Sunday, August 3, 2008

My Approach to the Research Paper

Like Wendy, this research paper is taking a really long time for me as well. I know I have that tendency to wait for ideas to come around, so it could waste up to a few good hours where I could have been productive in something else. So I decided to jump around and instead of talking about my research first, I started writing the section where I connected the research to the text first. I see how I want everything to connect because I know the importance of the research question to my paper, so not only do I get some work done, it might make me realize what I need to research to back up my claims in the process. This entire analysis and relating back to the novel part is essentially half of my paper.

Thanks to Natalia for the short one-on-one meeting at her office hours last Thursday. She told me what parts of my writing I need to improve on. She also made me realize some things I took for granted in Sweet Cicely. Good luck on your papers everybody!

2 comments:

Jeffrey Y. said...

Sometimes it's a lot easier writing different sections in the paper, and then try to link them together later. Might as well write down the ideas that are fresh in the mind. Otherwise, by the time the paper gets to that point, all the ideas might not be there anymore.

Rohit said...

Ya that's a great idea. I think I'm going to use this to help me write my own. Writing this is really difficult, but I like your idea of not writing on the formal intro-body-conclusion way but instead just starting to write the connections first and go from there. Thanks for the ideas.