Biology Essay Writing Guide: All You Need to Know

Scientific writing is an essential element of the whole educational process. Nonetheless, it is often neglected in the undergraduate courses in favor of consideration of scientific theories. Besides, the ability to present research findings effectively is essential for success in biological sciences. Not to mention, graduate students are encouraged to publish scientific essays quite often to become professional scientists. Thus, it is of vital importance for students to have a solid basis in scientific writing in order to develop their academic careers.

It can be challenging for the students studying biology to develop sufficient writing skills as most of them are focused solely on the scientific process. Thus, the first advice to you is not to neglect the scientific writing process. It is frequently a difficult task as it needs a unique format and differs in structure from how you may be initially trained to write. Scientific writing differs from how you can currently write in English 101, Art, or Social Science courses. Aforementioned can make the scientific writing process hard; mainly when you are presented with new and sophisticated content. Nevertheless, the effective essay can deepen the perception of the topic enforcing you to submit a coherent and logical article that is backed by credible investigations.

A professional scientific essay should follow a proper format and consist of such sections as

• an introduction of a topic;
• the hypothesis to be tested in the composition;
• description of methods to be used;
• key results of the investigation;
• a discussion that links the results of the analysis to the broader understanding of the topic.

The format mentioned above is a general format that is required in most scientific writing. Not to say, the correct arrangement of an essay facilitates the smooth delivery of information from the author to the reader.

Picking a Suitable Topic for a Biology Essay

When you are composing an essay in the field of biology, for example with our essay writing service, you should make sure that the issue to be discussed is up to date. What is more, you may choose a popular topic and make your essay highly relevant. Nonetheless, it can be a challenging task as there are a lot of different issues worth attention. At the same time, it is often difficult to limit a broad field of investigation to one particular theme.

Thus, to make it easier, you can regard the samples of the topics mentioned below:

• Rewriting of Human DNA;
• Viruses as the Most Dangerous Weapon;
• Can Vaccination Stop the Epidemics?
• Effects of Birth Control;
• Flu Viruses.

Choosing a topic for your investigation, make sure that some background information about the issue is known to you. You can subscribe to the biology-related digest to get some fresh ideas. By monitoring, reading, and searching for the relevant data, you will keep your hand on the relevant biological investigations.

At the same time, the title of your essay should include well-chosen words reflecting the subject of the composition. The title should indicate the scope of the essay carefully. Thus, do not title your essay “Evolutionary Developmental Biology” if you are discussing the topic of wildlife conservation and biology.

Create a Solid Outline

Starting the writing process, you may face a lot of difficulties. As you will be required to analyze scientific articles and incorporate their arguments into your paper, it can be challenging to evaluate the board variety of the materials correctly. Thus, you should compose the outline before starting to write the entire body of your essay. As a matter of fact, successful essays begin by examining how your theme fits into the existing scientific discussion, crafting a compelling topic, and deciding how to best aim your message at the intended readers.

The Prewriting Stage of the Writing Process

To compose a successful essay in the field of biology, you ought to identify the audience clearly. You should decide what you want your readers to comprehend from the essay. Decide what story you want them to read. While this may seem self-evident, some students fail to submit a suitable article because they probably fail to report the scientific findings correctly. Thus, you should keep in mind that the aim of science writing is not to reveal what you did or what you discovered, but rather what you want your readers to explore.

Accordingly, you can determine your audience by asking yourself such questions as:

• Who are my target readers?
• What is the purpose of my audience reading the essay?
• What information do I want it to take away from my essay?

If you want to publish a scientific paper in an academic journal or specific website, you should consider the journal mission statements or the submission guidelines. It will help you to determine how an essay should be structured to be published.

The Ultimate Structure of Biology Essay

In general, scientific essays have two types of audience: first, the readers of scientific journals; and second, the editors or professors, who have profound knowledge in the field of investigation. Consequently, you should be able to convince the audience that the research presented in your paper is relevant, accurate, and credible. For that purpose, you should clearly emphasize both the aim of the work and the result of it. Thus, present enough data to prove the validity of your investigation.

The abstract is the part of the essay that the investigators often examine when deciding whether they are interested in studying the rest of the paper. Therefore, the data presented in the abstract should reflect all the critical issues of the essay to make the readers interested and help them to decide whether the paper reveals the relevant facts of their field of interest.
The abstract should summarize the research and include one or two sentences for each of the sections presented in the body of the essay. To do that, you can introduce the rationale, primary objectives, and the purpose of the study. Further, indicate the methods that were used in the investigation. In the final section, the abstract should contain the summary of the results and the main conclusions.

