Academic writing requires accuracy of facts and figures. When doing a prior research to write an essay to gather all the information that you need. Always remember that you need to provide credibility to your work by gathering information that will support your essay thesis.

Conducting Prior Research
You need to determine the goal of your research. To help you determine your goal, formulate the thesis statement of your essay first. For instance, if you are writing about gender and development, you need to come up with a clear thesis to help you narrow down your research. Always remember that if you are working on topics that are as broad and complicated as gender and development, you will get easily get lost in the research process if you do not have clear directions of what information you want to find. Note that in many cases, students who do not formulate their essay draft before conducting their research often get overwhelmed by all the information that they eventually find.

Once you have set your research goal, you need to come up with a plan on how to go about your research. Make a list of all the sources that you need to review for your essay. If you professor specified a number of sources, add at least two more sources to the list just to make sure that you do not fall short of the required number of sources. Note that most professors always appreciate it if their students go another mile in conducting their research work.

If you need to use books, journals and other forms of reading materials for your essay, compile all the readings that you get from these sources in different folders. Do not mix up all your research materials. If you are using electronic files, use file names that are easy to remember and to track down. When going through your research materials, highlight the lines, phrases and sentences that you think you can use.

You may also copy and past all the important points of your readings into another file. However, if you cut and paste sentences from your research materials, make sure that you keep track of where you go these lines and phrases. Always remember that in academic writing, it is important that you cite all your sources. Not citing the sources of your essay will get you into trouble. A lot of colleges and universities in the country are very strict when it comes to plagiarism. Students who are found to have committed plagiarism are always given failing grades so be sure that you cite your entire source diligently.

When conducting prior research give yourself a good lead time. This means that you need to get all your research materials organized long before your start writing. Always give yourself time to read and go through all your research materials. Tight deadlines will make it very difficult for you to come up with a good academic essay give yourself enough time.