Writing A Research Paper Guidelines

To help you with your research paper I selected some excerpts from “How to write a research paper” written by Sarah Hamid from an excellent website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/: Use this website when you need more help. Excerpts: What is a research paper? A research paper is a piece of academic writing that requires a more abstract, critical, and thoughtful level of inquiry than you might be used to. But not to worry, you'll gradually pick up that mindset the more you envelop yourself in tutorial discussions and lectures at the college level, and of course, the more you write. Not just research papers but any paper, period. Writing a research paper involves (1) first familiarizing yourself with the works of "experts"--for example, on the page, in cyberspace, or in the flesh through personal interviews--to build upon what you know about a subject and then (2) comparing their thoughts on the topic with your own. You'll end up using relevant information--facts and/or opinions--from these expert sources, these "others," to support the topic you have been given or chosen to explore. Then, as our subsequent steps will outline, the final product will be a unique and appropriate integration of evidence you have located outside yourself and personal insights generated from your own internal think tank--your mind! The final product will be a unique and appropriate integration of evidence you have located outside yourself and personal insights. Often to the surprise of many a first-year student, it is the latter that your professors are most interested in. The inclusion of sources isn't just some arbitrary can-you-use-the-library? test in disguise, but complements your own ideas by providing academic context and credibility to what you are asserting. No professor will be marking what the published experts have to say, only how well you use what the experts have to say to advance your paper's purpose. Why and How to Create a Useful Outline Why create an outline? There are many reasons; but in general, it may be helpful to create an outline when you want to show the hierarchical relationship or logical ordering of information. For research papers, an

outline may help you keep track of large amounts of information. For creative writing, an outline may help organize the various plot threads and help keep track of character traits. Many people find that organizing an oral report or presentation in outline form helps them speak more effectively in front of a crowd. Below are the primary reasons for creating an outline. • • • • • •

Aids in the process of writing Helps you organize your ideas Presents your material in a logical form Shows the relationships among ideas in your writing Constructs an ordered overview of your writing Defines boundaries and groups

How do I create an outline? • Determine the purpose of your paper. • Determine the audience you are writing for. • Develop the thesis of your paper. Then: Brainstorm: List all the ideas that you want to include in your paper. • Organize: Group related ideas together. • Order: Arrange material in subsections from general to specific or from abstract to concrete. • Label: Create main and sub headings. Remember: creating an outline before writing your paper will make organizing your thoughts a lot easier. Whether you follow the suggested guidelines is up to you, but making any kind of outline (even just some jotting down some main ideas) will be beneficial to your writing process. •

The First Draft Before you begin writing, you should have a thesis or question that you're comfortable with and an outline that gives you structure on what you need to say and where. Writing an introduction: Introductions are important. They arouse a reader's interest, introduce the subject, and tackle the So What? factor. In short, they're your paper's "first impression." But you don't have to write them first. In fact, many students prefer launching right into the body of the essay before they tackle intros and conclusions. However, other students prefer writing the introduction first to help "set up" what's to follow.

