How to Write a Research Paper

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Laura from youngwritersworkshops.com. And I want to talk about writing a research report. The key in a research report is organization. You want to choose a topic that you'll be able to cover in a way that is complete and not overwhelming. So, step one in writing a research report is choosing a topic, a manageable size topic. And one you're interested in. The next step is doing some research, pulling together sources, finding out a little bit more about it, and also finding out where you're going to get more information. You might have a topic where you could use interviews. People in your community that you could interview, you might have a topic where you could visit a museum, or a zoo to get more information. So, start putting together what your sources are going to be, and how you're going to do this research. Once you've accomplished, kind of got an idea of what your sources are, gather some basic information so that you have enough information to write an outline. The outline is going to serve as sort of the backbone of your research. Now, while you're gathering information, you want to create note cards or some other system for organizing each piece of information. Some people do it electronically, some people use post it notes, some people use index cards. But you'll want to have some sort of organization for each piece of information. Now this can, and from your outline you can arrange your cards or post it notes to create you outline. Or you can just type up an outline based on the information you've gathered. Now, you're going to want to go back to this outline once you start writing, and probably revise it, this is a very typical thing to have happen. But you'll want to have your outline to start from. Once you've created your outline and begin to write, you'll have sections ready to put together. For each piece of information, you also want to make sure you document these sources because you're going to need to include bibliography on where you site your sources. For more information about writing bibliographies, you can refer to the many sources on line depending on the style MLA, or APA. So, when you have your completed report, proofread it, proofread it again, make sure that it's free of grammatical and typo, typographical errors. And format it in a clean, easy to follow way. And you've got your research report."