If you are a Postgraduate student working on a Master’s or a Doctorate degree you may have to write and publish papers and essays in Peer Reviewed Journals as you work on your degree. Indeed, when you have finished your postgraduate studies you may wish to continue to write and publish papers in learned Journals.
Below is a simple outline of how you could go about writing Academic Papers and Essays
1 Introduction
1.1 The background to the essay/research
1.2 The essay/research problems and questions
1.3 The aims and rationales of the essay/research
1.4 Outline of the report
1.7 Conclusion

2 Literature review
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The evolution of communication theories
2.3 Theoretical and analytical models of intercultural communication
2.4 Deductions: alternatives theoretical and analytical models and the essay/research problems and questions
2.5 Conclusion

3 Methodology
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Procedures
3.3 Data collection tools
3.4 Essay/research questions (see section 4 below for examples of research questions based on idealised notions of intercultural communication and the method of describing and matching research data patterns to essay/research questions). The Paper could be based on surveys, single case study or series of case studies. Indeed, the paper could also be an assignment essay. Thus in the latter case if the essay is one in which Assessment Criteria/Requirements and/or Learning Outcomes have been specified in advance, then the research questions would need to be framed such that data could be collect to enable each of the Assessment Criteria/Requirements and/or Learning Outcomes to be met.
3.5 Evaluation and justification of method
3.6 Description of essay/research subjects and population characteristics or contexts
3.7 Ethical considerations
3.8 Conclusion

Data analysis
Here you would be analysing and interpreting the data you have collected in responses to your research questions. The result of your analyses and interpretations would be reported in the Paper. The Paper must maintain internal consistency. In other words, the Paper must not report anything which has not been supported by the data which have been collected. More importantly, the paper must also maintain external consistency by using the literature review in paragraph 2 to theorise and underpin the discussions of the results of the research.
4.1 Introduction
4. 2 Patterns of data for each of the following essay/research questions, for example:

4.2.1 What assumptions, values and awareness underpin the notions of communication in different cultural contexts?

4.2.2 What form or forms of communication do the cultural contexts indicate? What then does communication mean in different cultural contexts? What factors are important in the definition of and explanation of the meanings of communication in different cultures?

4.2.3 Do cultural meanings of communication and of approaches to communication deviate from nomothetic and normative approaches to communication? If so, in what way or ways do they deviate? What form or forms does the deviation take and to what effects?

4.2.4 How may nomothetic and normative approaches to communication be improved so that they are reconciled to communication indifferent cultural contexts?

4.3 Conclusion
Here the Paper should draw together the main findings of the research. More importantly, the Paper should spell out the extent to which the research has answered or failed to answer the research questions. Additionally, the Paper should specify its own limitations and applications.

4.4 Bibliography