research writing activities

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Practice Exercises: Writing, Reading, Grammar

Practice exercises to review what you have learned and identify any areas that need more focus.   , research writing exercises.

• Exercise: Can the topic be researched?
• Exercise: Is the research question too broad or too narrow?
• Worksheet: Evaluate your own research question
• Exercise: Choose the best research thesis
• Exercise: Evaluating sources
• Exercise : Distinguish between summaries and paraphrases

Critical Reading Exercises

• Worksheet: Exercise for while you read
• Worksheet: Authority of the writer
• Worksheet: Logic of the writer's argument
• Worksheet: How the writer gets your interest
• Worksheet: Writer's use of language and style
• Worksheet: Ideology that informs the text
• Worksheet: Examining your reactions

Grammar Exercises

• Exercise 1a: Basic noun-verb agreement
• Exercise 1b: Advanced noun-verb agreement
• Exercise 2a: Basic agreement with trick singulars
• Exercise 2b: Advanced agreement with trick singulars
• Exercise 3: Agreement when words come between the noun and verb
• Exercise 4: Noun-pronoun agreement

Punctuation Exercises

• Exercise 1: Apostrophes
• Exercise 2: Capitalization
• Exercise 3a: Basic commas and semicolons

 Documenting Sources

• Exercise 1: The difference between primary and secondary sources
• Exercise 2: Sample search
• Exercise 3: Documenting within the paper - MLA
• Exercise 4: Documenting within the paper - APA
• Exercise 5: Documenting within the paper - Turabian
• Exercise 6: Documenting at end of paper - MLA
• Exercise 7: Documenting at end of paper - APA
• Exercise 8: Documenting at end of paper - Turabian
• Exercise 9: Where to document

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Information Literacy Instruction

• Exercises to Build Research Skills
• Formulate a research topic
• Find Information
• Evaluate Information
• Use Information
• Chicago/Turabian
• Citation Tools

Exercises Overview

Library instruction exercises.

The exercises below are designed for students learning to do research. They can be done in class or assigned as homework. They are in Word format so instructors who wish to use them can easily edit or adapt them. When appropriate, they contain an answer key, so instructors should look at the full handout and remove the answer key before sharing with students.

If you would like a librarian to come to your class to lead these exercises or if you would like an exercise customized for your subject area, contact your Library Liaison!

• Formulate a topic
• Find information
• Evaluate information
• Incorporate information
• Cite information
• Writing assignment formats
• Triangulating your research This exercise guides students with a broad topic to identify search terms and narrow their topic, arriving at a research question.
• Formulating a Research Question from a Broad Topic Students often begin their research (and writing) with a very broad topic. This means they waste a lot of time looking for resources that they will never use. Before they begin to research, it is ideal to have a focused question. This 10 minute assignment teaches them how to turn a very broad topic into a focused research question.
• Identifying and Refining a Research Topic Using Concept Maps This exercise is designed to help students think of words and concepts and see how they are related. They create a concept map of their topic, which may help them see ways to narrow their topic and arrive at a research question.
• Identifying and Refining a Research Topic Using Journalistic Questions Journalistic questions are a set of questions you can use to define your topic more clearly. This exercise will help student ask questions about their topic. Having specific questions to answer makes researching the topic easier when you get to that stage.
• Defining Search Terms Students will often try one or two search terms when using a database and assume there’s no information on their topic if it doesn’t work the first time. This exercise gets them thinking about synonyms and related words. This 15 minute exercise may seem simple, but I can almost guarantee that the next time they sit down at a database they will try multiple searches before giving up.
• Identifying Keywords In this exercise, students will practice identifying keywords that might be used to research their topic. The exercise has three parts. First, they will identify the keywords from sample research questions. Then they will brainstorm synonyms for those keywords, demonstrating the need to search using more than just one keyword. Finally, they will complete the exercise for their own research question.
• Information Source Comparison This activity helps students explore the strengths and weakness of Google, Google Scholar, Academic Search Complete and topic specific databases as information sources.
• Understanding Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT In order to apply your keywords to an effective search, you must be able to employ Boolean logic. Those operators are AND OR & NOT. The object of this exercise is to practice your use of those operators by looking at an everyday experience : Ordering food from a fast food restaurant.
• Creating Keyword Searches Using Boolean Operators In this exercise, students will practice selecting search terms and combining them using boolean operators in order to create an effective search.
• Popular, Trade or Peer Reviewed? Great hands-on exercise to teach students about the differences among the 3 types of publications. Students can read the differences in the provided example, but real learning takes place when they have to sift through the actual publications and write down differences. Can be tailored to use any three sources appropriate for your discipline.
• Analyze 4 types of sources This assignment does two things: 1) it makes students find 4 different types of sources rather than just search the Web; 2) it teaches students how to evaluate ALL information and compare and contrast different types of sources.
• Pin the News Source on the Fake News Continuum This activity asks students to research a variety of news sources and place them on a continuum to define their reliability.
• Evaluating Sources Process Cards This is a group activity in which students are given cards with a variety of sources on them. They evaluate the sources based on criteria such as "authority," "ease of creation," "time to creation" etc.
• Evaluating sources writing assignment Requires the student to answer a series of questions about a source they have found. These questions are also a good basis for writing the annotation for an annotated bibliography exercise.
• Article Analysis - upper level This exercise requires students to evaluate a scholarly article for not only its relevance to their research topic but also for its potential to help them find more sources via citation mining and keyword generation.
• Evaluating Web Resources Students choose one of three websites to evaluate. After evaluating the website they must make a judgment on whether it is good or bad for academic research and explain their decision. This assignment can be tailored to use websites related to your subject area. Just ask!

