Techniques for Writing a Research Paper

Research paper requires that you focus on a particular subject, develop a claim or thesis, and support your position with convincing evidence: background information, facts, statistics, description, and other people's evaluations and judgments. The evidence you present in a research paper, however, is more detailed than in an essay, and the sources must be cited in the text and documented at the end of the paper.

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Using Purpose, Audience, and Form as Guides

Like any other kind of writing, research papers have a purpose. Reporting, explaining, evaluating, problem solving, and arguing are all purposes for a research paper. Purposes may appear in combinations, as in a paper that summarizes the current research and then proposes a solution to a current problem. Research papers are not just reports of other people's ideas or evidence, however. What you, the researcher, observe and remember and learn is important, too. Most subjects are not interesting until writers make them so. Your curiosity, your interests in the subject, your reason and intuition establish why the subject is worth researching in the first place – and why a reader would want to read the paper once it is finished.

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Finding the Best Sources

Accessing information from both published and unpublished sources is central to all research. To find good sources, you need to hone your detective skills. Unfortunately, Hollywood has promoted the myth that good detectives follow their suspects in high-speed car or through glamorous affairs. Of course, that's just fantasy. Detectives must do actual research – paperwork and legwork – to track down leads. Writers are, in real sense, also detectives, constantly researching their own experiences and the experiences of others.

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