Your professor or your college/university has already given you a guide on how to write your research paper. This article is not a guide on how to write research papers. This is a guide on how to write a research paper and score more highly. What you are reading here is an article that gives you all the tips that graduate wish they had known before they started University.

Find and Use Topics That You Are Already Knowledgeable About

Finding a research topic that you are already knowledgeable about sounds completely contrary to the point of your professor setting you a research paper. Why bother researching something that you are already completely knowledgeable about?

It all depends on the sort of experience you want in college and University. If you want to ensure you pass, then you need to make things as easy as possible. You need to write about topics you are already very knowledgeable about, and you need to do things such as use a research paper writing service when you are unsure about a research paper or when you are ill and cannot complete your paper.

On the other hand, if you want a 100% pure learning experience, then you cannot take any sort of shortcut, which means your experience is going to be difficult. When you come out of the other end of it, you will have a far better education than the students who always took the easy road but taking the hard road means putting yourself at a bigger risk of failing.

Choose Topics and Subject Areas That Are Already Well Covered

Before you finalize your topic, go online and see how well covered the topic is. The harder it is to find research material, then the harder your research paper will be to write. If you are an experienced student, you are going to hear students bragging about how their research paper will involve mutations, outer space, or something that the student thinks is super original. If you are experienced, you are going to hear these claims and know for a fact that the student making the claim will fail that project because that student is going to have a very hard time finding any documented evidence that is academically credible or admissible within a research paper.

Tip – Turn It in Very Early After Your Second Rough Draft

This tip is rather smarmy because it is the sort of trick that the teacher’s pet pulls. Write a first draft quickly and then smarten it up during your second draft and submit it early. Your professor is going to send you amendment notes, which you may use to write your research paper.

What you are doing is you are submitting a half-assed version of your research paper, and you are letting your professor tell you which bits to concentrate on and which bits to ignore. You then use what you have written and what your professor has written to build your essay. It is like getting your professor to do part of the work for you. It is almost like your first submission is a decoy submission that you use to get further notes from your professor.

Google It and Stop Resisting the Obvious

The huge number of students who say they are going to use academic sources and therefore refuse to Google their research question are being foolish. Just because something appears on the first few pages of the Google search engine results doesn’t mean that what you are reading is pointless mush. Even if Google doesn’t produce the correct answers right away, it is probably going to lead you down the right path.

Work with A Variety of Different Resources If You Can

Here are just a few of the resources you should consider. They have notes besides them because some resources have limited use.

  • Magazines & Newspapers(remember that they have a run-with-the-crowd bias)
  • Indexes to Periodicals and Newspapers(remember that news companies are money-making businesses)
  • Dictionaries and Encyclopedias(Use them as a starting point)
  • Answers.com & Yahoo Answers(Use as a starting point and do not reference them)
  • Almanacs, Atlases and Av Catalogs(Use them if the occasion calls for it)
  • Wikipedia(See the Wikipedia trick in the next section)
  • International Public Library (It may help you find alternative ideas)
  • Google Scholar(Do not overuse because your peers will)
  • Government Publications, Guides and Reports (Your professors will love seeing these references)
  • Journals and Essays(Be careful if you reference them because some are not credible)
  • Your College or University Online Library(Your professor expects you to use them)
  • Wall Street Executive Library(Use if necessary)
  • Subject Specific Software (Try not to end up paying for them)

The Wikipedia Cheat That Thousands of Students Use

Your professor whinges on about how you shouldn’t use Wikipedia because it is an unreliable resource, and these are the same professors that claim newspapers, journals and online news groups are viable and credible sources (thinking people know better).

The Wikipedia trick involves reading through the Wikipedia post and looking for lines that relate to your research. Look at the numbers next to the points you see and check out the bibliography on the Wikipedia post. Many times, the source for the information is academically credible, so you put that source in your bibliography rather than referring to Wikipedia as your source. Plus, many times the Wikipedia bibliography takes you to other sources that you can mine for information.

Make Your Thesis or Question as Specific as Possible

Your professor has to stick by a marking guide, and you need to make it as easy as possible for your professor to mark your paper. If your professor has to think, then your professor is more likely to become bored or tired and quickly guess at your mark. Remember that professors are human, which means they are also lazy and take shortcuts. Give times, places, dates, and any qualifying parameters in your research paper thesis or question. For example:

How many oak trees were planted last year?
Vs
How many oak trees were planted and grew successfully in the year 1999 within a 10-mile radius of Hull in England, UK?

Tip – Consider Why We Should Proofread Days After Completing the Second Draft

People are going to tell you to write your research paper and then check it a few days later, but it is up to you to understand why you need to do this and why it works. The truth is that you are predisposed to skim reading, and the Internet has enhanced this fact. Can you imagine running through a bunch of Google search engine results without skim reading the pages you land on? When you are proofreading, you are going to start skim reading by accident.

If you have just written something, then you know what the text is about, and you know which point is coming next. Instead of reading your text word-for-word, your brain is going to insert snippets from your memory of writing the paper and you are going to skim read pieces of text without knowing. This phenomenon is so powerful that people will even skim over highlighted spelling mistakes with red squiggly lines under them. That is why professional academic writers use proofreaders.

Use A Positive and Negative Biases

Think about writing two versions of your paper. The first version is where you purposefully go out and try to prove yourself right. Once you have done that and you have all your points noted down, go through it all again and try to prove yourself wrong. You may have a hard time questioning your own work and your own points, but the trick is to find them anyway. Try to find holes in your arguments because if you do not, then the next person who reads your essay will.

Let another person check your work with our essay editing services. Or, if you are struggling to complete your research paper, then let us write it for you. We allow you to pick your deadline, and you pick your price.