Secrets to Writing Great Papers (Study Smart Series)

UW Press - : Secrets to Writing Great Papers, Judi Kesselman-Turkel and Franklynn Peterson

Can you make it yours? Write about the French Alps Your topic: If you think that topic looks a lot easier to write about than the rest, it's for one of two reasons: I you already know a lot about it, which means it probably does interest you the most and you can write about it well with a minimum of research, or 2 you're underestimating the quality of the paper the teacher wants on that topic and you'll probably bomb because of underresearching.

Do some preliminary research If you know zilch on the assigned topic, don't try to even think about it before you do some reading. For a short- or medium-sized paper, a half hour with a good encyclopedia is enough. For a long paper, a term paper, or a thesis, you should put in three hours of skimming through journals or books. Don't take notes when you're doing this research.

Secrets to Writing Great Papers

Keep in mind that you're just looking for a general understanding of the topic. But do make note of particularly good references to come back to. Some good quick sources for preliminary research are: Take an inventory of your interests If you can choose any topic for a particular assignment, select something you'd either like to tell others about or know a good deal about yourself.

Here are some broad topics to get you thinking about specifics. In those classes, the emotional impact of your writ- ing often counts for more with the grader than the quantity or quality of your ideas. To get emotion into your writing, choose a specific topic that you feel strongly about, whether it's a scary fire that you saw or a candidate for political office that you don't support.

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If you're writing fiction, the rule for creative papers ap- plies: Some broad fiction topics are romance, science fiction, animals, and adventure. An example of a specific topic for an adven- ture story is a death-defying adventure on a mountain face. Take several minutes right now to choose a tentative topic. If there's no paper hanging over your head at the moment, select a topic for some class anyway so that you can get some real practice as you follow along in this book. STEP 3 Adopt an Approach We said before that the point of writing papers is to express ideas, but until now we've been talking about topics, not ideas.

You can't have any ideas until you know what to have them about. But in order to write a paper, you've got to know how you're going to approach the topic. The topic combined with the way you approach it is your paper's main idea. Choose a clever or interesting main idea, and develop it cleverly and interestingly, and you'll get an A. But try to write before you've got your approach figured out, and you'll have trouble even getting started. You can show your approach to a topic often called the angle by published writers by adding verbs that tell what's going on with the topic, and also by linking your topic with certain specific key words like how to, personal experience, and history.

South Carolina evergreen trees Approach: The History of Interstate Highway Improvement Programs Notice that the main idea of the paper also makes a good title for it. This is so generally true, you can test whether you've got a good main idea by asking yourself if you've come up with an attention-getting title. We'll give you some guidance with that in Step 4. Select from the five basic approaches Choosing an approach is even harder than choosing a topic if you don't know where to begin.

Follow the Authors

There seems to be an infinite number of ways of looking at anything. In reality, however, all the ways can be classified into five major cate- gories: It's perfectly acceptable and often impressive to deal with more than one category in a paper-for example, to describe something in a persuasive paper, or to report an event that illustrates an idea you're explaining. Later on we'll let you know when to stick in any secondary angles you'd like to include.

But now's the time to choose just one main ap- proach. It will practically guarantee that your paper makes a point and sticks to it, and that's important. To help you choose the best angle, let's review all five of them. How to is often part of the title. In school, how- I-did-its and how-they-did-its are more often written than how-to-do-its.

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If you've ever based a science research paper on one of your own experiments, you've done a how-I-did-it. Even the lowly science lab report belongs in this category.

In addition to the papers that offer directions on how to do something tangible, this category includes papers that describe intangible courses of action: It's dangerous to give instructions to other people if you haven't done the thing yourself. One of our students once turned in a paper on using truss frames in building houses, when she'd never even erected a dollhouse or fixed a stuck door.

Her research got all the facts right, but her writing jumbled them in an order that made no sense. In addition, because she couldn't herself picture what she was describing, she couldn't Adopt an Approach 17 describe very accurately how the trusses went together in a way that made sense to other people. The how-it-works paper is also a member of this category. Instead of a how-to-do-it, this is a how-it-does-it: Examples are papers that show how an engine drives a car or that de- scribe the life cycle of a frog. The quickest way to approach your topic from a direction- giving angle is to add the words how to.

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Starting with the seven general topics listed on page 13, we show you, in the chart on page 18, how easy it can be. Siddartha added it Jan 19, Jason is currently reading it Jun 02, PurplyCookie marked it as to-read Jun 10, Blessing Akuma marked it as to-read Jan 14, Donny added it Dec 18, Bryan Blanchot added it Apr 08, Reham Gad is currently reading it Oct 30, Ivan Ng added it Feb 16, BookDB marked it as to-read Sep 21, Alex Reborn added it Jul 17, There are no discussion topics on this book yet.

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