A term paper or research paper is mainly a record of intellectual reading in several sources on a particular area under discussion. The procedure consists of several steps which can be categorized as: choosing a topic, looking for relevant sources of materials, acquiring the notes, outlining the paper, writing the first draft and finally editing the paper.
First choosing an area of study is very important. Good subjects are based around questions. The subject must be interesting to the writer so as to find questions to answer the paper. Writing a term paper revolves around trying to learn about new subjects or expound on a given issue. The paper is an attempt to write structured answers to whatever query one decides upon using facts for the intention of proving or supporting your argument.
Finding sources of materials to write the term paper will involve different techniques and will depend on the nature of paper you are examining. Sources can be either primary or secondary data. In primary data, first hand information is used in trying to achieve answers to questions raised and include field work. Secondary information is obtained through written data in physical form like books and magazine articles, news story or periodicals or in soft copies on the internet. Important issues to consider when looking for information include facts of publication, title and author.
When gathering the notes one should skim and locate the useful material including quotes and information for footnotes that should be made good use of. Care should be taken in note-taking so that it's accurate, honest and does not distort the author's meanings. Not only collecting things that will support your thesis but also paying attention to other facts and opinions by same or different authors. Getting the right kind of material is important to get facts not just opinions. Methods and procedures should be noticed in research studies and not afraid of criticizing them. When information is not quantitative in a study, the need for quantified, objective and well-controlled enquiries should be pointed out.
Outlining the paper should not be done in haste but put in mind the objectives and purposes in writing the term paper in comparison to the material gathered. Notes should be reviewed and sorted to find main sub-divisions in your subject. The organized data will look more coherent and taking on a definite structure and a general pattern will be visible.
The paper is written around the outline in the first draft indicating in the first part, the purpose of the paper. The article should inform the reader what you are going to say in the statement of purpose followed by more detailed information in the main body of the paper and finally in the statement of summary and conclusion. The word composition should include headings or sub-headings which are nouns but not verbs or phrases. The outline should be well organized to ensure that the topic does not change in the middle of the subject and that everything under one heading is about the same general study.
The paper is edited to polish up the first draft. This is done by checking for proper spelling, sentence construction and phrasing, proper form of footnotes, quotes and punctuation. Quotations should be checked to ensure that they show the evidences of what the author said to avoid misrepresentation through use of statements and save unnecessary ideas that were expressed by the original author. Proper form of tables should be observed and that any graph or table is self-explanatory. Reading the paper finally will help you to spot for awkwardness in the flow of the article and correcting where necessary.
In teaching on writing a term paper the following steps are advised for the best results as far as research/term paper writing is concerned.
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1. Choosing a Topic;
Some fields of study may require students to deal with one particular topic but mostly that is not the case. Students are given the liberty to select the topic that most interest them. A student should be critical in selecting a topic that will best give sufficient information on a subject that has not been clearly elaborated, is inaccurate or discovers related topics that can provide meaningful results. This therefore requires a student to read widely and come up with a research question. The subject chosen should be clear and precise. Wide topics always mislead the reader and become cumbersome to the writer.
2. Information Sources.
After selecting a subject from the text, a student needs to go further in search of materials that touch on that topic. These materials need to be recent since information changes with time. Most lectures require the source of material not to be past 20 years old on the shelves especially if one is not required to tackle a historical event. Looking at the book titles in relation to the required subject the student can peruse on the abstract to find the topic one is looking for. Note the points that is needed and if a whole quotation is needed, a student is allowed to uproot the information as it is. Such a books' reference is noted down for reference purpose carefully writing its author/ editor, title, volume number, year of publication, place of publication and the page which that quotation is found. First year students find it hard in finding information materials from the library that is why prior unit in Communication Skills:101 is needed to teach them on proper use of the catalog, call numbers of the books and the standard arrangement of books in Libraries so as to reduce time wasted in searching for a particular book or journal. It is important to note, when collecting data, accuracy and honesty is called for while fully exploring the research question from both sides of the coin. While reading through the information materials a student is free to pinpoint any shortcoming as presented by the author and by so doing he/she earns a higher score to critical thinking and proper presentation of an argument.
3. Sketching The Outline;
When a student has collected sufficient data for the term paper, he should go through the collected notes see whether these information support the topic as was desired. And if so what can he make out of it? Do these pieces of information interrelate? How can they be arranged to bring out coherence in ideas and thought?
The main objective at this stage is to create a flow of thought throughout the script; right from the title to the content. This will require the need to subdivide the notes into subtitles or subtopics to support the main topic. These subtopics should be arranged in a way that one topic smoothly flows in to another which can be arranged chronologically from the past to the present into the future. One can also fin out that one sub-title can have several topics within it and can appear in the following format.
4. Drafting
This can be done at least three times until when the writer feels that what he is about to present to the lecturer is good enough. The first drafting comprises giving an introduction to what is in the content. Here, one can tell the reader an overview of the stated purpose in the introduction, content itself in the body, then give the statement to summarize and a conclusion. one has to proofread until the desired draft is achieved for presentation.