Maybe you enjoy writing research papers; perhaps you dread it. No matter how you feel about writing research papers, there’s always something you can learn to make the process more efficient.
We’ve decided to delve deep into research paper writing nuances and read through hundreds of Nerds’ feedbacks and customer reviews to finally determine the shortcuts to writing a perfect research paper, every time.
Here we present you 5 awesome and foolproof tips from experts — let’s start!
How Can I Write Research Paper For Me Better? Organize The Process!
Writing an A+ research paper requires conducting original research — it’s not a literature review, where simple critical analysis of sources will suffice. Instead, students are required to do their own research, review what’s already been written on the topic, and then make concise conclusions. Unlike any essay, the research paper is to be all about consistency.
To get a good grade, it’s important to present ideas incoherent way, highlighting the logic of the train of thought.
Personal Nerds say that the secret to writing an excellent research paper is organizing the process. However, the trick is to divide the process into several concise steps and set deadlines for each of them. Some of our customers admit that they tried to organize the writing process by planning a lot of steps and failed it every time because of the pressure.
That’s understandable — the plan itself can become a huge work! To avoid it, our Nerds recommend planning only several steps, 5 max.
To organize writing the research paper, you don’t need to come up with an extra complex plan with many steps — several steps will suffice perfectly. The goal of organizing the process is to help you make it in time and have enough time to write a great paper
We’ve asked our best research Nerds about the steps of writing research paper they recommend to plan and here’s what they suggest:
- Literature research and making notes from relevant sources
- Creating an outline to define the layout of the paper and its structure
- Creating a rough draft
- Writing the final paper
- Proofreading
That being said, bear in mind that every paper requires a specific approach depending on the topic. Our Nerds admit that there’s no universal formula for every research paper, but organizing the process of writing it truly helps in any case!
Research Paper Writing Can Be Done Faster With Right Sources
Relying on the results of our research, lack of good sources is among the top 3 problems that result in lower than desired grades for research papers. Students admit that research paper requirements often dwell on the types of sources that shouldn’t be used, such as Wikipedia and blogs. However, what students really need is guides to finding and choosing relevant sources.
Our Nerds say that having good sources accounts for roughly half of the paper’s success. While writing an essay, it’s possible to get a high grade for a creative idea and arguments, but in research papers, it’s facts that count.
If you find relevant sources, consider half of the job done. Research papers largely rely on analyzing already existing literature, which is why it’s important to get the best sources you can
The solution to the lack of good sources is straightforward: you just need to know where and how to look for them. Our Nerds admit that even if you browse Google Scholar for a while, you can end up with a decent bibliography. If you know some shortcuts for effective literature research, you will be able to save time and skip all the unnecessary work altogether.
For instance, Nerds recommend looking through abstracts in articles to quickly find out if the article is relevant or not and making notes during the literature review to make sure you won’t miss anything.
Structure Is The Common Pitfall Of Research Paper Writing
If the key to writing an excellent essay is creativity, the watchword to writing an A+ research paper is structure. By all means, a research paper requires conducting original research that needs to be well-structured. Students reveal that structure is always one of the critical aspects of grading research paper.
For essays, the watchword is creativity, while for research papers — structure. The key to a suitable structure is consistency and analytical narrative
How to nail the structure in a way that’ll grant the best result? Our Nerds are simply the best — they readily share their secret tips to help our readers out:
- Research papers need to have all 3 key components — introduction, body, and conclusion
- The easiest way to create a good structure and follow it is by creating an outline
- It’s essential to include headings and subheadings if the paper is long
- If you’re baffled about how many sources you need, go for at least 1 per page
- Introduction and conclusion shouldn’t exceed 10–15% of the overall word count each
- Try to make body paragraphs similar in length — this way the paper will look more polished and professional
Personal Nerds know that these simple tips aren’t as easy to apply in practice as it may seem. However, it’s essential to prioritize structure anyway — along with quality content it’ll get you an A for sure!
Citations Are Another Pitfall To Avoid In Research Paper Writing
MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard — whichever it is, students always need a guideline to learn how to follow these citation styles properly. The pitfall is that citation styles are treated like common knowledge by professors, so college students are truly confused facing this challenge.
At a glance, following a particular citation style is a piece of cake. First, you just find a guideline online with examples. Second, you follow it as you’re writing a paper. In practice, it’s much more complicated because:
- Citation styles are regularly updated, but many online guidelines aren’t
- Some styles, such as Harvard, have several formats that are entirely different
- There are always exceptions to the rules that are puzzling
While going through customer feedback, we’ve found out that citation styles have the potential to wreck perfectly well-written and structured papers. Many students struggle with block citations, the arrangement of entries in the bibliography, and in-text citations.
We’ve recently published a series of articles aiming to help students nail citation styles, including a guide to MLA block citations.
Despite that guides to citation styles are abundant, there’s no way of telling whether they are correct or not — some of them aren’t properly updated, while others are downright faulty. Finding a proper citation style guide is the number one task when writing a research paper
Personal Nerds admit that learning citation style isn’t the easiest task, so while working on such tasks they suggest reliable sources with up-to-date guides and provide examples for each specific case.
For Nerds, there are no ambiguities — they know precisely how to format citations in each specific case. Nerds help students understand citation styles and explain the basic rules of each style to make it easier to use. Our Nerds all agree that such trivial thing as citation style shouldn’t ruin research papers!
Research Papers Written With Proofreading Score Higher
Checking the research paper for errors is an essential part of writing it. Unfortunately, many students consider proofreading useless and unnecessary. It’s understandable — writing a paper is difficult in itself and takes a lot of time and effort, while proofreading is an additional step you need to make after, basically, the job is done.
The least any student wants to get is a B instead of well deserved A after hours of work! That’s why many students turn to online grammar checkers. However, these services check only grammar according to an algorithm.
They go without paying attention to the paper structure. They don’t evaluate whether the arguments are logical and thought through. Of course, they also do not care whether the citation style is correctly used.
That’s wrong. All in all, proofreading isn’t only about grammar.
Proofreading is a must for every paper, and in this case, two heads are better than one, especially if one of them is an expert. The goal of truly quality proofreading isn’t just correcting mistakes, but finding the ways to improving the paper and perfect it
Our Nerds know that the aim of any proofreading isn’t just checking grammar, but verifying that the paper corresponds to the grading rubric and task requirements. Besides checking the research paper for errors, Personal Nerds pay attention to the structure of the article, citation style, and the facts and ideas reflected in the paper.
Their goal isn’t just pointing out simple mistakes, but suggesting the ways to improve the paper and polish it to perfection. Grateful customer feedbacks indicate that they have the best approach for sure.
In Conclusion…
Our investigation was fruitful — we’ve found out some seriously useful tips for writing a bomb research paper every time. The organization, paper structure, citations, sources, and proofreading are all vital for getting the grade you want for a research paper.
Along with them, Personal Nerds offer something precious — confidence that any task is doable. They’ve been students once themselves, so they know exactly how to help nail research papers, whatever the topic, deadline, and difficulty level.
Besides, our Personal Nerds can help with your college or work life, from ways to toss bad academic habits to honest reviews of popular, but still unique hobbies!
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