Writing an Effective Research Paper

First look at the paper's guidelines to narrow
your selection.

Write down all possible topics! Putting
words on paper will stimulate the brain's
thought process.

Evaluate all possible topics! Effective research
papers are: interesting, debatable, not too broad,
not too narrow, and not too unconventional.

To keep your research on track: focus
your investigation on building your argument,
use at least two pieces of evidence to support
each point, use a variety of sources, have
authoritative sources, do not let your opinion
be swayed, do not ignore opposing info, and
use the right number of sources.

Sketch a preliminary outline! Use roman
numerals for major divisions and A,B,C levels
for paragraph ideas.

Use the correct types of sources!
1. Primary sources- firsthand, or directly from
the source, information. Examples are: field
research, letters, photos, and text of law.
2. Secondary sources- provide commentary on
and analysis of a topic. Examples are: news,
opinion pieces, and reports.

Databases- allows you to search for
books, videos, or personal publications.

Keywords- words most relevant to your
search or subject.
Pros: can use terms that come to mind and
will find a wide variety of info.
Cons: may be more than 1 way to express a
topic and might get irrelevant material.

Subject searching- use terms from a list of
subject headings (or descriptors) from creators
of the database.

To search for more than one topic, students may
use connectors (Boolean operators).

Limit a search through: publication date,
language, format, peer-reviewed articles, full text,
and images.

Other types of sources include:

Encyclopedias: offer overviews and easy
info. Has good bibliographies.

Statistics

Government Resources

Web-based sources: not a good place
to look for traditional info; does not have
good quality control and can locate topics
with little relevance.

Multimodal sources

Evaluating Sources for Relevance:
Choose sources with relevant terms and
credibility.

Evaluating Sources for Reliability:
sources should be current, objective,
provide enough info on the subject,
and relevant.

Summarize instead of quote!

Make notes of the bibliographic info
along the way and cite it! Create a new
file for sources.

Use your pre-writing to help you keep structure
and note only relevant material.

If quoting, copy the sentence verbatim in quotes
and use ellipses for any left out info.