Hidden agendas are goals that are not immediately obvious but influence how an author presents the facts.

Bias refers to favoritism or prejudice toward a particular person or group

To evaluate your research sources, use critical thinking skills consciously and deliberately. You will consider criteria such as the type of source, its intended purpose and audience, the author’s (or authors’) qualifications, the publication’s reputation, any indications of bias or hidden agendas, how current the source is, and the overall quality of the writing, thinking, and design.

“Tips for Skimming Books and Articles” explains how skimming can help you obtain a quick sense of what topics are covered.

the content will still be presented in an objective style and formal tone

When you search for periodicals, be sure to distinguish among different types.

To locate shorter sources, such as magazine and journal articles, you will need to use an online database.

Ask yourself which sources are most likely to provide answers your research questions.

Secondary sources discuss, interpret, analyze, consolidate, or otherwise rework information from primary sources.

Primary sources are direct, firsthand sources of information or data

Next, in step four, you generate sub-questions from your main question. For instance, “During the 19th century, what were some of the competing theories about how life is created?,” and “Did any of Mary Shelley’s other works relate to the creation of life?” After you know what sub-questions you want to pursue, you’ll be able to move to step five.

Your main research question should be substantial enough to form the guiding principle of your paper—but focused enough to guide your research. A strong research question requires you not only to find information but also to put together different pieces of information, interpret and analyze them, and figure out what you think.

You may also use the list as a starting point to help you identify additional, related topics. Discussing your ideas with your instructor will help ensure that you choose a manageable topic that fits the requirements of the assignment.

Another part of your research plan should include the type of sources you want to gather. The possibilities include articles, scholarly journals, primary sources, textbooks, encyclopedias, and more

You would also not want to search for a single instance of surgery because you might not be able to find enough information on it. Find a happy medium between a too-broad or too-specific topic to research.

Narrow the scope of your argument by identifying the specific subtopic you will research. A broad search will yield thousands of sources, which makes it difficult to form a focused, coherent argument, and it is not possible to include every topic in your research

The research process allows you to gain expertise on a topic of your choice, and the writing process helps you not only remember what you have learned, but also understand it on a deeper level.

As a researcher, you have countless resources at your disposal, and it can be difficult to sift through each source while looking for specific information. If you begin researching without a plan, you could find yourself wasting hours

it is important to develop a research plan to ensure your final paper will accomplish its goals

it is important to develop a research plan to ensure your final paper will accomplish its goals.

Boundless Writing explains that a research paper is an expanded essay that relies on existing discourse to analyze a perspective or construct an argument.

You will need to put your thoughts together in a logical, coherent manner. You may want to use the facts you have learned to create a narrative or to support an argument

A research paper presents an original thesis, or purpose statement, about a topic and develops that thesis with information gathered from a variety of sources.

trying to solve a mystery—you want to know how something works or why something happened. In other words, you want to answer a question that you (and other people) have about the world

The writer should ask himself or herself questions in order to replace the linking verb with an action verb, thus forming a stronger thesis statement, one that takes a more definitive stance on the issue

A joke means many things to many people. Readers bring all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives to the reading process and would need clarification for a word so vague. This expression may also be too informal for the selected audience.

Pinpoint and replace all non-specific words, such as people, everything, society, or life, with more precise words in order to reduce any vagueness.

By challenging your own ideas and forming definite reasons for those ideas, you grow closer to a more precise point of view, which you can then incorporate into your thesis statement.

Your thesis will probably change as you write, so you will need to modify it to reflect exactly what you have discussed in your essay

you must also use confidence in your claim. Phrases such as “I feel” or “I believe” actually weaken the readers’ sense of your confidence because these phrases imply that you are the only person who feels the way you do. In other words, your stance has insufficient backing

The tone is authoritative and takes a stance that others might oppose.

For any claim you make in your thesis, you must be able to provide reasons and examples for your opinion.

A thesis statement must present a relevant and specific argument. A factual statement often is not considered arguable. Be sure your thesis statement contains a point of view that can be supported with evidence.

Your thesis statement should be in your introduction because you must make sure that the audience is aware of your paper’s intent so that there is clarity from the outset.

thesis is not your paper’s topic, but rather your interpretation of the question or subject.

The textbook Successful Writing explains that writers need a thesis statement to provide a specific focus for their essay and to organize what they will discuss in the body of their writing. A thesis statement is an argumentative central claim in a paper; the entire paper is focused on demonstrating that claim as a valid perspective. Your thesis statement should be in your introduction because you must make sure that the audience is aware of your paper’s intent so that there is clarity from the outset

Read your paper aloud to catch errors, and use spell check on your computer to correct any typos.

Revising Your Body Paragraphs As you build support for your thesis in the body paragraphs, always ask yourself if you are spending your readers’ time wisely.

Make sure you draw your readers in from the beginning and follow with interesting and supportive information. If readers are not intrigued from the very beginning of the piece, they will quickly become distracted and avoid reading any further.

