REL 2121: Religion in America
Choose a topic that interests and challenges you. Your attitude towards the topic may well determine the amount of effort and enthusiasm you put into your research. Focus on a limited aspect, narrowing your topic down to a specific historical period, or specific religious concepts, beliefs, or practices.
Step 2. Find information.
A great place to start would be our own “SCF Library Discovery Tool”, on the library website. You can enter in your topic and up will come academic journals, articles, magazine articles, newspapers, books, and ebooks. You can access everything on the SCF Library site with your G00 number as your name and the last four digits of your G00 number as your PIN number.
You may surf the net but be careful of sites with political or religious biases. Academic sites with .edu domain names are acceptable, but encyclopedias or Wikipedia do not count as source material for your paper. You can consult these latter to get ideas, but they cannot be relied upon in your paper.
As you gather resources, remember to jot down full bibliographical information (author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, page numbers, URLs, and your date of access) on your work sheet or printout.
Step 3. State your thesis.
Do some critical thinking and write your thesis statement. Your thesis statement is like a declaration of your belief. The main portion of your essay will consist of arguments to support and defend this belief.
Step 4. Make a tentative outline.
The purpose of an outline is to help you think through your topic carefully and organize it logically before you start writing. A good outline is the most important step in writing a good paper. All points must relate to the same major topic. Check your outline to make sure that the points covered flow logically from one to the other. Include in your outline an INTRODUCTION, a BODY, and a CONCLUSION. Make the first outline tentative.
INTRODUCTION – This is the opportunity that you have to explain your topic and frame your thesis. State your thesis and/or the purpose of your research paper clearly. What is the chief reason you are writing the paper? State also how you plan to approach your topic. Is this a factual report, a comparison, or an analysis of a problem? Explain briefly the major points you plan to cover in your paper and why readers should be interested in your topic. Here is where you announce the organization of your paper.
BODY – This is where you present your arguments to support your thesis statement. You should find three supporting arguments for each position you take. Always begin with a strong argument, then use a stronger, and end with the strongest argument for your final point. Offer solid evidence to support each claim (statistics, facts, quotations, surveys, etc.). Organize the material presented in a coherent and logical manner.
CONCLUSION – Restate or reword your thesis. Summarize your arguments. Explain why you have come to this particular conclusion.
Step 5. Organize your notes.
Organize all the information you have gathered according to your outline. Critically analyze your research data. Using the best available sources, check for accuracy and verify that the information is factual, up-to-date, and correct. Opposing views should also be noted if they help to support your thesis. This is the most important stage in writing a research paper. Here you will analyze, synthesize, sort, and digest the information you have gathered and hopefully learn something about your topic which is the real purpose of doing a research paper in the first place. You must also be able to effectively communicate your thoughts, ideas, insights, and research findings to others through written words or through spoken words as in an oral or multimedia presentation.
Do not include any information that is not relevant to your topic, and do not include information that you do not understand. Make sure the information that you have noted is carefully recorded and in your own words. Plagiarism is definitely out of the question. You must document all ideas borrowed or quotes used very accurately. As you organize your notes, jot down detailed bibliographical information and have it ready to transfer to your Works Cited page.
Step 6. Write your first draft.
Start with the first topic in your outline. Read all the relevant notes you have gathered for that first paragraph and begin to write, knowing that you can always go back and change or add to or subtract from anything that you put down.
Do the same with the next topic of your outline. As you move through the process, you should begin to notice your own voice in your writing. You are taking other people’s ideas and using them to shore up your own feelings and convictions about your subject.
Step 7. Revise your outline and draft.
Read your paper for any content errors. Double check the facts and figures. Arrange and rearrange ideas to follow your outline. Reorganize your outline if necessary, while keeping the purpose of your paper and your readers in mind.
If you have any concerns, you can take your paper to SCF’s Writing Center for advice. They will read your draft and offer suggestions on how to make it better. They are there for all students.
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