As soon as students transition from high school to college, a number of new challenges await them. First of all, they entail adaptation to new people and rules. It’s not only about rules of conduct though. The requirements for academic assignments are higher than previously, while instructions are not always clear.
No doubt, all students are familiar with essays and lab reports at this stage. Yet, what about more serious assignments such as business plans, research papers, or case studies?
The difference between a report and essay or a paper and plan seems to be more or less clear. What most students struggle with is grasping the essence of research papers – sometimes, they just write them as another essay, which is a huge mistake. However, it can be avoided or addressed if it’s not too late. For that purpose, we created this guide and outlined the things that distinguish a paper from an essay. Read on to find out!
Structure
Every student who has ever written an essay or received one from EssayHub can describe its structure as ‘introduction, body, and conclusion’. Of course, there may be extended essays that require subsections in the main body, but they are usually divided according to the subtopics. In case you have to write a research paper, it’s a whole different story:
- Introduction comes first as well, but it should include subsections for background information, problem statement, and research questions (at least).
- Literature Review comes next and contains the results of your preliminary research that indicates some gaps, contradictions, or unresolved problems.
- Methodology follows the review and explains how exactly you will conduct the actual research: what tools you will use, how you will analyze the data, etc.
- Results include the analyzed data that addresses the research gap and/or answers the research questions.
- Discussion compares that data to previous findings (content from Literature Review).
- Conclusion sums up the results and answers as well as outlines limitations and recommendations for future research and/or the industry.
Subject Areas
Essays are usually a part of the curriculum that includes the humanities. However creative one may be, they can barely create an adequate essay topic for physics, for instance. Yet, it doesn’t mean that there are no research papers on the humanities. It’s just that they offer a wider range of assignments, while technical subjects can only be based on some experiments, numbers, and projects built on those. So, you can write both an essay and a research paper on the English language, but not on chemistry.
Academic Level
If you ask other students, you’ll find out that research papers are more likely to appear in one’s curriculum closer to the college years if not later. No one will give a five-grader the task to complete one of those.
Meanwhile, an essay is basically the first written assignment school students have to deal with. Such an assignment can stay a part of the homework even when you’re obtaining a Master’s degree. Of course, the closer you are to a Ph.D., the fewer possibilities that you will have to write an essay. Yet, there are always some exceptions.
First Person vs. Third Person
Essays are well-known as assignments where one can share their personal details and add a so-called ‘author’s voice’. The latter is often reflected in writing in the first person. Although some research papers and even more serious written assignments can also have ‘author’s voice’, the degree of personal involvement should be as low as possible.
Some professors allow writing ‘I’, ‘my’, or ‘we’. Yet, the majority is against it and personal opinions. The most personal part of such works is Reflection that requires a student to share the most challenging stages of the research. There, one even must write in the first person. However, this section is absent in more than 50% of academic papers. So, when completing one, make sure you stick to third-person pronouns and base your conclusions on evidence.
Style & Terminology
While in essays, teachers mainly evaluate your vocabulary as well as writing and analytical skills, papers also involve deep research and sticking to academic writing style. In research papers, your vocabulary is also important, but it’s not so much about its richness.
You should be able to use correct and precise terms and stay away from colloquialisms or a rather journalistic style. For instance, writing ‘be that as it may’ is okay for essays, but not for a research paper.
Also, essay writing allows for using rather many transitional words and phrases (unless you use it as a loophole to meet the word count by adding numerous ‘with this in mind’ and ‘nevertheless’). Papers require the most concise options of transitional phrases and only when they are really needed.
Appendices
There’s probably only one thing that can appear as an appendix both in essays and papers – an annotated bibliography. Still, it’s not very common for the former to have appendices at all. At the same time, papers almost always include additional materials such as:
- raw numerical data;
- interview transcripts;
- photos of tools and physical samples if any were used;
- informed consent and invitation letter (primary research);
- a literature matrix for Results, and so on.
Summing Up
In case you used to think that a research paper is just a long essay, you are lucky to stumble upon this article. The list of the differences can go on, but nothing will showcase them better than two samples you can read and compare. Such samples can always be ordered at a writing service you prefer, so, don’t hesitate to ask for help!
