Course Description | Grading Criteria | Sample Student Papers & Responses | How to Write the Research Paper

Writing the Research Paper:

The first thing you need to do with a research paper is establish an objective for the paper. What you intend to research is not the only aspect of the paper that you should consider when writing. Why the paper has been written and how you intend to prove your objective(s) also matter a great deal. With these ideas in mind, here is an approach that should help you.

Project:

First identify what the purpose of the paper is. Try to restrict your focus. For example, if you look at the sample A paper, the student does not examine just rape. The writer looks at the consequences of “Acquaintance Rape,” and the specific nature of the topic then lets readers know the paper will (hopefully) avoid broad generalizations. Break down aspects of your topic. For example, instead of looking at “Music in the Nineteenth Century,” you could look at a genre (e.g., opera, the symphony) or a particular composer (e.g., Brahms). By restricting the focus the paper will not wander in different directions.

Development:

Approach the paper in stages. Write the paper with the idea in mind that the reader for the paper needs to learn something “new” about the topic. This then means that you need to analyze the material that you are working with. Do not write summary—the reader wants to know why and how, not what. Here are three important parts to paper development.

Angles:

Look at the A paper. Notice how the student explores all the different angles behind “acquaintance rape.” One reads about the mental and emotional consequences of the act, and learns about both the victim and the perpetrator. Sources are brought into “dialogue” with the writer and to establish further how “acquaintance rape” leaves a different impact on a victim than random rape. The writer carefully puts the paper together by building on previous “blocks” of information.

Sources:

Essential to the development of your paper are the sources that you use. Look at the sample A paper and note the bibliography of the student. Then look at the references. Notice how there are far more references. What this indicates is that the student has done a wide range of reading for the purpose of exploring the subject of rape—and then in the bibliography the focus has been narrowed down as a result of extensive research.

Transitions:

To develop these “blocks” of information, you need to pay careful attention to how you make transitions in your paper. In the sample A paper, notice how each paragraph “links” to the previous paragraph. In the sample B paper, the material is organized more in “lumps” of information. The weaker paper simply stacks ideas without fully exploring the connections that the ideas in each paragraph have with one another.

Quoting:

What is essential to a good research paper is integrating the quotes with your project. The quotes should not “free stand,” meaning that the reader has no clue what the quotes are doing in the paper, or “eat the document,” meaning that the quotes either fill space or do the work for you. Good writers make judicious use of quotes—they know how to pick out what is relevant to the paper, and just as important, they use quotes to move the paper along.

EXAMPLE:

“Some situations related to Stockholm Syndrome theory and Traumatic Bonding theory were revealed in previous studies, which showed the contradictory behavior of acquaintance rape victims. Rationalization of the abuser’s behavior was seen in the situations in victims of dating violence felt that their partner’s violence was at least ‘somewhat justified’" (Berry, Sigelman, and Wiles, 1984).

In the A paper (p.8) the student first mentions terms that are relevant to the project of the paper. These terms are given a general analysis in the clause “which showed the contradictory behavior of aquaintance rape victims.” Notice how the key phrase here is “contradictory behavior.” The writer then moves the paper into the sources by use of paraphrase and direct quoting. Berry, Sigelman, and Wiles reinforce the notion of contradictory behavior with their judgment that partner violence is “somewhat justified.” The rest of the paragraph uses sources to build on this pattern of judgment by the aquaintance rape victim. Subsequently, what happens in the paper is that the use of sources introduces complication with respect to the subject matter.

Notice how in the B paper the student fails to integrate quotes into the project of the paper. A serious problem that emerges for the reader is determining how much is the work of the student and how much is paraphrase. The paper jumps from one idea to the next, and there is a great deal of generalization in the B paper that is not evident in the A paper.

Complication:

A good paper will explore a complication and avoid confirmation. For example, confirmation would emphasize that “Nineteenth Century music is different because there is more feeling, more emotion in the music. This is why the period is known as the Romantic Era.” While this observation is fine for a freshman undergraduate in music survey, a graduate student should attempt something more challenging. That is where complication comes into play with the paper. Why there is more feeling and how emotion dictates the musical structure are questions that could develop the research project. What could the paper discuss that the reader would not know—and how could the discussion in the paper lead the reader to learn something that is more complex and more challenging?

Furthermore, by introducing complication into the paper, you are then going to avoid writing a paper that relies on broad generalizations. You will look at ideas on a deeper level, and avoid the superficial judgments that so often weaken papers that “confirm” an idea. Remember that a paper should demonstrate a sophistication of thought and fluency on the part of the student. The paper that only “confirms” only skims the surface of the subject at hand.

Closure:

All writers need to know when (and where) to end a paper. The sample A paper ends not with a final judgment, but with an overview of the subject that concludes with the position that more studies are necessary about the subject of aquaintance rape. The student avoids the obvious and carefully maintains that given the complications behind the behavior of the victims, more research should be done. More important, the information given by the student in the paper proves how contradictory victim behavior is, and the previous “blocks” of material in the paper support the assertion at the end that more research is important. In the B paper, the conclusion is superficial—the student simply makes a list of what the problems are, and tells us (in so many words) that “layoffs are bad.”