All-in-One Guide on How to Write a Research Paper
A research paper should demonstrate your point of view about a chosen topic, based on the study that you have completed. Since it isn’t a simple summary, you may have some difficulties unless you have an ultimate guide on how to compose such an assignment. The following guidelines will help you stay focused and write a successful work.
Steps for Creating Research Papers
- Choose a topic.
- Focus your research.
- Compose a thesis.
- Create a preliminary bibliography list.
- Prepare an outline.
- Study the sources and take notes.
- Write the final outline.
- Complete the first draft.
- Revise your work.
- Finalize your assignment.
You need to keep in mind the amount of time you have, the length of your paper, availability of sources, and interests of your target audience.
Your topic should be narrow enough and clearly demonstrate what you want to tell the readers about the subject. If you’re not sure you can handly this, try to get good papers for sale.
The purpose of the entire work is to support your thesis statement, so it should be disputable and provable.
Having a list of potential sources of information in hand helps you organize your work, so study reference guides, bibliographies, book reviews, etc.
To have a good starting point, you need to write a working outline that will give an order to your note taking.
You should gather the most important sources and study them carefully. It’s recommended to create cards with the key points and interesting facts and organize them.
This document is similar to your working outline, but your topic should be divided into subtopics and reflect the organizational structure of your paper.
After your final outline is ready, you can write your rough draft. It’s important to concentrate on the content of the paper and expand your points.
You’re required to read your first draft carefully, improve its organization, insert clear transitions, add evidence where necessary, and delete information irrelevant to the topic.
You need to cite all the sources, compose a bibliography list, create a title page, and proofread the text.
Vital Don’ts to Avoid
- Composing a thesis statement that is a fact, a question, or personal opinion.
- Using only online sources.
- Taking notes without indicating the source of information or data.
- Writing a rough draft that doesn’t follow your final outline.
- Missing one of the important elements, e.g. an introduction, thesis, conclusions, discussion, or bibliography.
- Revising your final draft without a clear purpose in mind.
- Skipping proofreading your work for mechanical errors.