- •What is an academic paper?
- •Writing for College How It Differs From Writing in High School
- •Constructing An Informed Argument What You Know
- •Summarize.
- •Evaluate.
- •Analyze.
- •Synthesize.
- •Choosing An Appropriate Topic
- •Finding a Rhetorical Stance
- •Consider Your Position
- •Consider Your Audience
- •Considering Structure
- •Introductions:
- •Thesis Sentence:
- •The Other Side(s):
- •Supporting Paragraphs:
- •Conclusions:
- •Using Appropriate Tone and Style
- •Tips For Newcomers
- •Coming Up With Your Topic
- •Reading to Write
- •Read Actively
- •Break the Linear Tradition
- •Trust Your Gut
- •Enter the Conversation
- •Use the Margins
- •Moving Outside the Text
- •Reading Differently in the Disciplines
- •Resources for Improving Reading
- •Using Critical Theory
- •Feminist criticism:
- •Marxist criticism:
- •Psycho-analytic criticism:
- •New Historicism:
- •Deconstruction:
- •Reader-Response:
- •Informal Strategies for Invention
- •Brainstorming
- •Freewriting
- •Discovery Draft
- •Formal Strategies for Invention
- •Five w's and an h
- •Tagmemics
- •Aristotle's Topoi
- •1) Use Definition
- •2) Use Comparison
- •3) Explore Relationship
- •4) Examine Circumstance
- •5) Rely on Testimony
- •Focusing Your Ideas
- •Nutshelling
- •Broadening Your Topic
- •First, try to make connections.
- •Second, turn your idea inside out.
- •Third, consider the context.
- •Narrowing Your Topic
- •First, test your claim.
- •Then look for examples.
- •Look for more examples.
- •Finally, consider the context.
- •Researching Your Topic
- •Finding Sources
- •Using Your Sources
- •Summarize Your Sources
- •Categorize Your Sources
- •Interrogate Your Sources
- •Make Your Sources Work For You
- •Keep Track of Your Sources
- •Cite Sources Correctly
- •Developing Your Thesis
- •Writing a Thesis Sentence
- •A good thesis sentence will make a claim.
- •A good thesis sentences will control the entire argument.
- •A good thesis will provide a structure for your argument.
- •Alternatives to the Thesis Sentence
- •The Thesis Question
- •The Implied Thesis
- •Will This Thesis Sentence Make the Grade? (a Check List)
- •What else do you need to know about thesis sentences?
- •A good thesis usually relies on a strong introduction, sharing the work.
- •The structure of your thesis, along with its introduction, should in some way reflect the logic that brought you to your argument.
- •A good working thesis is your best friend.
- •Constructing the Thesis: a Writer's Clinic for Beginners
- •What is a Working Thesis Sentence?
- •Revising the Working Thesis
- •Revising Your Thesis For Eloquence
- •Writing: Considering Structure & Organization
- •Organizing Your Thoughts
- •Let Your Thesis Direct You
- •Sketching Your Argument
- •Outlining Your Argument
- •Modes of Arrangement: Patterns for Structuring Your Paper
- •Constructing Paragraphs
- •What is a paragraph?
- •Writing the Topic Sentence
- •Developing Your Argument: Evidence
- •Developing Your Argument: Arrangement
- •Coherence
- •Introductions and Conclusions
- •Introductions
- •Announce your topic broadly, then declare your particular take.
- •Provide any background material important to your argument.
- •Define key terms, as you intend to make use of them in your argument.
- •Use an anecdote or quotation.
- •Acknowledge your opponents.
- •Conclusions
- •Revision: Cultivating a Critical Eye
- •Why And How To Revise
- •Large-Scale Revision.
- •Small-Scale Revision.
- •Editing.
- •Proofreading.
- •Developing Objectivity
- •Did I fulfill the assignment?
- •Did I say what I intended to say?
- •What are the strengths of my paper?
- •What are the weaknesses of my paper?
- •Analyzing Your Work
- •Consider Your Introduction
- •Consider Your Thesis
- •Consider Your Structure
- •Consider Your Paragraphs
- •Consider Your Argument and Its Logic
- •Read your paper out loud.
- •Get a second reader.
- •Be a second reader.
- •Visit rwit.
- •Logic and Argument
- •What is an Argument?
- •Understanding Formal Logic
- •Reviewing Your Argument's Evidence
- •Have you suppressed any facts?
- •Avoiding Logical Fallacies
- •Attending to Grammar
- •A Brief Introduction
- •Most Commonly Occurring Errors
- •Wrong/missing inflected ends.
- •Wrong/missing preposition.
- •Comma splice.
- •Subject-verb agreement.
- •Missing comma in a series.
- •Pronoun agreement error.
- •Unnecessary commas with restrictive clauses.
- •Dangling, misplaced modifier.
- •Its/it's error.
