| Subpages linked off this guide page: | |
| => Term Paper Topic Generator => More Generator Examples | |
| => Term Paper Element Record Sheet | |
| => Visual Aids used in this guide | |
| => Glossary of Term Paper Terms | |
| => Links to Other Resources | |
Step Two: Figure out what a term paper is so you can write one.
Step 3: Develop a Type 3 Question for Your Term Paper. Step 4: Develop a Draft Thesis Statement from Your Type 3 Question. Step 5: Conduct your Research and Record the Locations of your Sources.Alright, then. Ready?
Who wrote Wuthering Heights?
a. Jane Austin |
Now, even if you don't know (or don't care), you know (because it's a multiple-choice question) that there must be one RIGHT answer in the list. The book was written by somebody. There is only have one right answer (c, by the way) because this is a question of fact. Other questions of fact include such things as in what year did some particular event happen, or did Sir Wilfrid Laurier own a dog. Questions of fact generally lead to knowledge (at least that's what the experts say).
Okay, now here's another kind:
| What's your favorite kind of music? |
Questions like these are great conversation starters but don't (unless you ask an awful lot of people and then tally the answers and explain the results, i.e., a survey) as a rule tell you much about the great wide world out there. You may like jazz but your liking it won't mean that I or your sister like it.
A question like this is a question of opinion. Opinions or preferences are good and healthy but they're yours and yours only. Closely related to opinion is personal experience. Again, your own experience may be exciting and interesting but, in most cases, it's but one example of something. You can't really say your experience is the same or similar to anyone else's.
The third type of question
is more complicated. Here's an example:
| Why do people perform criminal acts? |
A question like this doesn't really have a right or a wrong answer. The best you can do to answer it is to go to the library, read up on what various sociologists, criminologists, and others have concluded. You might find that a particular group of psychologists believe they can prove that criminal activity is the result of brain chemistry imbalances. A sociologist might tell you that criminal behaviour is caused by the way society tries to box people. You might be tempted to answer "I don't know."
Okay, so you don't know. How might you find out the answer to this question? You have to do some research and think about what all those authors are saying, decide who is the most convincing to you, and explain clearly why it's convincing. Supposing you came to the conclusion that people perform criminal acts because they were forced, as children, to be nice to the cat. (Okay, that's stupid, but that doesn't matter; it's just an example.)
If someone were to say to you, once you told them your conclusion, "Oh, yeah? prove it," what do you think you'd say to convince them that you are right? You have to have some facts to back up your conclusion and you'd have to explain to your doubting friend why those particular facts are meaningful. You read about the results of a survey that reached this conclusion and there was this other book that said the same thing. Of course there were other books that said it was because of chemical imbalances but perhaps the chemical imbalances were caused by being forced to be nice to the cat. You, in defending your conclusion, are constructing an argument. You're marshalling your "evidence" and presenting it in such a way that your friend can't help but be convinced.
You see how you have to think about the details of the question and find ways to come up with an answer you can live with? Questions like this are questions of judgement.
Questions of judgement are, for the purposes of a term paper, the kind you want. We'll come back to this shortly.
Okay, enough about questions. Just don't forget what you've just learned, though. We'll be revisiting type one (facts) and type three questions (judgements) very soon.
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Perhaps this definition doesn't seem very helpful just as it is. Let me explain.
Any assignment (which includes quizzes, tests, papers, labs, presentations and exams) you receive in class will have one or several goals:
In assignments of the first kind, you'll probably be asked to hand in lab notebooks, successive drafts of your work, answers to questions about your readings, etc., so the instructor can check that you are, indeed, doing the work.
- to create a situation where you will have to do some home, lab, field or library work;
- to create a situation where you will have to demonstrate a competence or skill of some kind; or
- to create a situation where you will have to demonstrate that you understand the practices (research methods, experiments, etc.), ideas or theories of the discipline you're studying and can use them to explain some new situation or phenomenon.
In assignments of the second kind, instructors will set quizzes with short answer, definition or multiple-choice questions. Remember the type one questions? Those questions of fact are what you're likely to encounter on the competence-type tests. For example: Who wrote Wuthering Heights? What is "orogeny"? Name the Commissioner of Yukon.
In assignments of the third kind, your instructor will ask you to write a paper. It might be a short one of about four pages (a unit paper) or a longer one of up to twelve to fifteen pages or more (a term paper). First year students will generally be expected to write papers of between four and ten pages. Second year students will be expected to write longer, more complex ones.
