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Improve your paper writing with these successful tips!
1) Most important thing to remember is tell em what
you are gonna tell em, tell em, and tell em what you told em.
Introduce your topic, tell about your topic, and close your topic
with a summary.
2) Always give credit where credit is due. Use your
own thoughts and words about the topic. If you use someone's
work cite it.
3) When writing papers - you should gravitate more to
topics that excite you or will promote discussion. If you have
to write a paper on the civil war for history class relate it to a
civil war movie and prove that the movie was really close to
history. Take a high profiled historic civil war figure and
write about the dark side that no one knows about. If you are
not given a top brainstorm and write down as many fun things, or
things you want to know more about in two minutes and pick one of
those topics to write about.
4) When writing about a topic you have to figure out your
thesis. I.E. the grass is green from the carbon dioxide
in the air. Babe Ruth is the greatest baseball player to
ever play the game.
Once you have a thesis back it up. Limit your argument to
3-5 facts. Here is an example about Babe Ruth:
Hitting, pitching, and fielding are the most important aspects of
the game. Babe Ruth excelled in all of these categories and
makes him greatest baseball player to ever play the game of
baseball.
5) Tell em what you are gonna tell them - Start the paper
off with an introduction paragraph that will grab attention
(some teachers might want you to put the title of the paper before
the introduction paragraph others might think that the title page is
enough, you probably should find this out first). Make sure it
relates to the topic. Your introduction should lead into your
thesis and then your evidence for your paper. This is
called transition. You just introduced Babe Ruth as the
greatest player, and you are going to back it up with hitting,
pitching, and fielding.
6) Always introduce the next paragraph. Your first
body paragraph should talk about the hitting, pitching, and
fielding of baseball. Talk about the first topic hitting, and discuss
the stats that are important which will prove your point.
Highest average, most home runs, runs scored, and so on. Once
you finish that part introduce the next part. "Another
important aspect of the game of baseball is pitching. Pitching
is tracked in three ways...."
7) Use the order in which you listed the topics. If you
list hitting first then use hitting first. This will help your
paper flow.
8) Tell em - you body paragraphs are written the same
way as your whole paper. You introduce hitting,
talk about the stats, and sum it up all while pointing this
information back to your thesis to prove your point. Do
not forget to transition to the next paragraph with the last
sentence.
9) This is a great time to use quotes from sources.
Make sure they are labeled properly. Do not use long quotes
but sometimes you have to use a small paragraph because the
information is important. Most English classes have work cited
pages that will help you. I recommended using maybe one to two
sources more if you need to, but not all internet sources.
Show the person you are writing the paper for that you looked at
magazines, newspapers, journals, and books. Internet sources
can often be misleading but easier to use.
10) Quotes should be used to back up your information and
prove your thesis. I have seen many papers where the quotes do
not relate to the topic at all, in fact the writer should not have
put that quote in the paper because it does nothing for it but fill
space.
11) Tell em what you told em - in your conclusion sum up
your paper. It should restate your introduction in not so many
words but summarize the body of evidence. I never use "in
conclusion" but use something that lets the audience know
(or the person grading the paper) that you ending your paper.
12) Now that you are done with the paper part you can do
the works cited page (the quotes you used in your paper).
English books should have good examples works cited pages but you
can also check out this site here.
Your citings should be listed in the same order that your paper
lists them in.
13) Create a title page. Title page should consist of
your name and the date at the bottom. With the title of your
paper at the top.
14) Find out if page numbers are acceptable if not do not
add them in.
15) The length of the paper should be among the criteria
you were given. You should not go over the pages the teacher
is asking for. It is actually better if you have to write a
2-3 page paper that you write 2.5-3 pages. If there is no
criteria for the amount of pages make sure you have enough to prove
your thesis. Ask the other people in your class how many pages
they are writing to get an idea.
16) Do not wait till the last minute. Instead map out
your paper so you have plenty of time to finish it. Often if
you are one of the first ones to turn it in you are graded less
harshly.
17) Most of all have fun. It might seem that its
boring and lots of work but if you write about something that you
are passionate about it will make it much easier. You might
not think that you have to write papers once you are out of school
but you do - you will have to prove your point about something and
writing papers will organize your thoughts.
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