Provide Your Essay with a Hooking Introduction

As the next step, you should compose the introduction section. The introduction is of vital importance for a successful essay as it sets the tone of the paper. Thus, at the beginning of the composition, you can provide the relevant background data and mention the problem you aim to address. Think about the introduction of your essay as the beginning of a funnel. There you can explicitly specify the broader implications of your composition in the field of study. Do not forget to present enough background data so that the reader could understand the topic. Perform a thorough consideration of the relevant literature, but do not write everything you find. Background information should only involve materials that are directly connected to your essay. In other words, the composition should not contain the whole scope of information about the field of interest. After choosing the ideas to be used, do not forget to incorporate the in‐text citations in the proper paper format.

Create the Informative Paragraphs of the Main Body

The body paragraphs should incorporate such sections as methods, results, and discussion. First of all, you should clarify the aim of the work and determine the structure of the paper for the readers. You should make sufficient consideration of the scientific investigations in the field of interest. Then, it is required to present and review the research outcomes. Results can be combined into one section.

Nevertheless, the readers can require the presentation of the results accompanying interpretation so that the readers need to be informed what the results mean. Then, you can mention the conclusion of the essay. The conclusion section displays the consequence of the work by explaining the findings of the investigation. At the end of a composition, in the discussion section, you can relate these judgments to the motivation stated in the introduction.

Tips That Will Make Your Writing Better: What Our Writers Suggest

Before you start writing, you should comprehend the differences between plagiarism, quoting, and paraphrasing. Note that paraphrasing is a critical and punishable offense that will result in a zero mark or worse – it quite possibly can provoke expulsion from your educational institution. In general, plagiarism can be defined as the act of introducing the thoughts or statements of another person as your own. Thus, while it may be claimed that some opinions are original, you should define all the sources that are applied in your essay. With this in mind, to act as an honest and academically responsible student, you should mainly write an essay entirely in your own words. Paraphrasing does not mean using one’s sentence and replacing a few words. All the statements in the essay should be the result of you reading relevant articles and repeating each in your own words while referring to the original text. Therefore, you must indicate all the sources of information that were used in the essay to eliminate plagiarism. Hence, you should appropriately cite the quotations and restated thoughts.

All the students should keep in mind that nothing in science can be considered as “proven.” Thus, in the biology essay, you can write that some data is correlated with the hypothesis. If you consider that one statement is accurate, you can indicate that the weight of evidence for the particular theory is solid. For instance, you can state that the weight of evidence for the hypothesis concerning evolution by natural selection is overwhelming. Not to mention, in the field of biology, the word “theory” is rarely used, so you should apply such terms as “hypothesis” and “prediction.” Some hypotheses may be suggested to explain a pattern; they are usually not mutually exclusive, so you cannot state that one hypothesis is entirely right or wrong. As an illustration, a particular breeding site may be selected as it is free of predators; however, it does not indicate that the site was not chosen due to the availability of food nearby.

Kindly note that the most successful science writers:

• are familiar with the background of the discipline;
• have a clear topic that they want to cover;
• expertly draft the message they want to present to their audience.

Note that even though you have finally completed data collecting and drafting the essay, you are not done yet. Revising the paper and consolidating constructive feedback will be entirely useful in order to avoid rejection and get a positive mark. To do that, you should begin your paper early enough to be able to take your time to edit the essay. Then, edit the draft to examine if the paper is free of mistakes.

To check the coherence of the essay, verify if there is a common thread that ties each paragraph to the introducing one, and furthermore, that each sentence within a paragraph confirms the previous conviction. Ultimately, re‐read the paper with a more exceptional lens. Editing sentence structure and word choice should be the finishing touches on your essay. The absence of grammatical and spelling mistakes is just as critical as a scientific background of an essay. Kindly note that if your essay is poorly written, it will have a limited impact on the readers, regardless of the concepts shown.

After revising your biology essay, ask someone else to evaluate it or provide you with biology assignment help. You can ask a classmate. It can be an ideal option as your classmate will possibly know the requirements of the assignment. If a classmate cannot proceed with it, try asking a friend or even a family member. Having a fresh set of eyes will help you recognize sections of the essay that need editing. This method will also help you to understand the peer review process, which is an essential element of professional science writing. It is of vital importance to not be discouraged by some negative comments. You should remember that combining the feedback of reviewers will only strengthen your biological essay, so you need constructive criticism to progress.

References

1. How to Write Guide: Sections of the Paper. (2018). Retrieved from http://abacus.bates.edu/~ganderso/biology/resources/writing/HTWsections.html
2. Scientific Papers | Learn Science at Scitable. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/scientific-papers-13815490
3. Turbek, S., Chock, T., Donahue, K., Havrilla, C., Oliverio, A., & Polutchko, S. et al. (2016). Scientific Writing Made Easy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Undergraduate Writing in the Biological Sciences. The Bulletin Of The Ecological Society Of America, 97(4), 417-426. doi: 10.1002/bes2.1258
4. Writing a Scientific Research Article. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/ug/research/paper.html
5. Writing Scientific Papers. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.colby.edu/biology/BI17x/writing_papers.html