Introductory level - avoid plagiarism by properly using quotes, paraphrases and summaries.

• Evaluating quotes and paraphrases (100/200 level) Students are given a sample citation and 7 easy uses. They judge if the use is appropriate or plagiarism.
• Evaluating quotes, summaries and paraphrases Students are given a sample text and 4 summaries. They judge if the summary is legitimate or plagiarism.
• Quotes, Summaries and Paraphrases from the Purdue Owl This PDF from the Purdue Owl explains what each of these are, how to use them and concludes with a hands on exercise that requires students to summarize and paraphrase several sample original texts.
• Write your own quote, summary, paraphrase Given a single sample text, students are asked to write their own quote, summary, paraphrase for the instructor's evaluation. Can be tailored for any class.

Introductory level - how to integrate quotes, paraphrases and summaries

• Integrating quotes Given a single sample paragraph, students are asked to identify several key methods quotes are integrated into the paragraph.
• Analyzing how to integrate quotes and summaries This exercise has students analyze how and why scholarly authors have integrated quotes and summaries in order to help them learn smooth methods to use quotes and summaries in their own research.
• Analyzing supporting evidence An exercise that asks students to analyze how and why evidence is used in an existing scholarly article.

Introductory level - learning how and why to use sources

• Un-research Project This exercise helps students focus on why they choose sources to support their research.
• Is your paper well supported with evidence A quick, easy and visual exercise to help students determine if their paper arguments are well supported with evidence.

Upper level - synthesizing information

• Updating a literature review This exercise is appropriate to introduce the concept of a literature review and how to synthesize information in one.
• Mini-literature review assignment An introduction to literature reviews. Scaffolded instruction for how to approach your first literature review.
• Synthesis Matrix A beginner's matrix to help students begin thinking about synthesizing their sources.
• Advanced Synthesis Matrix A source synthesis matrix for advanced level writing assignments.

Create a list of sources with improper citations. Have the students attempt to locate the sources.  This should demonstrate to students how citations are used to track down sources and how frustrating it can be for their teachers and fellow researchers when they don’t provide adequate citations. Examples to use here could include books with multiple editions or books with very generic titles.

Breaking citations down: Develop a list of citations. Break these citations down (components: author, date, publisher, title, etc). Type or write them down on larger pieces of construction paper, cardboard, etc. You can utilize a variety of colors, shapes, sizes. Have students work as groups to assemble the parts (you can use pin boards, a wall and tape, magnetic boards, etc). This can easily be turned into a competitive game.

Selecting an Effective Writing Assignment Format

In addition to the standard essay, report or full research paper formats, several other formats exist that might give students a different slant on the course material or allow them to use slightly different writing skills. Here are some suggestions:

Journals. In-class journal entries can spark discussions and reveal gaps in students’ understanding of the material. Having students write an in-class entry summarizing the material covered that day can aid the learning process and also reveal concepts that require more elaboration. Out-of-class entries involve short summaries or analyses of texts, or are a testing ground for ideas for student papers and reports.

