Academic Writing

If your students need to do an extended research essay then they will need some help with academic writing.

You should look at the following areas:

1. Introduction
2. Methods
3. Results/Findings
4. Discussion
5. Conclusion
6. References
7. Annexes as required

It is not necessary to require an abstract for a high school research essay, but if you want to then you will have to look at that.

Also, a theoretical section is not really necessary at this level, or a literature review as such.

With the six-part structure above and 800 – 1000 words to play with, this would break down like this:

Part	800 word count	1000 word count
Introduction	100 – 150 words	~ 200 words
Methods	~ 150 words	~ 200 words
Results/Findings	~ 200 words	~ 300 words
Discussion	~ 200 words	~ 300 word
Conclusion	100 – 150 words	~ 200 words
References and Annexes	Do not count towards word limit.	Do not count towards word limit.

You can use this material to help introduce your students to academic writing.

Here are three sample research essays based on these requirements:

1. The essay should be based on research of some kind, with a clear research question
2. There should be a minimum of 5 references
3. It should be approximately 800 words in length
4. Tables, figures etc and labels for such and references do not count towards the word count

Sample 1: The Iron Heel: Keywords and Collocations

Sample 2: Paul Atreides: The Hero’s Journey

Sample 3: Oil and Natural Gas: The Lifeblood of Our Civilisation