psychology essay format

psychology essay format

The Importance of Proper Essay Format in Psychology

1. Introduction to Essay Writing in Psychology

Numerous resources can provide students with exactly the kind of help they need. Psychology instructors advance the knowledge and support provided in class when they integrate instructions on how to prepare research papers with specific topic areas in psychology. By following instructor guidelines and studying samples of research articles in the discipline, students can gain a more realistic understanding of what professionals in the field of psychology do, not to mention the expectations of research assignments. With greater comfort in writing, and consequently a more positive experience throughout their programs, students are more likely to find success in the classroom.

Writing essays and research papers is a common task given to students of psychology. Selecting an appropriate topic grows more difficult if a unique or specialized target audience is attached to the project. Students planning to pursue professional careers or graduate level education in a specified area of psychology are often required to submit papers of this nature. Many students find the prospect of writing such a paper intimidating and are put off by the more complex and comprehensive research projects they might be assigned. However, like most academic tasks, the project becomes increasingly manageable and understandable as students become familiar with the process.

2. Key Elements of Essay Format in Psychology

Scientific inquiry in psychology, just as in the physical and life sciences, possesses a technical language characterized by special terminology and presents knowledge partially based upon portions of original data and scholarly studies. The skills of technical writing in general, the composition of structured essays in particular, and the identification and interpretation of the relationship between various aspects of written expression and psychological terminology in the presentation of information are stressed throughout the psychology course. Occasionally, practice in these particular skills should be in the form of working knowledge for successful achievement on the portions of the AP Exam. Students scoring high in the scientific inquiry category exhibit both rhetorical writing skills and the ability to understand and use psychological terminology when describing and analyzing psychological concepts, theories, processes, and scientific methods.

Medical scientists suggest that inadequate written expression, if incorporated into the scores of prospective college students, be considered predictive of future professional inadequacies. That is, poor writing skills are suggestive of inadequate cognitive structuring and thinking, and it is therefore incongruous to have a high-scoring, poor writer place out of required college-level English courses based only on the results of a multiple-choice examination.

Essay format and written expression receive double weight in the scientific inquiry scoring of Advanced Placement (AP) Examinations in Psychology administered by the Educational Testing Service. This article introduces a few important considerations useful in the construction and grading of essay format in psychology.

3. Structuring Your Psychology Essay

Certain obligatory paragraphs form the widely-accepted psychology essay format. First of all, your essay should start with a clear introduction that presents readers with a main idea. In most cases, many familiar essays contain a thesis statement at the end of an introductory paragraph. Then the writer divides the argument into several sections and the main structure of the essay is built. Generally, the essay is divided into three parts – the first one provides a paragraph about the thesis, the second one includes several paragraphs that develop arguments about that thesis, and your psychology essay ends with a strong conclusion. Another common feature of many familiar essays is the placing of thesis at the end of the first paragraph of an essay.

Such a system of well-arranged elements and symmetrical structure can be called proper essay format. The goal is to make your essay readable and easy to understand. If you are not hindered by time or topic constraints, nothing prevents you from writing endless essays, as they say, from your head or leg. But when you need to write numerous essays on psychology within a short period of time and the subjects of these essays are often much more diverse and confusing than you prefer, then the structure change for your essays is not only desirable, but also important.

4. Common Mistakes to Avoid in Essay Formatting

Others may result from the unintentional lowering of the creative way of thinking about their papers. To speed it up, copying an essay sample and pasting it into the document may occur very commonly, yet keep in mind that if specific formatting requirements remain unchanged, then this is not a way out.

Common mistakes to avoid in essay formatting. Even well-versed professionals in the field of academic writing commonly make this very mistake. Regardless, the most prevalent errors tend to include consistency-related mistakes. Original essay drafts may cover all necessary requirements, including a proper essay format, yet the mistakes may still occur. This can be very frustrating and confusing, yet this is why proper paper revision has always been equally important. To be more specific, inconsistency in headings may result in mixing long and short titles, poor selection of parts of the text to accent with formatting, prolonged line breaks, poor indentations, and missing fonts.

5. Conclusion and Final Tips

A good conclusion is a good start for an essay. In order to convince the audience, you need to prove every statement. However, the finish is not just a finish. It’s your results and a new start for you. Good job. In the end, though, remember that good writing does not happen by accident. Although we have endeavored to explain everything that goes into effective essay writing in as clear and concise a way as possible, it is much easier in theory than it is in practice. As a result, we recommend that you practice writing sample essays on various topics. Even if they are not masterpieces at first, a bit of regular practice will soon change that – and make you better prepared when it comes to the real thing. Good titles will catch the reader’s interest and make him read the essay.

In order to receive full credit on essay assignments, the following format should be used when you write your essay. In this course, on essay exams, you will usually write in response to a question or questions when you prepare an essay. Psychology is a science, so you must support your ideas with evidence (not your own personal opinion). If you are discussing a theory or research study, make sure you cite the source of the information. Note that this is not the author of a textbook you have read, but the original source/author(s) of the theory or research study. For the first body paragraph, you should use your strongest argument or most significant example unless some other more obvious beginning point (as in the case of chronological explanations) is required. The first sentence of this paragraph should be the topic sentence of the paragraph that directly relates to the examples listed in the mini-outline of the introductory paragraph.