Remember, they don’t know what you are going to write about, so orient them to your topic by beginning broadly. Think of your research paper as an educational piece of writing that you are creating for another student, but keep the tone and language formal. Keep your reader in mind – another student in another class. Don’t make the mistake of beginning too narrowly. Introductions may provide some historical background, may discuss the history of a controversy, may introduce the various factors that impact the topic, and probably introduce and define some of the key vocabulary that your reader may not know. At the end of the introduction, you may want to state your exact research question rather than a thesis.

As in any paper, you want to move from general information that orients your reader to your topic, to more specific information that focuses more directly on what you are studying. Because you are writing more, you probably need to provide more background information.

Research paper introduction may last two or more paragraphs. Keep your audience in mind and what they are likely to know about your topic before reading your paper. If you must write it first to get yourself going, be sure to rewrite after you have completed your conclusion. Write the introduction of your research paper last. Do not describe your research process of researching and writing in a literature review research paper (scientific research papers have a methodology section where the researcher does describe their research, but that’s not what you generally do in a first year composition course).

The structure of a research paper is very much like that of a regular essay except that your main idea may not be as clear early on (check with your instructor about this), the introduction may be longer than usual, the body of the essay is much longer, and you use many more sources. You still bring in your own ideas, however, make the connections between everything, and come up with new ideas based on how you put together the ideas of other writers. However, even a literature review depends more on the research that other people have done than does a regular essay. We will focus on the literature review style of research paper, which is really like an extended essay. There are really two types of formal research papers: A scientific style research paper and a literature review style research paper. General Structure Guidelines for Research Papers

Rough draft example of essay