Well, first, why not write the introduction in the beginning? It might be a bit confusing, but our suggestion is that the best introduction is written at the end of the research paper, not in the beginning. The reason is that by the end of the work, you already know everything about the paper; you know what you wrote in the literature review and which studies you discussed, you know which research method you chose, who your research population was, you know who your interviewees were and what conclusions were drawn. All these make up an introduction.
Writing an introduction will be similar to the opening of your summary chapter, only here it will be a more comprehensive and short review of the work’s structure. You need to present what you will discuss in each chapter of the work. A good introduction will be up to 2 pages long, no less than a page and a half. At the end of presenting the work’s structure, it’s advisable to talk about why you chose to engage with the topic – how it relates to you or why it’s important to discuss it.
After writing the introduction, you have just a little bit left. Writing the abstract, or executive summary, is not mandatory, but we can give you the best reason why to add an abstract: an abstract turns your 20-page paper into a 20 pages a half paper. And if you think we’re joking, we’re not – the abstract makes your research paper more professional and high-quality, and more importantly, shows your professor how good you are at summarizing things compellingly. An abstract consists of a single paragraph that concisely talks about the topic of your work and what conclusions we find at the end of the paper.
Now, all that’s left is to organize the paper. Write the titles correctly where they need to be. Add page numbers. Ensure that the research paper meets all the technical guidelines: font size, font type, line spacing, margins, etc. Pay attention to the line spacing – many students start with double spacing and then find out they were supposed to write according to a 1.5 spacing, so they now have a few more pages to add… don’t do that.
At this stage, many students forget that they were supposed to write a bibliography as well, which makes the writing a bit more daunting. In the next chapter, we will give you some good tips for writing a bibliography and citing sources within the work.