Letters. Students can define and defend a position on an issue in a letter written to someone in authority. They can also explain a concept or a process to someone in need of that particular information. They can write a letter to a friend explaining their concerns about an upcoming paper assignment or explaining their ideas for an upcoming paper assignment. If you wish to add a creative element to the writing assignment, you might have students adopt the persona of an important person discussed in your course (e.g., an historical figure) and write a letter explaining his/her actions, process, or theory to an interested person (e.g., “pretend that you are John Wilkes Booth and write a letter to the Congress justifying your assassination of Abraham Lincoln,” or “pretend you are Henry VIII writing to Thomas More explaining your break from the Catholic Church”).

Editorials . Students can define and defend a position on a controversial issue in the format of an editorial for the campus or local newspaper or for a national journal.

Cases . Students might create a case study particular to the course’s subject matter.

Position Papers . These projects ask students to research a topic from a variety of viewpoints, and then use that research to support their own perspective. Students can define and defend a position, perhaps as a preliminary step in the creation of a formal research paper or essay.

Imitation of a Text . Students can create a new document “in the style of” a particular writer (e.g., “Create a government document the way Woody Allen might write it” or “Write your own ‘Modest Proposal’ about a modern issue”).

Instruction Manuals . Students write a step-by-step explanation of a process.

Dialogues . Students create a dialogue between two major figures studied in which they not only reveal those people’s theories or thoughts but also explore areas of possible disagreement (e.g., “Write a dialogue between Claude Monet and Jackson Pollock about the nature and uses of art”).

Collaborative projects . Students work together to create such works as reports, questions, and critiques.

Summary papers These assignments ask students to summarize a key concept from the course, or a reading or set of readings.

Compare/contrast papers Students are asked to compare/contrast theoretical positions from key scholars, reading, methods, or procedures for completing a task, etc.

Reading responses Students are asked to respond to specific questions about course readings. These can take place in reading journals that you occasionally collect, or reading responses on a discussion forum (on Moodle or elsewhere).

Position response papers Students are provided with a position that they must then defend or refute using course concepts and outside research.

Disciplinary problem papers These projects ask students to make an argument for the best solution to a disciplinary problem.

Data analysis papers Students are provided with raw data (or asked to collect raw data themselves) that they must then analyze using a particular methodology from the course.

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Research Topics & Questions

Main navigation, exquisite corpse topic narrowing activity.

In this activity, students engage in an "exquisite corpse"-style activity, where they will get to pass around their research topic idea and see how other students in the room understand, interpret, illustrate, and expand upon it. 

Crafting Insightful Research Questions

Through this activity, students examine what constitutes a strong research question and then, through peer workshopping, start to develop a question to guide their own project.

Crowdsourcing Research Topics and Paths

This discussion-board-based activity helps students narrow down their final RBA research topic by encouraging students to collaborate with each other at the initial stage of conceiving of their RBA projects. 

Metonyms and Lenses - Focusing Your Research

This topic helps students narrow and focus their research topics by having them consider them in reference to the idea of the metonym.

The Reflexivity Memo: Developing Student Researcher Identity through Writing

This writing activity asks students to understand their various positionalities as researchers/writers and to recognize how their embodied socialized practices shape their research questions and practices.

Jumbo ‘Spectra’ Worksheets for Narrowing Topics and Locating Positions

In this activity, students use a pair of worksheets to create a visual mapping of research questions to help them focus their topic and their inquiry and identify positions beyond "yes" and "no."

Accordion Pre-Write

Students create an "accordion" of these questions to see the full spectrum of possibilities for their research, developing greater insight into the pitfalls of overly-specific or overly-general questions and the advantages of carefully-focused inquiry.

Research Topic Brainstorm

This asynchronous activity follows a class discussion in which students brainstorm different topics; it asks students to submit their own ideas to Canvas and receive instructor feedback. 

Research Question Generator with Padlet

This asynchronous activity uses Padlet to help students generate research questions with a rhetorical approach. Students not only craft research questions with different emphases, they also critically reflect on critical rhetorical concepts and the purpose of their research. 

Research Question Framing

This asynchronous activity helps students think through the process of framing their research questions at the early stage of their RBA by asking them to consider different ways of framing their research questions. It also encourages students to work with each other in the process of finalizing their research questions.

Research Proposal Planning Table

This asynchronous activity helps students thoroughly examine their research proposals with a rhetorical approach. Students not only look at different components of the research question itself, but also critically reflect on their audience and the purpose of their research to prepare for an excellent oral delivery of their research proposals.

Online Research Mixer

Instructors designed a 60-minute online workshop (research mixer) between freshmen composition students two different universities. During the session, students have the opportunity to introduce their research projects and provide and receive feedback on their drafts. 

