Doing Your Research Paper—Understanding What You Are Supposed To Write

Writing custom research papers are part of student life. It is something that one cannot avoid or one cannot escape. Perhaps the fear of writing a research paper comes with lack of understanding on what exactly this kind of academic paper demands. When it comes to research papers, what exactly are you supposed to write? Now stop for a minute and think of how you will answer this question. Lucky you if you know exactly what you want to propose to research and write about. But what if you are one of those other students who don’t have a clue of what to research or write about. Certainly, this task will easily overwhelm them. In this light, the key to writing an effective research paper is fully understanding what a research paper is and what is it not.

What is it?

A research paper is basically your ideas or response to the information found in certain observable entities, as in laboratory research, as well as library sources. Based on those observations, you will make informed judgments, theories or hypothesis, on which you will base your selection of research materials. To present your observations as well as the result of your research, you will create research questions, which will guide your discussions through the sections of your research paper. In simple terms, a research paper is the final product that involves all the research skills that you have learned from school, such as critical thinking, information source evaluation and organization and composition. In many ways, custom research papers provide students with the exceptional opportunity to increase their knowledge on their field and put everything they have learned into real-world applications.

What is it not?

A research paper is different from a simple essay or book report. It is neither an opinion piece nor an expository paper. A research paper has every room for objective interpretations, and none for opinions or subjective interpretations. Unlike other papers, it requires more time in investigating and evaluating information sources. The main goals of writing custom research papers is to draw attention to its topic and present the topic using a unique perspective that will engage and inform its readers of what the topic is about and what other people have to say about that topic.

Know what you’re dealing with
The key to making research paper writing a less daunting task is understanding what it really is. Understanding how this paper differs from your other academic papers, such as thesis and position papers, means studying the assignment sheet. That piece of paper contains everything that your teacher or instructor expects from your research paper. It indicates what type of topics you should write, how many pages do you need to accomplish for this paper, the date of its submission and other pertinent details about your writing task. Normally, the intimidating impression that research paper tasks often have hinder students from enjoying the process of creating and completing it. But the same way that people give wrong impressions to good people, all it takes is making that first step in getting to know what you are actually dealing with.