Your body paragraphs are perhaps the most important part of your paper; without them your thesis is meaningless and your research question . . . well . . . remains an unanswered question. The number of paragraphs you have will entirely depend on the length of your paper and the complexity of each subtopic. However, after you have begun to double space your prose, there should be a new paragraph somewhere on each page; a page without an indent is usually a signal that a paragraph somewhere is running too long. Moving through your essay should be like strolling through hilly terrain. At the hill peaks, you introduce your readers to the 'bigger picture' with more general, abstract words. Then you descend the hill from these heights of generality to the examples down in the valleys. Here you explain in concrete terms what you mean by your lofty claims and show them in action. Eventually, you make your way back up again so that readers can see the examples in their context, that is, what they mean to the bigger picture. This is how your essay should flow: up and down and up again. If, on the other hand, your valleys mutate into vast prairies, readers begin to lose a sense of the original general assertions. Or, if your peaks become heady plateaus, the audience will get dizzy from the high altitude and long for examples in the concrete world. Therefore, you must always achieve a sense of balance between the general and the particular. According to Bell and Corbett's The Little English Handbook, the three most important features of a paragraph (and unfortunately the most common errors as well) are unity, coherence, and adequate development. ACTIVITY: see if the above paragraph on essays like hills fits the following three criteria. If not, how would you fix it? Unity is the development of a single controlling idea usually presented in the topic sentence. Each sentence should somehow develop that idea and no other. A paragraph on the role of midwives in child-birth should not digress to child-rearing in the same paragraph. Thus, if you're typing a sentence in your draft that doesn't seem to fit where it is, keep it in but flag it somehow. During revision, you'll see whether there isn't a better spot for it or if it ought to be scrapped. Coherence is a quality where the writer makes it explicitly clear what the connections are between thoughts. In Latin, coherence basically means "to stick together." Make things stick together for your readers. You won't be there beside them saying "oh, this is what I meant." Tell them what you mean in writing! Don't think "but, that's obvious"--make it obvious by saying it. Bell and Corbett include the following tips for achieving coherence:

Adequate development is what it sounds like: fulfill what you promise in your topic sentence. If you say you will discuss several unusual items found in drugstores, then discuss several. Give your readers enough meat to chew on about the topic. What is adequate? Well, it's quite subjective but remember this little saying (sexist implications aside) from one of my early English teachers: "An essay or paragraph is like a woman's skirt: it should be long enough to cover the topic and short enough to be interesting." Writing a conclusion. Just as there is no formula for an introduction, there is none for a conclusion either. What form a conclusion will take entirely depends on what precedes it. There are some rules of thumb to keep in mind though: * Don't depend on your conclusion to sum up the body paragraphs. Your paragraphs should flow naturally into one another and connections should be made among them. Summary can be an important function of conclusions but keep this part brief; readers know what they've just read. * Don't simply regurgitate your introduction. Try to talk about your topic in a new way now that you've presented all that you have about it. * Point out the importance or the implications of what you've just said on an area of societal concern. Again, this is the so what? factor stated perhaps a bit more dramatically. * For analytical papers in particular, you could mention the lack of conclusion in the field. This demonstrates that you understand the complexity of the subject matter. * Perhaps propose what you feel is a natural next step to take in light of what your argument is attempting to convince people of. * Don't end your conclusion with a quotation or with a statement that could very well be the subject of another paper. The former deflects attention away from you as writer and thinker; the latter deflects attention from what you're saying in your paper.

What is plagiarism? This is a statement that Professor Irwin Weiser of Purdue University has used with his Introductory Composition courses: When writers use material from other sources, they must acknowledge this source. Not doing so is called plagiarism, which means using without credit the ideas or expressions of another. You are therefore

cautioned (1) against using, word for word, without acknowledgment, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc., from the printed or manuscript material of others; (2) against using with only slight changes the materials of another; and (3) against using the general plan, the main headings, or a rewritten form of someone else's material. These cautions apply to the work of other students as well as to the published work of professional writers. Of course, these cautions also apply to information you find on the Internet, World Wide Web, or other electronic or on-line sources.

Traditional Endnotes or Footnotes with Superscript Numbers This system of small raised numbers signaling footnotes or endnotes, followed by a bibliography, used to be the standard method of documentation and interrupts the essay very little. You can choose either endnotes or footnotes (at the bottom of each page); readers usually prefer footnotes. Established scholars also use notes for digressions on tangential points, but that would seem pretentious in most student work. Example: When Hamlet protests to his mother, "Leave wringing of your hands" (3.4.35),1 he is naming a universally recognizable gesture. As Smith says, similar broad physical movements are "still the most direct way of indicating inner turmoil."2 Notes 1 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, in The Norton Introduction to Literature, 8th ed., ed. Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, Kelly J. Mays, and Jerome Beaty (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 996. Subsequent parenthetical references will refer to this edition. 2 Jasmine Smith, "Renovating Hamlet for Contemporary Audiences," UTQ 76 (Summer 2007): 960.