When it comes to writing a good research paper, you can learn many of the latest methods in research and report writing from your professors and librarians. Assuming you don’t wait until the last minute, most research papers can usually be completed by following a few general guidelines.
For detailed reports, you can write a good research paper just by practicing a few steps. In fact you can easily turn your standard paper into a flawless research paper just by going through 4 easy steps listed below.
Step 1: Selecting Topics and Initial Research
Start out by choosing a good topic for yourself as this will decide the outcome of your summary. Once you have locked your topic in place, proceed in collecting your references and bibliographies. That will help you decide where to seek for solutions and locate the information you need from various media resources like encyclopedias and informative websites. After you get them all together in one centralized location, get some index cards where you’ll add these bibliography entries in preparation for your outline.
Step 2: Arranging and Structuring The Paper
You are going to need additional note cards to sort out all the relevant information in a logical manner. The trick with the note cards is to put all of the related ideas into one single paragraph to fill up the entire note card. Adding the bibliographies and references to that information will aid in keeping things organized.
Once all of your note cards are complete, separate them into different groups. The versatility of the note cards allows easy shuffling and experimentation with different outlines. Try to arrange them into a tree structure where you have the main topics, subtopics, details, etc.
Step 3: Drafting and Proofreading
With all of the note cards properly organized, you can now proceed in making your rough draft with confidence. Write a couple of rough drafts for your research paper and make sure it complies to the note cards which represents your entire research paper summary.
You can also try using writing software that can generate the outline for you based on ideas that you can give. After you are satisfied with what you are reading, give it a final check for spelling and grammar and then let your professor approve it.
Step 4: Preparation and Final Development
Get your bibliography cards out and start preparing your bibliography section in fuller detail. This process should be real simple if you sorted out your cards so you can easily place them in the relevant areas. This is important when your research paper is being checked as sources may be confirmed in order to evaluate the paper
After that, you can begin paginating and preparing the table of contents and matching title page. Refer to the online resources or teacher’s reference on how to make the correct title page and check if everything is in order. You should be have a very organized research paper if these 4 steps were done correctly.
