feelings: you're probably still feeling uncertain, even though you have a topic. As you root around in your topic, you may have your darkest hour in the whole process, feeling threatened by the choice of a focus mdash what if you pick the wrong one? try to tolerate these feelings. You may even have an aha! experience, but don't worry if you don't mdash there's not an aha! in every a+ paper. thoughts and actions: follow the steps below to get an idea of things you should be thinking about and doing. steps in looking for and forming a focus 3.3 purposeful thinking about possible focuses 3.4 choosing a focus or combining themes to form a focus now that you have a topic, you need to learn about it! instead of piloting a helicopter over the landscape, you're now on the ground.

Your task is to explore it, which will require going around, over and through it several times to see what's there, looking at it from different perspectives. 3.1 info search exploring your topic before you can decide on a focus, you need to explore your topic, to become informed about the topic, to build on your knowledge and experience. You'll be locating books, articles, videos, internet and other resources about your topic and reading to learn.

You're looking for an issue, an aspect, a perspective on which to focus your research paper. This is the first step in which you'll probably be checking books out of the library. You're looking for treatments of your topic which are either more comprehensive or more specific than an encyclopedic treatment, with various authors' summaries, analyses and opinions. But, until you've chosen a focus, you're not really on a mission of gathering information. If you gather information on the topic as a whole, you'll waste a lot of time doing it and have way too much to sort through when you are ready to write your paper. Now you'll be using the library's online catalog, online indexes and the web search engines along with the reference room and the subject based web directories. 3.2 info search preliminary note taking as you read, start taking notes of what you're learning about your topic mdash concepts, issues, problems, areas where experts agree or disagree.

Keep track of the bibliographic references for the information you're using, and write down a note or two of what's contained in the book, article, website, etc. There's nothing more frustrating than knowing you read something earlier about a particular point and not being able to locate it again when you decide it's something you need. Find out what kind of citations are required by your instructor and make sure you're recording what you'll need to do your bibliography. 3.3 purposeful thinking about possible focuses while you're learning about your topic, intentionally look for possible focuses in the material.

You could spend enormous amounts of time reading, especially about an interesting topic, without being any closer to a focus unless you purposefully keep that goal in your mind while you read. 3.4 choosing a focus or combining themes to form a focus try your choices of focus on for size as you did your topic. Which ones fit the assignment, the size, scope and type of the paper? think about which of your possible focuses has the best chance for making a successful a+ paper.

If you find several themes within your topic which each are too small to support the entire paper, can they be combined to form a focus? if you haven't yet read the linked articles on browse through them to get suggestions for focusing and narrowing your topic. the focus essay your essay should chronicle the ways in which your ideas about your topic developed as a result of exploring the relevant literature. You should discuss how this led you to a more focused topic as well as a working hypothesis or central research question that will guide your further research. Recommended organizational format for your focus essay:

introduction: describe your preliminary topic, the reasons why you selected it and your initial perspective on it. Literature review answer the following sorts of questions in this section: bull what were the results of your research? bull what did you find mdash and what didn rsquo t you? bull how did you find it? bull what problems did you encounter while searching for sources? bull how will your findings contribute to your final research project? bull what were your most valuable sources? bull what resources i.e.

Online catalog, databases, were most useful to you and why? bull how did specific resources make you rethink your topic? bull where there sources that you ended up not using? why not? conclusion: clear description of your newly defined research topic and/or question and the working hypothesis/thesis that will guide your research. Working bibliography: 15 20 key sources that may be useful for your final research project. Focus is the feature of effective writing that answers the question so what? an effective piece of writing establishes a single focus and sustains that focus throughout the piece.

Just as a photographer needs to focus on a particular subject to produce a clear picture, a writer needs to focus on a single topic or main idea in order to produce an effective piece of writing. But finding a focus means more than just knowing what to photograph or write about. Good photographers also think about what they want their photograph to communicate. This affects their decisions about how to frame their subject in the shot, and whether to zoom in for a closeup or zoom out for a wide angle shot. For a newspaper reporter, for example, finding a focus for a story means finding an angle, a perspective from which to tell the story.

Kid Writing Paper With Borders

Focus, therefore, involves more than just knowing what your story is about, but understanding why you are writing it in the first place. Without a clear focus, students stories, reports, and essays degenerate into lists of loosely related events or facts with no central idea to hold them together, leaving the reader to ask so what? by establishing a clear focus before they start to write, students can craft their writing into a coherent, unified whole. Finding a focus helps students find the significance in their stories, the message that they want to convey to their audience, their reason for writing. Establishing a clear focus also helps readers understand the point of the piece of writing. Readers dont want to read a mishmosh of unrelated ideas they read to learn something new, to be surprised, to gain a new insight on an old idea, to view something from a new perspective or angle. Focus determines what choices the writer makes about everything from organizational structure to elaborative details to word choice, sentence length, and punctuation. At the same time, effective writers take advantage of the appropriate supporting features to strengthen the focus of their writing.

Studies by writing researchers show that goal setting is an important element of planning for mature adult writers bereiter and scardamalia, 1987 hayes and flower, 1980. Bereiter and scardamalia found that immature writers engaged in little goal directed planning before they wrote. Instead, most of their planning occurred on the fly while they were writing, using a what next? strategy to write the next sentence. Rather than viewing their text as a whole, immature writers focused on localized, surface level revisions that did little to improve the quality of the text.

Bereiter and scardamalia characterized this immature writing process as a linear knowledge telling process. For mature writers, however, planning and revising were goal directed, recursive activities that occurred at a global level throughout the writing process. As a result, for mature writers, writing becomes a knowledge transforming process that not only improves the quality of their writing, but also moves them toward greater understanding of their topic. The time for students to think about focus, therefore, is before they begin to write. Who will read the piece of writing, and why? what will readers know or expect when they sit down to read? author katie wood ray suggests that students not only need to know what they are going to write about they also need to be able to envision a range of possible roles, audiences, and forms for their writing. This ability to envision multiple possibilities requires exposure to a wide range of genres by a wide range of authors. Students can also use expressive writing, such as journal writing, personal experience narratives, and other forms of exploratory writing, to explore and experiment with different perspectives that will help them find their focus.

Strategies such as rafts role, audience, form, task, strong verb can help students find their focus before they begin writing. Although it is important for students to think about focus before they begin writing, focus can also be strengthened through thoughtful revision. Students and teachers can use these guiding questions during revision conferences to strengthen the focus of their writing.

what is the most important point in your piece? does the piece stay focused on the most important topic or the main event? are there any ideas or events in your story that do not strengthen the main focus? lesson plans that help students learn to find and strengthen their focus are available. By guest author isn’t it ironic that i’m having a hard time focusing on this list of tips to help people focus? as i struggle to keep deadlines, i realize that my work environment is filled with distractions – whether it’s other people’s conversations filling my head or the flashing of my instant messaging window telling me a co worker has a question. It’s easy to lose your train of thought when your co workers are yapping about last night’s bachelorette episode.

How to Focus When Writing a Paper Text

Kid Writing Paper With Borders

Refereren Naar Master Thesis