Chapter 35: Writing Your Research Paper

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Personal Reaction:

First of all, this chapter is very short, which is nice. That said, this chapter includes some interesting concepts.

One is the idea of trying different ways to write a beginning and end (or the intro and conclusion) of your paper. You can write your intro and conclusion after you have written the body of your essay, or start with an event or example, build to the finish, and end with a call-to-action. You could also start by summing up the opinions, ideas and research of others and then continue the rest of the paper by explaining where you stand and why.

This will not only be helpful to keep in mind when writing for school, I may also use these methods when writing on my personal blog and movie review blog.

Professional Reaction:

It may be helpful in the future to know the two methods of writing a research paper: the thesis method and the answer method.

Thesis Method: Come up with a thesis statement and use it to form your paper, including points and evidence to support this thesis.

Answer Method: For this method, you do not need to state a thesis at all, but instead write your paper in a way that answers a main research question. This method may require more revision time because you are creating your points to answer this question as you go.

Written by Hayley Leach