Another helpful technique in the final revision process is to have someone read your paper aloud to you. This practice will force you to go over the material more slowly and allow you another chance to absorb the content of the paper.

Revising and editing are two separate processes that are often used interchangeably by novice writers. Revising requires a significant alteration in a piece of writing, such as enriching the content, or giving the piece clarity; editing, however, is not as involved and includes fixing typos and grammatical errors.

T = “What’s all this about?” E = “How do you know?” A = “Why should I care?” R = “What does this have to do with anything?”

Before using a particular transitional word or phrase, be sure you completely understand its meaning and usage. For example, if you use a word or phrase that indicates addition (“moreover,” “in addition,” “further”), you must actually be introducing a new idea or piece of evidence. A common mistake with transitions is using such a word without actually adding an idea to the discussion. That confuses readers and puts them back on rickety footing, wondering if they missed something.

In the end, you want your body paragraphs to build (like blocks) to your conclusion. Transitions are the glue that hold these blocks together. You should work  on building topic sentences that both develop and support the thesis in a logical manner. Avoid such easy, empty transitions as “firstly,” “secondly” and “finally.”

Take a look at the picture above. Notice anything? No two slices are the same. So it should be in your essay. Each paragraph should do its own job, have its own focus.

While you’re writing, think of each paragraph as a self-contained portion of your argument. Each paragraph will begin by making a claim (your topic sentence) that connects back to your thesis. The body of the paragraph will present the evidence, reasoning, and conclusions that pertain to that claim. Usually, paragraphs will end by connecting their claim to the larger argument or by setting up the claim that the next paragraph will contain.

Testimony consists of direct quotations from either an eyewitness or an expert witness. An eyewitness is someone who has direct experience with a subject; he adds authenticity to an argument based on facts

Judgments are conclusions drawn from the given facts. Judgments are more credible than opinions because they are founded upon careful reasoning and examination of a topic.

explain, or prove your main argument without delving into irrelevant details. When faced with lots of information that could be used to prove your thesis, you may think you need to include it all in your body paragraphs.

Ideally the end of your first paragraph will clarify the thesis statement you will support in the rest of your paper.

Not all people like to begin writing their introduction. Some writers like to begin the body paragraphs and then return to the introduction and conclusion once they know what it is they would like to focus on. There is no one right process. Find the process that works for you.

The best way to revise your thesis statement is to ask questions about it and then examine the answers to those questions. By challenging your own ideas and forming definite reasons for those ideas, you grow closer to a more precise point of view, which you can then incorporate into your thesis statement.

Ability to be argued

Precision

Specificity

A formal outline is a detailed guide that shows how all your supporting ideas relate to each other. This outline helps you distinguish between ideas that are equally important and ones that are less important

Three common ways to structure a paper are chronological order, spatial order, and order of importance. Choose the order that will most effectively fit your purpose and support your main point.

When you write, your goal is not only to complete an assignment but also to write for a specific purpose—perhaps to inform, to explain, to persuade, or to achieve a combination of these purposes.

Order refers to your choice of what to present first, second, third, and so on in your writing. The order you pick closely relates to your purpose for writing that particular assignment.

The textbook English for Business Success explains that your prewriting activities and readings can help you gather information for your assignment. The more you sort through the pieces of information you found, the more you will begin to see the connections between them.

You may receive an assignment prompt that asks you to write from your memory, recapturing the experience of reading a special book or text from your childhood or adolescence. Think of this as a chance to recapture something significant from your past, to explore its importance, and to reconstruct it in writing for others to appreciate.

Basic Orienting Facts-Lets the reader know who, when, where, and what is happening. Organization-The reason you order your content the way you do. Structure-The order in which you choose to present your events to your reader Scene-Vivid descriptions of the setting and what you said in order to feel immersed in a story. Scene is the opposite of summary. Use scene sparingly when you want to slow down and focus on an important part of the story. Summary– A way to manage time. When you tell the reader what used to happen in your family, for example, you could explain, “My mother used to cook Sunday dinner for the family. She often made a roast.” You are summarizing what used to happen in the past. If you were to write about a specific Sunday, and you fleshed out what happened in scene with dialogue, included details about the sound of vegetables being chopped, described the smells in the kitchen, and told the reader what your mother was wearing, and reflected on the conversation you had, that would be a scene. Summary condenses information in both academic and creative writing, but in creative writing, summary is linked to time management. Persona– The character of you that you construct. It’s not literally you, because you are not words on the page, right? You are flesh and bone and you have a rich inner life. Use that rich inner life to develop your persona. Persona comes from the Latin word for mask. It’s the version of you that you would like to illustrate for the reader in your memoir. This is a complicated concept. One way to think of your persona is you in relationship to the situation or people in the story. The persona can also be shaped by time: who and what you were like when you were twelve, for example. It can be shaped by relationship to your topic: who and what you are like in relationship to your mother or third grade teacher or your sergeant in boot camp. Readers Trust in You-Readers won’t automatically question your credibility as a narrator on the page, but if you seem very infallible or somehow superhuman while everyone else in the story is tragically flawed, then the reader will wonder about the truthfulness of your own self-depiction. You are accountable to telling the story to your reader as truthfully as you can, while using craft elements to engage the reader. It’s a daunting task. Also, readers like protagonists who are flawed, so be truthful about your mistakes. Setting-Where and when the story takes place. Mood-The emotional weight or atmosphere of a story, created through details, description, and other craft features, for example, sometimes setting can help create a mood. Imagery-An image in a story, or in a poem, is a description that appeals to one of the five senses. An image should also convey additional meaning, either emotional and/or intellectual. It’s not an image to say green gelatin. Green gelatin is meaningless until the reader injects the gelatin with meaning. You can, however, create an image if you were to write, “The Frog Eye Salad recipe that my beloved grandmother used to make for Sunday picnics.” The latter description is specific and contains emotional content. Reflection-The sense and interpretation that you make of the events that transpired in your memoir and how you feel and/or think about them. You can also reflect on the story and relate the events to the universal meaning or theme you would like to include in the story.