Collaborative invention: working with research topics

This collaborative activity invites students to help their classmates to narrow and focus their research topics by taking turns contributing to a shared worksheet that asks them to engage with the topic in different ways.  

These activities are licensed under  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 . Please remember to attribute all activities to their original authors (even if with an “adapted from”) on any handouts, webtexts, slides, or assignments sheets you generate from them.

If you have any activities of your own that you’d like to share, please send them  here .

FSU | Writing Resources

Department of English

• College Composition

Arguments on Trial: Using research/evidence in writing

Curious researcher teaching groups, deconstructing source integration: using research/evidence, hypertextuality and online research: evaluating and using online sources, sharpening structure: the research essay, citation remediation.

Purpose:  This activity teaches students how to identify areas of their paper that will require additional research and accompanies “The New American Epidemic” (2006–07 OOW).

Description:  This activity asks students to play devil’s advocate, finding holes in the first draft of an argumentative essay, and then seeing how many of those holes have been “filled” in the essay’s final draft. The purpose is to teach students to see the flaws in their own arguments and avoid the trap of supporting opinions with opinions.

Suggested Time:  50 minutes

•  Instructor will divide the class into groups of three, and each will read the first draft of “The New American Epidemic.”
•  As students are reading the draft, they will act as defense attorneys for student drinking by picking out weaknesses in the original argument. Are there any claims the author makes without using supporting evidence? Does the argument employ vague generalizations? What counter-arguments could be made? Are these arguments addressed?
•  After reading the paper, charge students to develop a “case” against it.
•  The next step will be to test this case against the paper’s final draft. In other words, students should compare the “holes” they noticed in the first draft to see how/if they have been addressed in the final draft Would you still be able to defend student drinking? What additions in the drafting process made this argument stronger? Are there any areas where additional research would strengthen this case?

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Purpose:  These student-led group presentations will help students become familiar with information in their research writing text--The Curious Researcher. Five groups of students will each be in charge of presenting one chapter from The Curious Researcher.

Description:  Students will be divided into five groups—one for each chapter of The Curious Researcher. Groups will be scheduled to present on appropriate days while students are working on their assigned researched essays. For example, when the class first begins working on their researched essays, Group I will present on Chapter I: The First Week.

This site includes directional advice for groups along with a “Teaching Group Evaluation Form” that can help you evaluate each group and a "Teaching Group Member & Self-Evaluation Form” for students to complete and give to you.

Suggested Time:  Each group presentation will take 15-30 minutes spread out over the five weeks or so your class works on their researched essays.

Procedure:  Divide students into five groups, one for each of the five chapters of The Curious Researcher. Schedule dates on which the various groups will present. Give each student a copy of the information that follows—“TEACHING SECTIONS OF THE CURIOUS RESEARCHER.” This information serves as directional advice for each group. Go over it in class with students.

TEACHING SECTIONS OF THE CURIOUS RESEARCHER

Direction for Groups:  Get in contact with your members ASAP so that you can decide how to divide your chapter. Through Blackboard, you can send emails and exchange files to your entire class, or a particular person. Your group needs to get together and plan your presentation prior to your assigned presentation date.

Think like a teacher:  What material will be most relevant to the class at this point? Which pages should they pay close attention to? How can you present the material so that students will grasp it? Which exercises will work best at this stage in the writing process?

You can use our projector with the Internet, handouts, Power Point slides, and/or demonstrations. The consol also plays DVDs and CDs. Handouts that mark-out your overview of the chapter work well, though your classmates can also make notes. If you want students to bring materials to class for your presentation (handbooks, photos, ads, magazines, paper drafts, etc), you may send them emails through Blackboard, or make an announcement beforehand. I am also willing to help you as needed, so if there is something I can do let me know.

Think as a student:  Which exercises worked best for you at this stage? Which were forgettable? If you lead an exercise in class, test it before you present so that you know how long it will take, and how many you'll have time for. Confer between members on which ones seemed most effective. Make sure any assignments you give the class for homework will help them advance their papers, but you are authorized to do so.

Note:  Some chapters have a lot going on, so you'll need to really focus on covering the most pertinent material and exercises with the class. Also keep in mind the readings and journals we’re working on at the stage of drafting you present for. How might you choose/phrase your exercises or chapter material discussed to fit in with our process? Will your classmates have drafts in hand to work with? Should they bring in sources or pre-draft material?

Following is an evaluation form for your use as you evaluate the various groups and give them feedback on their presentations.

