Steps To Writing a Research Paper, Creative Essay Example

Writing a research paper is a process which requires much skillfulness and concentration. It is a hard, time-consuming task, which involves a lot of investigation and analysis. To produce a good written report, you have to be specific about your subject, understand well the ideas you aim to communicate to a potential audience, and be able to present them effectively. In order to reach success in composing a research paper, one has to follow a sequence of logically ordered steps.

First of all, you have to choose your subject carefully. Your topic should be researchable and as focused as possible. If your subject is too extensive, you will have trouble completing your paper. Search for challenging ideas, narrow your topic and state you subject as a question. It is better to select a question that you are interested in or care about.

Before you get down to actually conducting a research, make sure to set clear goals and criteria for sources you are about to use. Gathering information is not as easy as you may think. There is a variety of sources, such as magazine and journal articles, newspapers, books, videos, films, surveys, or interviews, which provide a huge amount of diverse data. Your prime objective is to locate and then match suitable, applicable sources to your own ideas. Search for print and electronic sources.  Use information from a range of diverse reference sources. Also make sure to produce an annotated bibliography, which you need in order to document the sources of information you employ when working on your paper.

It is essential to evaluate and synthesize your sources. Knowing how to assess information critically and search data efficiently can help you avoid inappropriate references and waste less of precious time. Make sure to turn to sources that are reliable and contain relevant information that is presented objectively from an unbiased perspective. Keep in mind the fact that it is better to collect an assortment of perspectives and opinions on your subject rather than rely heavily on a single author.

A research paper should communicate your own ideas and also contain information from expert sources. Therefore, after searching and gathering information, you have to decide which data to include into your paper and present it in a form of summary, direct quotation or paraphrase. Be sure to clarify which statements and ideas are originally yours, and which you have borrowed from other sources, so to avoid plagiarism. Presenting others’ ideas as your own may damage your academic integrity and also become a cause for dismissal from college, which is obviously unwanted.

When writing a research paper, you aim to explain something to your reader or to convince your audience to agree with your point of view. To achieve your objectives effectively, you should think of a thesis statement, – a complete sentence that communicates the major idea of your essay. To produce a one- or two-sentence thesis statement you have to do some critical thinking. Your thesis statement is like a written declaration of your main belief. The largest part of your essay will present arguments to support and defend this idea. It has to be powerfully worded, noticeable not to be overlooked and it should better be stated in the first paragraph or introduction of your report.

Use your notes and produce an outline to write a rough draft of your paper. Try to organize you arguments consistently, so that all the presented summaries, paraphrases, direct quotations and your ideas are combined logically. Arrange and rearrange arguments so to conform to your outline.

Revise and edit your text. Read your paper for any content errors. Pay attention to your essay structural consistency and style, clearness of expressions. Make sure to avoid the grammatical errors. Replace the unwieldy or confusing words and phrases, organize your ideas so to guarantee that your arguments present rational and consistent support for your conclusions.

One of the characteristics of a research paper is that it has citations, and consequently has to include references or bibliography. You are supposed to document your sources at the end of your paper, as well as in the paper’s text, when you use direct quotations or paraphrases and summaries of concepts and data from the sources you have studied.

At the end of the paper you should make a list of the citation sources being used, including all the necessary information, so that you can cite your sources following the specified citation style requirements. Record your sources in alphabetical order.

When you are finally done with all the mentioned steps, you are then ready to prepare the final manuscript. Make sure to edit and proofread your final draft before it actually turns into an essay ready for your reader’s eyes. Check final paper thoroughly for punctuation, spelling, misplaced or duplicated words. Your paper must meet the expectations as recognized by your instructor, and should as well be clean, organized, neat, and nice-looking. Do not forget to prepare a title page and table of contents for your essay.

Sometimes, as working on a research paper and moving through the recommended steps, you may find it inconvenient to follow all of them in a specified order. Do not worry, that is fine. You may actually adjust the sequence of the step depending on the topic being researched, your knowledge of the subject matter, and your available data.