- •Becoming Your Own Grammar Tutor
- •First, determine whether the error is a matter of carelessness, or a pattern of error.
- •Second, prioritize among your errors.
- •Third, practice writing sentences.
- •And finally, understand that grammar counts.
- •The Basic Principles of the Sentence Principle One: Focus on Actors and Actions
- •Principle Two: Be Concrete
- •Nouns often require prepositions.
- •Abstract nouns often invite the "there is" construction.
- •Abstract nouns are, well, abstract.
- •Abstract nouns can obscure your logic.
- •Principle Two, The Exception: Abstract Nouns & When To Use Them.
- •Principle Three: Be Concise
- •Principle Four: Be Coherent
- •Is your topic also the subject of your sentence?
- •Are the topics/subjects of your sentences consistent?
- •Have you marked, when appropriate, the transitions between ideas?
- •Principle Five: Be Emphatic
- •Students' Advice for Students Sharon Stanley '99 writes on Clarity
- •Ross Wilken '99 writes on Revision and the importance of starting early
- •Ashley Brown '00 writes on Writing as a process
- •Louisa Gilder '00 writes on The importance of being personally invested in your writing
- •Leda Eizenberg '00 writes on The value of outlining after you write
- •Rita Mitchell '00 writes on Clarity
- •Christina Krettecos '00 writes on The writing process
- •Kinohi Nishikawa '01 writes on The importance of getting personally involved with your writing
- •Nils Arvold '00 writes on Things that work for him
- •Julia Henneberry '99 writes on Voice and tone, and the importance of reading other people's papers
- •Lauren Allan-Vail '99 shares a few thoughts on writing
- •Andrew Berglund '00 writes on The importance of clear logic
- •Karen Meteyer '99 writes on The importance of starting early
Make Your Sources Work For You
Beginning students often make one grave mistake when they write their first academic papers: overwhelmed by what their sources have to say, they permit their papers to crumble under the weight of scholarly opinion. They end up writing not an informed argument of their own, but a rehash of what has already been said on a topic. The paper might be informative. It might also be competently written. But it does not fulfill the requirements of a good academic paper.
We have said it before and we will say it again: a good academic paper must be analytical. It must be critical. It must be a well-crafted, persuasive, informed argument.
Consider the phrase "informed argument." The word with the power in this phrase is the noun, "argument." The word "informed" is merely a descriptor. It serves the noun, qualifying it, shading it. In the same way, the information that you have gathered should serve your argument. Make your sources work for you.
You can take some steps to ensure that your sources do indeed work for you without overwhelming your argument.
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First, don't go to the library before you've thought about your topic on your own. Certainly your research will have an impact on what you think. Sometimes you might even find that you reverse your opinion. But if you go to the library before you've given your topic some thought, you risk jumping on the bandwagon of the first persuasive argument you encounter.
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Second, limit your sources to those that are relevant to your topic. It's easy to get swept up in the broader scholarly conversation about your subject and to go off on tangents that don't, in the end, serve your argument.
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Finally, keep track of your evolving understanding of your topic by periodically stopping to summarize. As we said earlier, summarizing your sources makes them more manageable. If you manage your sources as you go along, you reduce the risk of their overwhelming you later.
Keep Track of Your Sources
It's very important when you are in the research process to keep track of your sources. Nothing is more frustrating than having a great quotation and not knowing where it came from. Develop a good, consistent system for keeping notes.
Every academic discipline requires that you submit with your paper a bibliography or list of works cited. A bibliography should include every work you looked at in your research, even if you didn't quote that source directly. A list of works cited, on the other hand, is just that - a list of works that you quoted, paraphrased, or alluded to when writing your paper.
Both bibliographies and works cited pages require that you provide information that will make it easier for your reader to find your source for herself. For example:
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If your source is a book, make note of the title, the author, the publisher, the date, and the city of publication.
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If your source is an article, make note of the title of the article, the author, the title, the series number, the volume number, and the date of the publication.
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If your source is a site on the Internet, make note of the author, the title of the document, the title of the complete work, the date of publication or last revision, the URL (in angle brackets), and the date that you accessed the site (in parentheses). (As the Internet is changing from day to day, you will want to check a current style manual for the most accurate citation methods).
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Sometimes you will be citing a lecture, video, film, radio program, or other less usual source. Consult a style manual or Dartmouth's pamphlet Sources to find out what information you will need to complete your bibliography or works cited page.
Always, ALWAYS keep track of the page number(s) of any information you intend to use in your paper. Indeed, we encourage you to use Reference Management Programs such as Refworks in order to keep track of your sources easily and efficiently. No longer will you have to shuffle through scraps of paper or email messages to find the reference you need. You can use a reference manager to organize your references by research project, thereby eliminating the need to type the references into your paper. The programs will automatically format your references in any style you choose, such as MLA, APA or the style of a particular journal.