NAME : RAHMAANDITYA

NIM : A320210013
CLASS : A
Essay VS Research Paper
Introduction
As a learner, whether we are an elementary student, or junior highscool
student, or a college student, or even any other academic level student, paper writing
has been one of the most crucial elements rooted within the academic moduls. Paper
writing is a free mind pouring activity that involves the writers to translate their
thoughts about certain topics into a well-enhanced written words. When writing a
paper, students are to creatively compose their paper with a great flow of delivery and
easy-to-understand delivery such as using trendy, popular, and well-known words as
in to make the paper fits to the audiences type. Speaking of creatively writing, there
are so many types, many examples, mana characteristic of paper writing, but there are
two kinds of paper writing that is well-known and frequently-used by almost every 7
billion people in the world during their academic activities, which are essay and
research paper. Thus, this paper aims to breakdown as well as to compare the lacks
and the excellences of these two.
The ABCs of Essay
As lots of people have already known, essay is a part of the paper writing that
allows the writers to demonstrate their comprehension in the most creative ways
combined with good writing skills to produce a final brief of context written by the
writers about certain topics. There are various types of essay with its own purpose of
writing, delivery styles, writing intention, and so on, divided into four types which
are comparative essay, descriptive essay, narrative essay, and academic essay. Even
though each types of essays has its own writing purposes, all types of essays basically
have the same structures, but the writers are still free to add new components on the
essay. The structures of essay are brokendown into three stages, which are the
introduction as the opening in which the writers can start with providing reasons why
they are interested into talking about the topic, why is the topic relevant or/and needs
to be talked. The second stage is the body of the essay, in this part, essay usually
consists of three paragraphs which are; 1) first paragraph, as the opening in which the
writers can start with explaining wisely the background about the topic that is likely
to be discussed on the paper, in order to give a pre-insight to the readers before
actually discussing the main topic, 2) second paragraph, as the evidence-dropping and
any relevant data to the topics to support the arguments, and 3) third paragraph, as the
last paragraph in which the writers are to address counter-claims and re-highlight the
point of the writers’ assumption. The last stage is conclusion, the writers can end the
essay by highlighting and summarizing the final point of the arguments floored on the
previous stages.
The 5Ws + 1H of Research Paper
Research paper is an evolved version of essay, but has an additional
structures, different axis of goals, styles, audiences, and so on. Sierra College defines
research paper as, “an essay in which you explain what you have learned after
exploring your topic in-depth”, or in another words can be sum up as a paper writing
that aims to discuss about certain topics through a well-structured and enriched
process such as data gathering as one of its fundamental aspect to support in data
analysing. If essay is a free mind pouring with creative writing styles, research paper
is indeed the same, but the creative writing styles needs to be based on actual and
factual data or information. Data gathering in research paper referes to primary and
secondary sources, for example interviews, literature study, scientific data,
observation, etc. The structures of research paper is more sophisticated and is divided
into many steps which are; 1) abstract, 2) introduction, 3) literature review, 4)
methodology, 5) results, 6) discussion, 7) conclusion, 8) references.
Essay and Research Paper: Which One is Better?
As already discussed above, essay and research paper are similar to one
another, yet they have so many differences on every aspects. Essay is more creative-
free and data-free type of writings, but research paper is more strict and structured
writings that have to be completed with the help of data and information assistance
into its analysis process as part of its many steps starting from abstract to references.
Here are 7 points of differences between essay and research paper;
1. Page numbers: an essay consisting of 5 paragraphs is shorter than research
paper that is required to at least have 8 pages
2. Content: essay is based on the writer’s experience and thoughts, research
paper is data-driven writing with actual data to support the writer’s argument
3. Structures: the writers can freely play with the structures when writing an
essay, but they can’t skip or miss a certain structure when writing research
paper
4. Types: there are 4 types of essays (comparative, descriptive, narrative, and
academic essay) and there are 3 well-known types (cause and effect,
analytical, and subject-bsaed research paper)
5. Objectives: essay is to express the writers’ thoughts through beautiful
handwritings, while the objective of research paper is to analyse and produce
a report regarding the topic discussed
6. Words: essay may runs from 1000 to 5000 words, and research paper can vary
from 5000 to 12000 words
7. Methods: essay doesn’t need data to support the argument, and the opposite
for research paper, it needs data and similar paper to support the writers’
arguments
Both types of paper writing, essay and research paper, has its own objectives,
styles of delivery, characteristics, structures, etc. Both have its pros and cons, as well
as its plus and minus. Even with the similarity existing, essay and research paper are
not on the same level, thus makes it hard for the writer to compare which one is better
than the other one. It depends on the situation and the demands, if you want to write a
quick flexible writing that doesn’t require data supporting and can be done in a short
page and fast, essay would be the best for you. If you want to produce a scientific
report and have data, research paper is the one for you. If you want to write writings
with trend-adaptive and cool language styles that can be easily understood by any
types of audiences, essay is taking it all.
Conclusion
To sum up, essay and research paper has different axis of objectives,
structures, audiences, flexibility and complexity, delivery styles, etc. Essay is a free
mind pouring paper with no factual data needed, meanwhile research paper is a strict
paper that needs the writer to gather factual data to support their arguments. The use
of both paper writing needs to be aligned with the demands and the situation. Both
have its own lacks and excellences.