you will definitely need transitional words and phrases to guide the reader through time.

As always, it is important to start with a strong introduction to hook your reader into wanting to read more. Try opening the essay with an event that is interesting to introduce the story and get it going. Tell the story with scene and engaging details. Finally, your conclusion should help resolve the central conflict of the story and impress upon your reader the ultimate theme of the piece.

You want your audience to be moved by your story, which could mean through laughter, sympathy, fear, anger, and so on. The more clearly you tell your story, the more emotionally engaged your audience is likely to be.

Notice how the analysis does not simply repeat information from the original report, but considers how the points within the report relate to one another

This diagram illustrates the relationship between Audience, Tone, and Purpose in writing, highlighting how each element influences the content and interacts with the others to create effective communication.

Your teachers will likely introduce different purposes for your writing, and different conventions they want you to follow depending on the disciplines in which they teach.

As you are reading, highlight areas where you have questions, and also mark words you feel are particularly important. Ask yourself why your professor assigned this task. How does it relate to what you are studying in class? Pay attention to key words, such as compare, contrast, analyze, etc. Who is your audience? Should the paper be written in a formal or informal tone? Is there documentation required?

regardless of genre, one can use some basic strategies to approach these assignments constructively.

Once you figure out what works best for you, try to repeat that pattern each time you find yourself in a situation where you must write.

Our brains respond differently to the task of writing. Some people like to outline, some people like to create idea maps, and some people like to write all their ideas down and organize later.

asks a friend or colleague to read what she has written

Your essay should “flow” in the sense that the ideas connect to each other, but not in the sense that the style seems like listening to the waves of a lake lapping against the shore at steady intervals

usually leaves the opposite impression that you are spending too much time with the thesaurus and not enough with the actual substance of the essay.

That means you should avoid unnecessary informality like first and second person usage, use of slang, and the temptation to write like you are texting, tweeting, emailing, blogging, or engaging in any other genre that is typically characterized by a less formal style.

Your writing style, especially your word choice (diction), should reflect the audience you are writing to. Always imagine who your hypothetical audience is (what type of publication would the content of your essay fit into?) and that will help you determine the specifics of your writing style.

A friend who tells you about her weekend may speak excitedly about a fun skiing trip. An instructor who means business may speak in a low, slow voice to emphasize her serious mood. Or, a coworker who needs to let off some steam after a long meeting may crack a sarcastic joke.

Saying each writer has a unique voice does not mean that each writer has a radically different style from anyone else. In academic writing, voice comes down to small habits and personal preferences. Think about it this way: if all the students in your class were told to explain a complex concept, none of them would do it in the same way. Each one would use different language and syntax to describe the concept, and as each student makes individual choices in language and syntax over a period of time,

Voice refers to elements of the author’s tone, phrasing, and style that are recognizably unique to her or him. Having a distinctive, persuasive voice is crucial to engaging your audience — without it, your paper risks falling flat, no matter how much research you’ve compiled or how well you’ve followed other directions

As a writer, it is important to know your audience and to consider which content will be appropriate for that audience. Once you have determined these basic steps in your writing process, you can begin to consider how to shape and develop your voice to be academic and appropriate to the discipline in which you are writing.

you update your status on a social networking site with the awareness of who will digitally follow the post. If you want to brag about a good grade, you may write the post to please family members. If you want to describe a funny moment, you may write with your friends’ senses of humor in mind. Even at work, you send e-mails with an awareness of an unintended receiver who could intercept the message.

Even in everyday writing activities, you identify your readers’ characteristics, interests, and expectations before making decisions about what you write.

Even the best students, however, need to make big adjustments to learn the conventions of academic writing. College-level writing obeys different rules, and learning them will help you hone your writing skills. Think of it as ascending another step up the writing ladder.

Regardless of your field of study, honing your writing skills—plus your reading and critical-thinking skills—will help you build a solid academic foundation.