Term papers or a Research Papers are primarily based upon intelligent reading from several sources on a particular subject. This task of writing a term paper is not as difficult as it seems to be. It just requires a thought out in advance as a definite procedure with a systematic perpetration.

There is a specific procedure that is to be followed for writing such a report and consists of the following steps:

1. The first and the foremost step are to choose an appropriate subject for your writing that consequently outlines your purpose of writing.

2. Then you have to look for proper sources from where you can extract the material that you need for the writing. The sources should be relevant as you will have to give citations for all your information that you put into your work.

3. Gather then all the notes that you have so that it is easy for you to pick out the most appropriate information from within them.

4. Then outline your paper.

5. Write your first draft that might have errors in it in the beginning.

6. Then edit the draft to make it perfect to be submitted.

Now let’s look at each of them closely to have a better understanding to avoid any possible errors in the final paper!

Choosing a Subject

Mostly, good papers are the ones that are built around questions. You may however find subjects in any textbook. Simply just take some part of the text that interests you the most and examine it carefully. Then ask yourself the following things about it to see whether you can locate a question to be answered in your paper.

Does it tell you everything that you might want to learn about the subject? Are you sure the information is accurate enough? Is the author making any assumptions that need to be examined further? Can any two of the sections that are more interesting in the text be shown to be interrelated in any useful way? Your paper is however an attempt to write a well-organized answer to whatever the question that you have decided, using the facts for the purpose of providing, or at least to support your contention.

The most common error of all that is made by the students in choosing a subject for their term paper is to choose a subject that is to general. This increases the chances of more than one student having the same subject as some other student whose paper is being checked by the same reader which however, leads to less originality. The most specific subject will have enough aspects to furnish a long lengthy paper, if you think about it for a while.

Finding sources of Materials

A. Limitations:

As per what the traditions suggest, you should limit your sources to those that are available on the campus and to the materials that are not older than 20 years, unless the nature of the paper is to examine older writings from a historical point of view.

B. Guides to sources:

1. Always begin by making a list of subject-headings under which you would want the subject to be listed.

2. Using the following forms, start a card file:

a) Articles in Books and Magazines:

i. Subject

ii. Author

iii. Title

iv. The Facts of publication

v. Library Contact Number

b) News:

i. Subject

ii. The Facts of publication

iii. Headline News

c) Periodicals:

i. Author

ii. Title

iii. Name of the periodical

iv. Volume and page numbers

v. Month and the year

Sort these card files into (a) books and (b) the volume of periodicals. Then look for the contact numbers of other periodicals and sort them out for each branch library. This sorting technique saves liberty time.

C. To locate the books in the library, consult the card catalog – record the name of the author, the title of the book or magazine, the publisher, date of publication and the contact number.

D. Consult any guides that are available to periodicals, such as the following:

– The Education Index

– The Readers Guide

– The International Index to periodicals

– The Psychological Abstracts

These are the ways of finding articles that relate to your subject. They list the subject heading accordingly, with the various titles of the articles that are under them, along with the location of each of the article.

Gathering the Notes

A. Examine the books and the articles – taking out several volumes at a time would save steps.

Skim quickly through the sources that are available to you, looking for the useful material that would be relevant to your study, and then make good concise notes of it, including all the quotes and the information for footnotes. You would obviously not want to go back looking for these books and then for the page from which you extracted the information. Make the important notes on a separate card for each author so that you can easily identify the information by the name of the author.

B. Take care while you are taking down notes; be as accurate as possible and be honest while writing down any statistics. Be sure not to distort the authors meaning of the text. Remember your purpose is not at all to collect the things that support your thesis, ignoring all the other facts and opinions. The reader always wants to know the other side of the question as well. While you write both the sides and then explain with reasons why exactly you support a particular side would give a better idea to the reader of what you were actually trying to say.

C. Get the material that is relevant to your subject matter:

1.Look for the facts; don’t just rely on the opinions as opinions vary person to person. The reader might not agree to an opinion that you have listed in fact he/she will have to agree to a fact that you present. Compare the facts that you present with the authors conclusion.

2. While doing research studies, notice all the methods and procedures, and don’t be afraid to criticize them at any point as criticism always leads to a better understanding. If the information in a study is not quantitative, point out the need for the objective, quantified, and a well-controlled research.

Outlining the Paper

A. Don’t hurry to write. Take your time and think about the subject and the purpose of your writing, and the kind of material that you have found how to put it down in your term paper.

B.Review your notes to find the main sub-divisions of your subject. Sort out the cards into natural groups then try to name each of the groups. Use these names of the groups for the main divisions of your outline. For example, you may start off writing a paper about the Voice of America and you have written the following subject headings on your cards:

1. Propaganda – The American History

2. Voice of America – the funds that are appropriate

3. Voice of America – The expenditures

4. Voice of America – the cost compared to the Soviet Propaganda

The cards that are mentioned above could be easily sorted into six piles, furnishing the following headings:

1. Card 1 – History

2. Card 5 – Purpose

3. Cards 6 and 7 – Organization

4. Cards 2, 3, 4 and 9 – Cost

5. Card 8 – Effects

6. Card 10 – Future

You might have more cards than in the example above, and however, at this point you can always narrow down your subject by further taking out one of the piles of cards from all of them.

C. Sort again the cards under each of the main division to find the sub-sections for your outline.

D. By now it should begin to look more coherent and should take on a definite structure. If for some reason, it does not, then try to go back and sort again for the main divisions, to see if some other general pattern could be possible.

E. If you want to indicate the parts of your general outline in any of the traditional forms as the following:

1. Example

a) Example

i. Example

ii. Example

iii. Example

2. Example

3. Example

4. Example

a) Example

b) Example

Use these designations in the outline and not in the paper itself, or it will look more off like an extended outline rather than a term paper.

Writing the First Draft

You are now almost ready to write.

A. Start writing your paper around the outline and make sure that you indicate the purpose of your writing in the first part of the paper. For that you may follow the old formula:

1.Tell the reader in the beginning only as to what you are planning to say i.e. the statement of purpose.

2. Say it in detail i.e. the main body of the paper

3. Tell the reader what you have said to conclude it properly i.e. the statement of summary and conclusion that should always be given in the end.

B. A word about your composition:

1. As per the tradition, any headings or sub-headings that are included are nouns, not verbs nor phrases.

2. Try to keep the things together that belong to one another. Your outline may help you do this if it has been organized in a proper manner. Be sure not to change the subject of your study in the middle of a paragraph, and make sure that everything that is under a specific heading in your outline relates to the same general topic.

3. Always avoid writing short or bumpy sentences and long straggling sentences that carry more than one idea in it.

Editing the Paper

You are not ready and polished to write your first draft.

A. Try to read the draft as if it is unfamiliar to you. It would be a good idea to go through it a day or two after you wrote the first draft.

B. Reading the paper aloud is always a good idea to be sure that the language that is used is correct and that whether you have written it in a fluent manner or not. Also to see if it flows properly and does not take a lot of time in reading it.

C. Check for any spelling mistakes that you might have done in your draft. Check the phrasing and the sentence construction. Make sure that the pronouns clearly refer to the nouns.

D. Check for the proper forms on footnotes, quotes and any punctuation.

E. Check to see if the quotations serve one of the following purposes:

1. Provide an evidence of what the author has said.

2. Avoid any misinterpretation through restatement.

3. Save any unnecessary writing when the ideas have been well expressed by the original author itself.

F. Check for the proper forms on the graphs and tables. Be certain that any graph or table is self-explanatory.

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Category: Education
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