The Research Process: Seven Steps to a Successful Paper

1. The Research Process: Seven Steps to a Successful Paper

2. 1. Understand the Assignment • You cannot expect to produce a successful paper if you don’t understand the assignment • An off-topic paper or paper that does not follow the assignment will not receive a good grade • Figure out what you are expected to do before you begin • Are you being asked to • Compare/contrast? • Analyze? • Report? • How you approach the paper depends on what you’re being asked to do • Ask for clarification if you need it

3. 2. Choose Your “Plan of Attack” • Know the other steps of the research process and think through them • Know the requirements of your assignment • Know the deadlines you will be required to meet • Gather everything you’ll need before you start • Guidelines • Instructions • Worksheets/questionnaires • Look over the resources available to you; know what’s out there • Books • Databases • Decide where you want to start

4. 3. Narrow Your Topic / Focus Your Research • Choose your topic (in our case, you’ll choose a controversial topic) • Make a list of the various subtopics you think you might explore (list as many as you can) • Look into each item on your list; you will quickly find out that some will be more difficult to research than others • Keep notes as you browse; this will prevent you from wasting your time later • Note any sources that look useful • Note any sources that are NOT useful • Note any information you find that you find interesting or that you think might be useful—and note its source • Choose topics that are easy to research, but that have lots of information available about them • Choose the top three ideas you want to research; you can change these if you need to, but if you did the preliminary research listed above, you probably won’t need to

5. 4. Gather Your Information • Evaluate the sources you plan to use • Use the Pathfinder created for you • For this assignment, Google is NOT your friend • You may not use Wikipedia unless I give you a specific article • Take notes as you go • Always note the source of information • Keep yourself organized by topic and source • Create your thesis statement

6. 5. Prepare to Write • Create an outline • For this assignment, you will be required to complete a sentence outline for a grade • The outline will allow you to • Find gaps in your paper that need more information • See any extraneous information you have (get rid of it!) • Finalize your thesis and the organization of your paper

7. 6. Write the Paper • You will write a ROUGH DRAFT first • This is the paper you will turn in • The more thorough and organized you are and the more effort you put into the rough draft, the easier your final draft will become • Use the outline you created to write your paper • Include source citations • Proofread your own paper • Peer edit • Revise/rewrite

8. 7. Finalize the Paper • Make the changes noted during the editing process • YOU’RE NOT FINISHED YET! • Reread your paper again; odds are, you will find at least one new error to be corrected • Print out the paper • Reread it one last time—do NOT turn in your paper without looking over the printed final draft

9. Other Topics We’ll Explore This Week • Evaluating Sources and Information: How do I know if I should use information or not? What makes a good source? • Paraphrasing: You’ll be doing a lot of it in this paper • In-Text Citations: It’s not a research paper without them; it’s plagiarism • Specifics about the Assignment: What will be expected of you