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Writing a Term Paper
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The practical guide to writing a Term Paper:
1. Choose a topic for your Term Paper
2. Find information
3. State your thesis
4. Build your tentative outline
5. Organize your notes and write your first draft
6. Revise your outline and draft
1. HOW TO CHOOSE A TOPIC FOR YOUR Term Paper:
There are many ways to choose a subject for your Term Paper (if you aren't assigned one):
1. Usually it is a good idea to select a topic you are interested in, as you are going to be doing a lot of reading about it.
2. Another practical tactic is to select a subject only after you have made sure enough information is available on that topic.
Tip:
It is highly advisable to pick your topic along with your professor - most of them do not like "surprises" and might reject your topic.
2. FIND INFORMATION:
Surf the net!
The net is by far the best way to find all the information you need.
Use search engines and other search tools to find your information. Plus, there are several sites online that have many Term Papers for your review/purchase. You can use these sites to collect more accurate and processed information. These sites dramatically decrease the amount of time you must invest to gather and summarize your information.
Of course, there are ALSO other, more traditional, places to find information, such as public libraries and your university library.
Tip:
Keep an organized list of your resources, and for each source note the subject you want to refer to there: this will save a lot of time when it comes to building your bibliography.
Tip:
Use the bibliographies of the essays you found in order to get more information.
3. STATE YOUR THESIS
Take some time and do a lot of thinking, and write your thesis statement down in one sentence. The thesis statement is the cornerstone of your work, so make sure you get it right. Most of your essay will consist of arguments to support and defend your thesis.
4. BUILD A TENTATIVE OUTLINE
Building this outline will help you carefully think through all the topics you want to address and organize them. This step is one of the most important steps in building a good essay.
Make sure to include in your outline an INTRODUCTION, BODY, DISCUSSION and CONCLUSION. Make the first outline tentative.
5. ORGANIZE YOUR NOTES AND WRITE YOUR FIRST DRAFT
Here you need to carefully organize and analyze all the information you have gathered. It is critical to verify that all information is factual, up-to-date and accurate. This is the most important stage in writing your Term Paper. Here you will analyze, synthesize, sort, and digest the information you have gathered and hopefully learn something about your topic, which is the real purpose of doing a research paper in the first place.
In this stage you must also be able to effectively communicate your thoughts, ideas, insights, and research findings into written words.
Tip:
Use a special symbol to mark spots that you want to review again back later to re-edit.
6. REVISE YOUR OUTLINE AND DRAFT
Read your paper thoroughly for any errors and mistakes; double-check facts and figures. Make sure all your ideas are presented in a clear and understandable way. Arrange and rearrange ideas to follow your outline.
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