Article by Amelia Jones

Research essays come in different forms. In grade school, students will be asked a lot of descriptive research essay writing. Thoughts on their plans and what the students did during the summer break are the usual topics for descriptive essays. But when the students hit college and post-graduate studies, the list of the different types of essays also increases! This is the time when students are asked to worked on a wide array of essay types. If you are in college and university setting then chances are you have come across the expository essay, the literary essay, informal essay and the research paper essay. Among these sample types of essay, you can say that tough work can be expected from the research paper essay. This should be expected judging from the name itself. Because this calls for research, the quality of work done in a research essay is more defined compared to other types of essay. There are other differences that set apart one type of essay from the rest. The amount of work is one and on this count, the research essay is that type that calls for more and quality research. If you are facing a research paper essay as a requirement in college or university, better to be prepared for the tough work ahead! So what makes such an essay different from the other types available for work in college and universities? When you are faced with the research paper essay as a requirement, expect that you will search and tap into the works of others and you will need to compare your works and thoughts with these authors and researchers. Common challenges you will face when writing research paperWhen you are writing a research paper, you need to collate and go through a number of source materials and you need to synthesize all information using your ideas. The challenge here is that you must find suitable texts and use these ideas and theories. The problem when writing a research essay is that you can be lost in the wilderness of loaded materials and complex ideas. In order to prevent this from happening you must narrow your topic before starting to work on the paper.Another common challenge when writing a research paper (or even other kinds of essays) is that you can commit plagiarism. For example, if you are writing the paper and you are looking at a string of ideas coming from an author and you don’t include ideas of your own then you are actually committing plagiarism. Or if you borrow quotations and ideas and you did not cite these in your research paper, then you are also committing plagiarism. So the most important thing to keep in mind is to cite resources and make sure that you also inject your own thoughts and ideas while writing. When you are writing a research paper essay, the important thing is to demonstrate to your readers what you have learned and your own take on the subject.Keep tabs on the evidences to be used when writing the research paper essayWhen you have a thesis in mind that can set the direction of your research paper, the next thing to consider when writing a research essay is to find the evidences that will be used to support your thesis and to sway your readers into taking your stand. These evidences are important when writing essays, a research essay included. Evidences can take the form of examples and illustrations of other authors, researchers and authorities that will support and put focus on your thesis statement. When writing a research paper essay, make sure that you provide multiple evidences. The key in writing a competent research paper essay is to have a sufficient listing of ideas that can set the ground work of your essay. The evidences must set the tone of the paper, and to do that you need to make sure that these evidences are representative and relevant.Evidences that you can use for your research paper essay can be primary or secondary sources. When you say primary source, it means that the text that you are looking at is directly related to the paper that you are working on. The secondary sources that you can use when writing a research essay are the opinions, ideas and interpretations of other researchers and authors. Primary sources are important when writing a research paper essay. But for the secondary sources, there are appropriate situations and contexts where you can use these. You don’t need to rely on secondary sources all the time when you are writing a research essay. When working on the research essay, you don’t need to rely heavily on these sources. When writing a research paper, you can use the secondary sources to support your own views and interpretations and these should not be used as the basis for fine-tuning your stand. When writing the essay, don’t just collect all ideas, opinions and theories and arrange them in order to come up with a paper. A competent and professional research paper essay will include your own synthesis and take of the subject as well. There should be value-adding activities when you are writing a research essay. And you can make it happen by adding your own thoughts on the research essay.