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Writing a Research Paper
The first step in writing a great research paper is selecting the topic of your paper. If you select a topic that you are passionate about, your paper will most likely be one that is well written and informative. As you contemplate choosing a topic for your paper, you can choose one that you know something about. For example you may want to write about sports in secondary schools. Perhaps you have played sports at the secondary level. However, that topic is too broad for a research paper. So, you can narrow the topic by choosing to focus on one sport, perhaps football. Then to narrow that topic even further you could choose to focus on sports injuries that young people experience in playing football. Or you could site the sports in which students have sustained the most injuries. You could also choose to discuss the continuing impact of sports injuries on students in secondary schools. Just remember to focus on only one aspect of your topic.
Step two in writing your research paper is to gather information by doing research. As you search for information be sure to keep a record of what you have found. You can do this by using paper, but using 3X5 index cards is quite effective in organizing your research. Be sure to record on each card any information that you will be using. You should include the name and author of the publication, the date of publication, and the pages you are citing. If you are using the internet to do your research, it would also be a good idea to include the site where you found the information. This will not only be included in your footnotes and bibliography, but it will also help you to return to the site as you need to. If you choose to do your research on the internet you need only to type into your browser the topic. For example you might type in “football sports injuries-secondary school”. When you find some information that you want to use, save it to your documents folder on your computer. Later, you can record the information on your 3X5 cards. Next, you will organize your cards by the topic. For example, you will organize all of the information about a major injury sustained by students together with all cards containing that information. Number your cards to coincide with each topic. Now you are ready for the next step, an outline.
First of all you will state your objective in writing about your chosen topic. (1)football injuries sustained by secondary athletes. (2) football can cause serious and continuing harm to young players, football is a dangerous sport as shown by injuries. (3) my brother sustained head injuries playing football
I.Introduction: Playing football in the secondary school causes
life altering injuries, and sometimes even death
II.Body: Statistics
A. Broken limbs
a. arms
b. legs
c. hands
B. Life threatening injuries
a. concussions
b. other head injuries.
III. Coaches
a. ignorance of injuries
b. ignorance of treatment of injuries
c. using injured players
IV. Conclusion
A. Summarize information from the body
B. Restate purpose
C. Concluding statement
Your outline will help you explore your research and contribute to the information you already know. Now that you have your outline and your research organized you can begin to write your research paper. Follow your outline carefully to include any information from your research cards to either express your thoughts or quote from the information that you have searched and recorded on your cards. Make a note of the authorities that you have cited to be sure to include the name, author, date of publication, and page numbers. This information will be cited in footnotes and in your bibliography at the end of your paper.
Now that you have finished writing your research paper, carefully check it for errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Make sure that you have written complete sentences and have not repeated information unnecessarily. Take note of organization problems and reorganize if needed. Ins
 Posted 261 day ago
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