Teaching Group Evaluation Form

Course and Section:

Presentation Date:

Group Members:

Chapter Presented:

Evidence of Preparation (scale of 1 – 5):

Presentation of Main Points (scale of 1 – 5):

Use of Extra Media, if applicable (1 – 5):

Choice of Exercises (1 – 5):

Involvement of Group Members (1 – 5):

Last, here’s a form you can ask each group member to complete that will provide you with information about each student’s contribution to the group.

Teaching Group Member & Self-Evaluation Form

Rate Preparation of Each Group Member (scale of 1 – 5):

Notes to add:

Rate Your Preparation (scale of 1 – 5):

Who Made the Most Effort? Why?

Who Made the Least? Why?

Considering your group’s honest interest in conveying the most crucial information to the class at the appropriate stage of drafting (preparation, methods, participation), what mark (1 – 5) do feel your group realistically deserves?

Purpose:  This activity will show students how to successfully integrate outside sources with one’s own ideas in order to produce a new piece of writing; it accompanies “Liam O’Flaherty’s ‘The Sniper’ and the Irish Civil War” (2008-09 OOW)

Description:  In this activity, students find, read, and summarize one of the sources used in “Liam O’Flaherty’s ‘The Sniper’ and the Irish Civil War.” They then analyze the author’s use of that assigned source, which helps them see the “hows” and “whys” of successful source use. In the process, this should help with quote integration and MLA citation, and will give students practice looking for sources, especially when finding books in the library.

Suggested Time:  Two class sessions. This is a homework-based activity that will require a few days of students’ time outside of class.

 1) Day One: Read and discuss “Liam O’Flaherty’s ‘The Sniper’ and the Irish Civil War.” Place students into small groups.  2) Homework: Assign each group one of the sources from essay. As homework, each group should then find, read, and summarize the source they are assigned. They should also reexamine “Liam O’Flaherty’s ‘The Sniper’ and the Irish Civil War” and analyze the author’s use of their assigned source—paying attention to

• how much of the source was directly quoted,
• how the author used the source to back up his own view,
• how well the sources strengthen the argument, and
• how heavily the author relies on the source.

This might be best accomplished by highlighting or marking the physical page to see where the sources appeared within the essay and making notes in the margins. Each member of the group should have their own photocopy of the source; posting it on Blackboard and asking students to print it off might be the best way to facilitate. It may also help to note the different ways the author transitions from his own words to source material.

3) Day Two: Each group should then present their findings to the class.

Additional Information: Ideally this exercise would have better success using a research paper with more sources. There aren’t many sources used, so the groups will be large in nature. If the instructor wishes to have groups smaller than five, some groups can be assigned to look for additional sources the author could’ve used. As an alternative, Amanda Davison’s “Obesity And Famine: How Vegetarianism Can Help” (2009-10 OOW) can be used in conjunction with the original essay. At the end, you might want to have students write a reflective journal detailing their experience with incorporating evidence from sources as well as any issues they faced while working with their group.

Purpose:  This activity helps students to develop their skills in identifying and incorporating online sources, using the student essay “The Suburban Generation” from Our Own Words 2006–2007. It is designed to heighten or instigate awareness of hypertextuality, especially its potential in linking information or incorporating additional information from sources right into the text . Furthermore, hypertextuality presents interesting research possibilities, in that students learn how to develop connections between a primary and secondary text, while also learning how to discern between specific online resources.

This activity accompanies Chapters 2 and 3 of  The Curious Researcher . (Online research involved, works best in a computer classroom)

Time Suggested:  50 min class period

 (Students will have read “The Suburban Generation” before class)

•  Begin with a discussion or freewrite about hypertext to get them thinking about how different aspects of texts are interrelated.
•  Have students define hypertext. How does hypertext enter their lives daily?How is hypertext used in the world today? For communication, organization, entertainment, etc. Perhaps show examples of hypertext in use via blogs or other online resources.
•  Divide the students into groups. Then have the students discuss “The Suburban Generation” and think of the words they would hyperlink.
•  Students will research and find a corresponding webpage to link with the words they would hyperlink. For example, the students could search for a page explaining “Raiki healing.”
•  Have a group discussion and make the students justify their choices for hyperlink (both the word and webpage). This would be a good place to guide the students into a discussion about good versus bad research (reliable and academic websites).
•  Perhaps walk the students through the research of a certain topic. Demonstrate how they might navigate through different sources, from online sources, to books, to articles, to personal interview, back to the web or books, etc.

