Informal Formal Academic Paper Structure
(Writing this up because so many of my clients have needed help with this, and I’ve done this off the cuff so many times that I’ve lost count)
[Start paper: Introduction]
Here is this big topic; I am going to focus on a small part of this big topic. Here is the small part, and here is why I am focusing on it. What I’m trying to show or find is this [Thesis].
[All The Background Needed: Overview]
Just in case you don’t know about my big topic or my small part, here’s the information you need to know in order to understand the rest of what I’m going to be talking about.
[What Other People Found: Literature Review]
First, I am going to see what other people have found out about my small part of the big topic, plus anything else that I think might be useful to help me show what I’m trying to find or learn.
This other person and their group found one thing about my small part, but it’s not exactly what I’m looking for, but it is still interesting, and I need to take these bits of what they found into consideration.
This other person and their group found another thing about my small part. It’s related to what I’m looking into, but in another area of the big topic, so I’ll definitely be able to use that in a similar way, but I’m not doing their work over again, because the areas of the big topic are different.
And this third person found something that I will show is of importance to my small part, even though they weren’t looking into my area at all, but I’m going to take what I’ve learned from them and put it to use here.
[My Argument/Point/Experiment: Methodology]
Now that I’ve shown you what other people have found and what you need to know to understand, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to design an argument somehow (theoretical math/scientific experiment/survey/etc) that will let me test what I’m trying to show or find. Here’s how I’m designing it. Here are the little bits that I have to take into consideration so they don’t screw up what I’m looking for. Here are things that I need to remember. Here are things that I’m not looking for this time, but I’ll keep in mind for next time.
Now that I’ve designed it, I’m going to do it.
[What I Found: Results]
Here’s what I found from my argument. I did my argument and I got these bits back. I’m just going to tell you what I found for now, and let you see what I found.
[What I Noticed About What I Found: Discussion]
Looking over what I found, I can say that what I was looking for was or was not shown by what I found. Also, I can talk about other interesting things that I found that are of relevance to my small bit of the big topic.
[And The Whole Thing: Conclusion]
Here was the big topic, of which I was focusing on a small part. My small part that I was looking into found interesting things, which may or may not have been what I was looking for. What I was looking for was interesting because of how it relates to the big topic, and this expands what we know of the big topic some more.
~fin.
And that’s a very general and generic structure that you can use for “how to write a college-level formal paper... in very informal terms. I’ve just had so many of my clients drive themselves into anxiety attacks over not knowing how to structure their papers or what goes where in the paper that I started writing this up for them on their notes--and it helped!
