Week of Aug. 25, 2013 - 5 Research Papers Tips for Inexperienced Writers

By Joan Whetzel

 

For those high school and college students who are beginning the fall school year, guess what? It’s time for research papers too. If you haven’t done one before, or haven’t done that many, then you may need a few pointers to help you get started. If you’ve done them, but it’s been awhile, then use this information as sort of a refresher course. There are five main things you should keep in mind when writing research papers.

 

1)      Understand Your Teacher's Requirements
·         Your high school teacher or college professor will give you the requirements for this paper when it is assigned. Most commonly, they will require 12pt. Times New Roman font, with one inch borders all around, and typed double-spaced. Of course, you should check with the teacher first, but the teacher states no preference, then this is a good place to start.

 ·         Another requirement will be topic. Most of the time, your teacher will assign a specific topic or a specific set of materials to write about. There are some teachers, though,  that ask students to choose a topic related to the course they’re teaching. For those that have you choose your own topic, you will probably be required to run it by the teacher first to get his or her approval. If the teacher doesn’t say one way or the other, it might be a good idea to run it past him or her anyway, just to make sure you’re on the right track.

 ·         The final requirement will be the due date. The teacher may or may not require a rough draft, outline, or a list of your proposed resources ahead of time. If not, don’t worry about this one. Otherwise, just make sure you know when the final draft is due. And be aware that once you get to college, the professors are very strict about this due date. Every professor I had in college that required a term paper, made a major portion of the final grade (40 to 60%) and would deduct one whole grade point for every day that it was late. So if my final term paper grade would have been a 90 (A-) it would have been 80 (B-) if I had turned it in 1 day late, 70 (C-) if it was 2 days late, and 60 (D-) if it was 3 days late. Anything beyond that and it’s an F. So you can see how not following the due date requirement could actually cause you to fail the course.

 2)      Choose a Topic That Is Relevant to the Class

Like I pointed out in the previous point, many teachers will assign a topic, others will not. Just make sure your topic and your resources are relevant to the course you are taking. If you’re not sure, always run it by the teacher. Teachers are always happy to help you tweak your topic and resources and to steer you in the right direction. The very fact that you’re asking for clarification may act in your favor because it shows that you're serious about the class and interested in writing the best paper possible.

3)      Do Your Research - Redundant Research and Relevant Resources

Some teachers will assign specific materials to write your term paper about. My Lit class in college was just such a class. Of course, in that class there was a great number of materials that we had to read, then write about. The final paper, though was one where we had to choose a book, a set of stories, or an author and write a paper about that person. Most of my college papers, however, the teacher either gave us a few resources that they considered important and left the rest to us or let us choose our own resources.

Make sure you do the research and that your resources are good ones. If the information is questionable or you are uncertain about the validity of the information, do further research. If you can find more than one source providing the same or similar information (redundant research), then it’s probably okay to use in the paper (you can always run it past the teacher). If the information is questionable, and you can’t back it up, you have to choices. Either leave it out, or add it with a qualification. Something the following: “I found this anecdotal piece of information that, while questionable, still adds an interesting twist to the discussion on this topic. If  [anecdotal information] were proved true, then it could be argued that [fill in your argument].” It might just gain you a few extra points for thinking outside the box and displaying good argumentation.

 

4)      Organize and Write

Once you’ve got all your research and notes taken care of, you should have a good general idea where you want to go with the paper. First organize it with a basic outline. Use the Roman Numeral Headings as Subheadings for your paper as a way of organizing your paper and breaking down the material to make it easier for your teacher to read. Then write the rough draft of the paper. Just make sure you start this process early enough in the semester that you have to time to write and edit it before the due date. Writing it the night before is not a good idea.

 

5)      Edit and Proofread

Let the rough draft sit for at least an hour or up to a few days. Come back and re-read it. Make any corrections to help the writing flow better. Let it rest again, then come back and re-read it. Tweak the words, sentences, and paragraphs if necessary and run a spell and grammar check. Re-read it for typos and correct choice of words (two/to/too, where/ware/wear).

 

This is not meant to be a be-all and end-all guide, just the basics. There’s enough room here to tweak this to your own style of doing things. My only absolute rule would be that you should always start early in the semester. Spreading out over the semester gives you time to get the research and writing done. It also gives you a chance to make any course corrections if you need to.