tailieunhanh - RESEARCH AND WRITING SKILLS SUCCESS PART 10

Before you walk into a library and ask questions or log onto the Internet, it makes sense to be prepared. What essential tools or equipment do you need to start your research paper? The basic materials are easy to get your hands on and are surprisingly simple. To be prepared you will need. | FINALIZING AN OUTLINE Depending on the length of your paper you can also begin to approximate roughly how long each section will be. If you are writing a paper for a specific class or the length has been dictated to you in advance then you can revise your outline to reflect how many pages you will write for each part of your paper. If there is a specific length requirement then based upon the volume of information you have gathered and the total number of your note cards you can try to approximate its length. Simply fill in the number of pages in each section as you think they might be and don t worry about being exact yet. Remember you haven t started to write. Some sections may have more pages than you originally intended and that s fine. For the moment just guess. If your assignment was to write an 18-page paper your outline might be THESIS STATEMENT One sentence INTRODUCTION One page or two paragraphs BODY 1 SECTION 1 5 pages 2 SECTION 2 5 pages 3 SECTION 3 5 pages CONCLUSION Two pages Again remember that this is not exact. You might write a slightly longer introduction or perhaps section three the last part of your paper might be a little longer than the two previous sections. This breakdown just provides you with another more specific visual guideline of how your paper will be structured. Filling In Your Finalized Outline Now that you have a general blueprint handy it s time to begin to fill in your outline with as much specific information as possible so that it can help you. For example let s return to the topic of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The most important part of any paper and sometimes the hardest is your thesis statement. What are you trying to prove in your paper What has all your research and evidence led you to conclude about the assassination of President Kennedy Perhaps you ve decided that the assassination of President Kennedy was not a conspiracy or plot as some of the reading suggested but the work of a lone assailant. .