Writing a Research Paper

• Pose a few questions, within the assignment guidelines, that seem worth investigating and that interest you
  • Do these questions have a recurring theme?
  • Do you find yourself more interested in one area/question than the others?
  • Will it be possible to answer and/or explore the question within the page limit of the assignment?
  • Would you want to read the paper that this question will produce?
• Choose a possible topic based on your questions
  • Make sure the question is not too narrow, too bland, or too challenging
  • Make sure the question is challenging enough to produce an interesting paper
  • Make sure your question is not too theoretical or speculative-you want to make sure that the central argument of your paper can be grounded in facts uncovered in your research
  • Give your topic a title, as you anticipate what the argument could look like
• Make an appointment with a reference librarian and/or subject specialist and plan a search strategy
• Locate sources
• Read actively and take notes
• Keep track of all source materials (the best option is to print them out or photocopy them so that you can write on them and so that all source information is handy when you write the bibliography)
• Develop a working thesis statement
• Draft the paper
• Give your paper a title—and "Essay 3" or "Final Assignment" do not qualify as titles. If you cannot come up with a title, then most likely you do not have an argument and you need to do more work
  
• Visit your TA or others for guidance in revising—and remember, a "revision" is always a "re-vision." If all you do when revising is correct spelling mistakes and grammar errors, you are not revising but proofing and editing. For a re-vision you need to read your own work critically, look at it from different perspectives, determine paragraph re-arrangement, make insertions and deletions where necessary, refine the argument
• Prepare a list of works cited/bibliography; check out the cheat sheet for a quick look at citation examples.
• Write and proofread the final draft