How to Write High School Research Papers

Writing a research paper can be a challenge for students.

Once you reach high school, you will be expected to have some research skills and to demonstrate these skills when writing papers. The skills you learn writing high school research papers help better prepare you to take on the challenges of college or a job. There's a general formula for writing high school research papers, but always adhere to the specific instructions of your teacher.

Instructions

1. Decide on the subject of your paper and its purpose. For example, you might be writing a paper about the Civil War and your purpose is to explain the outcome of one particular battle.

2. Complete the research for your paper, following your teacher's guidelines for research. Take advantage of resources offered by your school's library, such as a database of online articles from accredited journals and magazines. Also use books on your subject and legitimate professional and academic websites.

3. Outline your research paper. You need a thesis statement, which is a single sentence that explains the purpose of your paper in detail. You also need a topic sentence for each paragraph. Every paragraph should include a separate point to support your thesis, and there should be at least three main points in your research paper.

4. Go through your research and pull out the facts and information you need for your paper. With your outline in front you, go through each of your sources carefully. When you find a fact, quote or professional opinion that backs up your paper's purpose, write it down. Make a note of which paragraph in your outline the information should go into.

5. Write the first draft of your paper. The first paragraph starts by explaining your topic and mentioning each of your main points. It ends with your thesis statement. Fill in the information for each of your supporting paragraphs by adding the quotes, facts and professional opinions from your sources and explaining each one as it relates to your purpose. The final paragraph summarizes each of your main points again.

6. Cite the information you included in your paper from the sources. You need to cite direct quotes, facts and paraphrased information. The way you cite will depend on your teacher's instructions, but you need to include the last name of the author or the first few words of the title if there is no author, and the relevant page number from the source.

7. Proofread. Go back through paper carefully and tighten up your sentence structure. Add more details where needed and transition between paragraphs. Asking someone else to proofread your paper can also be helpful.

8. Type out your bibliography. This is the final page of the paper and includes all the sources you used, in alphabetical order. Rely on your teacher's instructions for the structure of the bibliography, but, in general, you need to include the author's name -- with the last name typed first -- the title of the book, journal, magazine or website, the title of the article (if applicable), the page number, the publisher and the year of publication. A sample entry might look something like "Smith, John. ABC Journal. 'Sample Article.' pg. 123-126. XYZ Publishers: 1995."

References

• ipl2: Research & Writing Step by Step