Purpose:  Key Words: Structure, Organization, Thesis Statement, Outline. Accompanying Essay: “Liam O’Flaherty’s ‘The Sniper’ and the Irish Civil War”

Description:  The purpose of this exercise is to examine structure as it works in conjunction with an essay’s controlling idea (thesis statement). Most students forget (or are told to forget) the five-paragraph essay form. But as a result, students are not sure what to think about structure. If they receive any instruction about structure in ENC 1101, it is most likely in the context of personal writing, more creative writing. This exercise provides a way to examine the practical, almost natural, way in which structure can be teased out of one sentence, a statement of an essay’s controlling idea. This activity makes outlining less arbitrary and more fruitful for students writing research essays.

Suggested Time:  A 50 minute class period.

• Have students read the introduction to the essay and locate the essay’s thesis statement.
• Have students identify the key terms in the thesis statement.
• As a class, construct a barebones outline from the provided thesis statement.
• Have students then break up into groups and read the entire essay. During this process, have them make an outline for the essay.
• Come back together as a class and each group’s outlines. Look to see how these outlines compare to the barebones outline you constructed as a class just from the thesis statement.
• With these two sets of outlines in hand, critique the thesis statement: was it accurate? Was it clear? Should the thesis statement be revised at all, and if so, how?
• Have students free write on how they can apply this activity to their own research paper.

Purpose of Exercise:  How many times have you tried teaching your students MLA guidelines, and in how many ways? Maybe it was a Jeopardy game. Maybe it was a lengthy Powerpoint or a PDF of guidelines. This exercise will allow your students to engage with citations relevant to their own projects by breaking the process down into steps which they are responsible for providing a set of multimodal instructions for completing.

Description:  Students will be composing a how-to guide for creating a citation relevant to a project they are currently working on which features what text is being cited, what format to use, where to find the necessary information for creating it, and what the finished product looks like, and why.

Suggested Time:  Class period

Procedure:  Your students should be participating in this exercise in the context of a project for your course, one which requires secondary sources and/or a primary text of some kind. Have your students consult their McGraw-Hill Handbooks and/or the Purdue Owl in search of how to cite the type of text being cited. From here, students will combine images and text to show how to make an in-text citation and works cited entry for their chosen text, with an explanation of where they got the information (URL on the OWL or pages in the McGraw-Hill Handbook). Prezi and Powerpoint offer good venues for compiling and organizing the steps in citation creation, as they have slides/a path built into them which will help students think about creating citations as a process. The final product should serve as a step-by-step how-to guide for making an in-text citation and a works cited entry for a particular type of text which the rest of the class can use as a model for making their own citations as related to their own projects.

Additional Information:  This activity works best in a computer writing classroom, but can be altered to accommodate a lack of computer technology. Depending on the project or range of sources being used, you can break your students into groups responsible for particular texts (web source, movie, song, album, TV show, videogame, etc.) which are prevalent for the project at hand, and can present their finished work at the end of class to their peers, depending on time and resources at your disposal.

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Writing a Research Paper

28 Writing a Research Paper: Exercises

Exercise 29.1

• In this chapter, you learned strategies for generating and narrowing a topic for a research paper. Brainstorm to create a list of five general topics of personal or professional interest to you that you would like to research. Then use freewriting and preliminary research to narrow three of these topics to manageable size for a five- to seven-page research paper. Save your list of topics in a print or electronic file and add to it periodically as you identify additional areas of interest. Use your topic list as a starting point the next time a research paper is assigned.
• One subject-specific periodicals database likely to include relevant articles on your topic
• Two articles about your topic written for an educated general audience
• At least one article about your topic written for an audience with specialized knowledge
• What topics you learn about by reading or viewing this source
• Whether you consider this source reliable and why

In addressing the latter point, be sure to consider details that help you evaluate the source’s credibility and reputability, as well as the presence or absence of bias.

• What are the purpose, intended audience, and message of this document?
• How does the writing style function to fulfill the purpose, appeal to a particular audience, and convey a message? Consider elements of style, such as word choice, the use of active or passive voice, sentence length, and sentence structure. If your document includes graphics, consider their effectiveness as well.
• Are there any places where the style is inconsistent?
• Is the writing style of this document effective for achieving the document’s purpose? Why or why not? If it is not effective, explain why.

Text Attributions

• This chapter was adapted from “ Writing a Research Paper: End-of-Chapter Exercises ” in Writing for Success by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution (and republished by University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing). Adapted by Allison Kilgannon.  CC BY-NC-SA .

Provincial English Copyright © 2022 by Allison Kilgannon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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