Academic Writing Steps
- Step 1: Choose an essay topic
- Step 2: Dissect your essay topic
- Step 3: Rewrite the essay question
- Step 4: Begin gathering broad ideas
- Step 5: Brainstorm
- Step 6: Develop a thesis
- Step 7: Read to support your thesis
- Step 8: Draw a mind map
- Step 9: Write an essay proposal
- Step 10: Draft your introduction
- Step 11: Write the first draft of the essay
- Step 12: Check your draft for problems
- Step 13: Second draft
- Steps 14–16: Proofread and edit your essay
Brainstorm to gather ideas with an open mind, and then search them for emerging patterns. Simply write down ideas you have found that you think are relevant, then join them or group them as you see useful relationships between them. These patterns can help you identify your argument structure and your position.
Here’s an example using the sample essay topic:
Some consider that happiness is about how a person feels right now. Others think happiness is about our long-term sense of meaning or purpose. Compare and contrast these two viewpoints. Explain which is more persuasive.
- First jot down ideas from the readings that might be relevant
- Then look for patterns (drag and drop to complete this part).:
Activity – Brainstorm Matching
- People are happier if they are not mind wandering
- Killingsworth: more present in now – more happy
- Colonoscopy patients: story with happy ending is more meaningful – and happier (Kahneman)
- Nurses in intensive care – happy because of meaningfulness and purpose of job
- Norton: money increases happiness when you spend it on someone else
- WA school study: relationships are main factor for happiness for kids – and linked to doing well at school
- Kahneman: experiencing self/remembering self are different
- Happy as feeling a good experience now, is a different thing from happy in the story of life memory
Theory that explains why these two seem so different
Happiness is about how a person feels right now
Both theories can explain
Happiness is about long-term meaning or purpose