start-essay What do you think about these advices?

Answer 1

Hi Majece!

This might be a bit late for the initial purpose that you asked the question, but I don't imagine that was the last essay that you will ever have to write, so I'll offer an answer here.

1. Starting the paper by making the main idea clear: Generally, I'd say this is useful advice. One concern I would have, as a teacher, is that a college student might mistake this for "tell your teacher the topic you have selected." Ideally, for me, college students begin to move beyond simple "topics" and toward "research problems" and "research questions."
2. A student might choose a topic like "self-driving cars"...but that's a huge topic. You might break that down into the mechanics of self driving cars, the programming of self driving cars, the laws/regulations around self driving cars, disability access and self driving cars, etc. Even breaking it down into a subtopic, you might find yourself merely repeating existing information available in other places, so identifying something that is unknown or under-studied, or a problem that needs addressing, gives your writing more purpose. For example: "In what ways do programmers of self-driving cars consider 'ethics' a part of their project, and how does this manifest in the machine learning and decision making elements of self-driving cars?"
3. Statement of central issue/thesis: Some fields like a thesis driven essay. For me, many students have learned about the thesis in high school as a 1-2 sentence statement, often with 3-4 component subparts that correspond to their body paragraphs, which they write at the outset of their paper. This can limit the paper (I can only talk about the 3-4 subparts; I have already taken X stance; I said these were related elements, so I have to prove that), so I usually encourage students to either wait to write it until later, or to ensure that they go back and revise the thesis after some exploratory writing. More often, as I note above, I encourage students to develop a "controlling purpose" for their paper, which corresponds to a "research problem" that they have identified. If more students' writing was purposeful, aimed at solving a problem (rather than arguing a position in an endless game of pro/con), then I think students might enjoy writing more.
4. Catchy hook/grabber: Generally a good idea to grab your reader's attention; the issue is that different things are compelling to different audiences. I'd warn that many students do this in a cliche way (the "since the dawn of time" starter, or the "Merriam Webster defines 'racism' as..." starter, or the "Have you ever felt..." starter, or the "Henry David Thoreau once said" starter, etc.). My usual recommendation is to check out John Swales' CARS Model...in it, he describes how many academics use certain rhetorical moves in a sequence to create a sense of urgency/need for the writing/research that you are about to do. This involves setting your research in an ongoing conversation and identifying a niche, which, to me, is much more compelling than the weird fact you found on Google. If you've ever been exposed to Graff's They Say/I Say (of which I am not, generally, a fan), his introduction about "joining the conversation" and "putting in your oar" is pretty similar. Both Graff and Swales, in a way, are referencing what we call "the Burkean Parlour" in rhetoric.
5. ProAcademicWriters.com: It's a paper writing service, and, as a longtime grader of student papers [who has also encountered papers that students purchased online], I can tell you that they're usually pretty garbage enterprises. Even if you went there just for the advice page, they have a vested interest in not giving away the best advice for free (because they want you to buy their paper-writing service). Even if you buy their service, though, you're not going to be getting your money's worth. The immediate issue is that the writers are not part of the class for which you are writing...they haven't done the same readings, haven't completed the other assignments that the professor set up to scaffold leading to the paper, and don't know the instructor's peccadilloes and focuses in grading. These papers jump out pretty clearly to an instructor. The longer term issue is that you, as a writer, don't develop strategies that work for you to adjust to new writing situations...so you're largely trapped relying on others to do your writing for you. This could be expensive over time, but also means you won't develop skills that will be important in your future educational and workplace environments.