The goal of a research paper is to bring together different views, evidence, and facts about a topic from books, articles, and interviews, then interpret the information into your own writing. A research paper will show two things: what you know or learned about a certain topic, and what other people know about the same topic. It's always a good idea to keep your teacher in mind while writing your paper because the teacher is your audience. These stages are: while most people start with prewriting, the three stages of the writing process overlap. Writing is not the kind of process where you have to finish step one before moving on to step two, and so on.

Your job is to make your ideas as clear as possible for the reader, and that means you might have to go back and forth between the prewriting, writing and revising stages several times before submitting the paper. thinking about a topic the first thing you should do when starting your research paper is to think of a topic. Try to pick a topic that interests you and your teacher interesting topics are easier to write about than boring topics! make sure that your topic is not too hard to research, and that there is enough material on the topic. Television news, the world wide web, and even in the index of a textbook! narrowing down your topic as you think about your topic and start reading, you should begin thinking about a possible thesis statement a sentence or two explaining your opinion about the topic. One technique is to ask yourself one important question about your topic, and as you find your answer, the thesis can develop from that.

Some other techniques you may use to narrow your topic are: jot lists preliminary outlines listing possible thesis statements listing questions and/or making a concept map. As you do your research, follow your background research plan and take notes from your sources of information. The purpose of your research paper is to give you the information to understand why your experiment turns out the way it does. A citation is just the name of the author and the date of the publication placed in parentheses like this: author, date. This is called a reference citation when using apa format and parenthetical reference when using the mla format. If you copy text from one of your sources, then place it in quotation marks in addition to following it with a citation.

Be sure you understand and avoid plagiarism! do not copy another person's work and call it your own. Always give credit where credit is due! most teachers want a research paper to have these sections, in order: title page with the title of your project, your name, and the date your report bibliography check with your teacher for additional requirements such as page numbers and a table of contents year after year, students find that the report called the research paper is the part of the science fair project where they learn the most. So, take it from those who preceded you, the research paper you are preparing to write is super valuable. The short answer is that the research paper is a report summarizing the answers to the research questions you generated in your background research plan.

It's a review of the relevant publications books, magazines, websites discussing the topic you want to investigate. The long answer is that the research paper summarizes the theory behind your experiment. Science fair judges like to see that you understand why your experiment turns out the way it does.

You do library and internet research so that you can make a prediction of what will occur in your experiment, and then whether that prediction is right or wrong, you will have the knowledge to understand what caused the behavior you observed. From a practical perspective, the research paper also discusses the techniques and equipment that are appropriate for investigating your topic. Some methods and techniques are more reliable because they have been used many times.

Can you use a procedure for your science fair project that is similar to an experiment that has been done before? if you can obtain this information, your project will be more successful. As they say, you don't want to reinvent the wheel! if these reasons sound to you like the reasons we gave for doing background research, you're right! the research paper is simply the write up of that research. As you write your research paper, you'll want to make sure that you include as much relevant math as you understand.

Each card contains the source at the top, with key points listed or quoted underneath. No matter how you take notes, be sure to keep track of the sources for all your key facts. Before starting to write, think about the best order to discuss the major sections of your report. Generally, you will want to begin with your science fair project question so that the reader will know the purpose of your paper. What should come next? ask yourself what information the reader needs to learn first in order to understand the rest of the paper.

Dissertation Abstracts Index

A typical organization might look like this: your science fair project question or topic definitions of all important words, concepts, and equations that describe your experiment the history of similar experiments answers to your background research questions when you write your research paper you might want to copy words, pictures, diagrams, or ideas from one of your sources. If the information is a phrase, sentence, or paragraph, then you should also put it in quotation marks. A citation and quotation marks tell the reader who actually wrote the information. For a science fair project, a reference citation also known as author date citation is an accepted way to reference information you copy.

Simply put the author's last name, the year of publication, and page number if needed in parentheses after the information you copy. Place the reference citation at the end of the sentence but before the final period. Make sure that the source for every citation item copied appears in your bibliography.