The prospect of a research paper may seem overwhelming to students at first. Due to their extended length and the immense amount of facts required, research papers often entail time-consuming organization and work.

Since research paper assignments continue from high school to college, a well-written paper seems important for educational success. These steps, encouraged by sophomore English teacher Natalie Douty, will help to ensure a proper writing foundation and a stress-free approach to compiling a paper.

For a less taxing research paper, allow four to six weeks to write it. Get in the habit of writing papers throughout a time span rather than a last-minute attempt. Procrastinating often causes anxiety and sloppy work, resulting in a lower grade.

To stay organized during the research writing process, create a self-checklist with all the necessary things to do and focus on ? including mistakes to avoid.

To begin the paper, first determine a research topic. Students should choose a topic related to their interests. According to Douty, students produce better papers if they are based on something they find engaging. Douty suggests using historical subjects rather than current events, because historical topics often have more factual information available to use.

The topic can be the first mistake students make on their research papers. Avoid using a person as the subject because the paper can easily turn into a biography. If students want to use an individual in their paper, they should consider writing the paper on a topic related to the person and use him or her in significance to the subject.

In the next step, gather factual information on the topic from a variety of sources, such as books, brochures, magazines, articles, newspapers, organizations like museums and the Internet. Most teachers don’t allow students to use Web sites such as Wikipedia.org, so be sure to know what the teacher allows.

Collect an excess amount of facts to ensure the paper reaches the required length and write them on notecards. Keep the notecards organized by labeling them and citing the source on the back of the card. Put them into categories like background information, purpose and effects of the topic.

This classification helps make the cards easier to find and creates a harmonized composition. Throughout the research paper process, organization is key to writing a well-structured paper. A narrow variety of sources and a lack of citations often result in a lower grade.

After collecting the sources, establish an outline and thesis statement to follow through the whole paper. Use the categories of the notecards to help decide the divisions of the outline. Once the outline is made, write a thesis that relates to the focus of the research paper and introduces the topics in the body paragraphs.

Make sure the outline follows a certain order. If unsure of what method to arrange the information of the subject, try a chronological order. Verify that all notecards fit the scope of the topic, fit into a section of the outline and support the thesis. Discard unrelated facts that could detract from the score.

With the outline and notecards as guidelines, compose a rough draft. After written, revise it in three different ways: re-read it and search for any mistakes; read it out-loud to someone and listen for awkward sentence structures, then ask the person for anything that should be changed; and finally have someone read it and edit it, looking for order, organization and logic. After this, correct the mistakes for the finished draft.

To finish, put together a works cited page listing every source used for the research paper in alphabetical order and using the proper format.

By learning and continually following these steps, students will secure a proper writing basis on which they can tackle a research paper and earn an A on the assignment.

For more tips on writing a research paper, visit Academictips.org or e-mail Natalie Douty.