ESL Blogs

1)  Choose Your Subject

A crucial moment before you begin your English research paper is when you select your subject. You want writing your paper to go as smoothly as possible and factoring in how many pages your paper needs to be, your resources, the allotted time frame, and the amount of information you’ll have access to are all key factors to the process. In addition, going with a subject that actually interests you will do a lot in terms of sparking your motivation as opposed to having to slog your way through a topic that puts your feet to sleep.

2)  Keep the Topic Focused

While the subject is the broad person, place or issue, the topic is what you actually have to examine and say about it. Thus, you’ll want to focus the topic by researching background information concerning the subject and from that narrow down to a handful of main ideas to write about. A good way to go about this is by determining your opinion about the subject, what are the major players involved, what is interesting and important about the subject, and what types of issues or problems are intertwined with the subject? By answering these questions, you’ll be able to come up with a compelling, focused topic.

3)  List the thesis or objective for your paper

Your term English papers need a clear direction, and before you begin researching you’ll have to present your viewpoint by creating a thesis statement that you will then express and back up with facts in your paper. The unforgivable mistake of not choosing a clear direction is one of the worst common essay mistakes, according to statistics. Simply put, the point of the paper is to demonstrate your thesis as valid, and your initial thesis statement will give you a controlling direction as to what research materials you use and keep you on a set path the notes you take.

4)  Create a Preliminary Bibliography

This will be a list of sources of information you might use for your English paper. As you go along, you’ll want to evaluate the relevance of your sources and consider whether or not the authors are current with their information and the quality of their presentation of the topic.

Once you choose the books and articles you’re going to use, take down the information on 3x5 cards as you would present it in your final bibliography, then, once you’re finished with your paper, you can easily refer to these cards and simply place the references in alphabetical order.

5)  Put Together An Outline

A working outline is the backbone of your paper and will provide you with a guide to keep your ideas structured, in order, and on track. Create the initial outline before you begin your notetaking, and then as you do your research,  you can supplement or alter it as you fit. 

To get started, simply create a list of topics that you want your paper to cover, and then after that, break down the items into major and minor topics. This will provide you with a great starting point from which to build the rest of your outline.

6)  Get Your Notes Down

Now that you’ve got your working outline together, it’s time to start taking notes. By getting your notes down on 3x5 cards or 4x6 cards – with only one note per card – you’ll have a set of note cards where each card connects to a topic laid out on your outline. The next step is to then title each card with the relevant topic so it will simple to access the card you’re looking for once you begin to put together the final outline for the paper.

7)  The Final Outline

Essentially a pumped-up version of your working outline, the final outline further divides the topics previously listed into subtopics. To do this, just create separate piles for your notecards based on subject and then break each pile down into the various subtopics. At that point, you can create your final outline based on the way you wish to organize the topics and subtopic as listed on the cards in your paper.

8)  The Rough Draft

All right, you’re now ready to write. Remember, though, this is just the rough draft so your main concern is getting the content down as laid out in your outline and fleshing it all out with your notes, so don’t spend much time on punctuation, sentence structure or spelling. It is important though to structure the rough draft as you will the final copy, so it should consist of three sections: the intro, the body, and your conclusion. 

9)  Fine Tune Your Rough Draft

Once you’ve put together the rough draft, go over it again and make sure the content and structure of the paper are how you want the final version to be. Some key things to make sure of include:

• Do you back up each of your ideas with evidence?
• Does each paragraph provide a topic that relates back to your thesis?
• Are the transitions between ideas clear and smooth?

10)  The Final Draft

Congratulations, you’re at the final step to writing your English research paper! Just make sure to include your bibliography and citations into your final draft and double check your professor’s requirements regarding the paper’s formatting style and whether or not it should include a title page which should have the paper’s title, the course name, your instructor’s name, and the paper’s due date.Be sure to include any required footnotes which can be sequenced numerically either at the bottom margin of the page or on their own individual page before your bibliography.