A term paper is an answer to a type three question we looked at above. (Click on the linked text if you would like to review the types of questions.) Some examples: Why do people perform criminal acts? How was the development of Whitehorse be similar or different from that of Yellowknife and why?
| 1. Broad Subject | 2. Specific Instance | 3. Reasoning | 4. Limits |
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Okay, I've looked at the things in the table. Now what?
Let me give you an example of how to use the Term Paper Topic Generator. I've chosen the following elements from the table and shown what exact aspects I'm going to look at (in parentheses):
Why have the numbers of reported tire slashing incidents in Whitehorse perpetrated by females aged 18-24 fallen in the past four years when their rates of vehicle theft have remained high? (See a visual aid of the anatomy of this question on this new page.)As you can see, you can develop a pretty precise judgement-type (Type Three) question with the aid of the generator. (There are some more examples on this new page. Note, too how the question contributes to a revealing title.)
Try it yourself. . . You might like to use this Term Paper Element Record Sheet to organize your thinking. (The sheet opens in a new window so you can switch back and forth.)
When you've played with the generator a bit, and you have a question, carry on to the next section of this guide where we'll explain what to do with a question. (We'll be using the tire-slashing question as the example.)
Oh, one last thing. . . Don't worry if you don't have all the answers to your question at this point or if you think you might change your mind about any aspect of the question or its answer. There'll be lots of room for changes as you go. Indeed, it's a healthy thing to change your mind about the answer as you do your research.
Now that you have a Type Three question, you'll need to think about some possible answers to it. At this point, you may not have a clue what an answer might be or you might have some idea. That's okay.
Start by thinking about what books, journals, magazines, web sites, or people might have some information that will help you answer your question. This is the start of your research.
Have a look at this visual aid of the data required for this term paper. There are three main data elements, in this example, that you'll need to research to start with. You will need to show your reader that the "numbers of reported tire slashing incidents in Whitehorse perpetrated by females aged 18-24" have, indeed, "fallen" even though the "rates of vehicle theft have remained high."
With this information, we have established that the situation, indeed, exists. The next stage of the research will probably be more tricky. We will need to find an explanation for this situation.
Or suppose we think that it might be explained by the fact that fewer young women have driver licenses (where would you find this information?).
Or we might think that it's harder to slash tires (how much effort does it take to slash a car tire?) than it is to steal them (are they stealing cars from people they know? were the keys left in them?).
Remember that Type Three questions do not necessarily have one right answer; they tend to have many possible right answers.
Each of these possible explanations is a "hypothesis," a possible answer to the question. A hypothesis is "a supposition made as a starting point for further investigation from known facts" or "a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without the assumption of truth" (Oxford Canadian Dictionary). Any one of our explanations might be true. We don't know yet.
After we've done some reading and decide on one of them, we have a thesis. A thesis is an answer to a judgement-type question. A thesis, according to the Oxford Canadian Dictionary, is "a position to be maintained [supported] or proved."
A very short summary of the thesis is a thesis statement.
Now that you know what a thesis statement is, you may be wondering why it's such an important element of your term paper.
You must have a thesis statement at the outset of your paper to tell your reader what the paper is about, hint at the question you're going to answer in your term paper, your answer, and the reasons you think your answer is the best one.
Your thesis statement is the road map to your paper. It tells you and your reader where you're going to go. Without it, you only have a mess of words.
To answer your question and to support the thesis you have developed, you'll need information or data. There are three main steps in doing research:
Your instructor may have taken you on a library tour. If not, you may request a brief orientation from the librarians.
Libraries are repositories of massive amounts of information, much of it in books and journals. To make materials easier to locate, libraries are organized in one of two main Classification Systems. Your school library and public libraries most likely used the Dewey Decimal System. Academic libraries, like the Yukon College Library, use the Library of Congress (LC) Subject Classification System.
Knowing that certain sections of the library collects related information allows users to browse the stacks efficiently. Today, library catalogues on computers have made searching collections much easier. However, sometimes looking at the shelves can lead you to books or videos you might not have found with the catalogue.
Librarians are your best source of help in a library. They cannot, however, do your research for you. They can help you locate materials that might be useful but they cannot tell you if the material will help you answer your question. In general, too, they cannot help you choose a topic or help you develop a type three question suitable for your term paper. You must do this for yourself. Try to have your question and hypothesis in mind before you request a librarian's assistance. If you don't know what you're looking for, the librarian won't be able to help you find it.
There are at least six other sources of information in a library. First, every library has a catalogue. Once you know how your subject is indexed (what keywords apply) or classified or who the major authors are, you should be able to use the catalogue to find other works in the same field or by the same author.
Most libraries also have databases of lists of articles and other materials. Many of these are collected according to subject, like ERIC for education, or ASTIS for Northern Studies. Others are collections of materials that appeared in a particular publication, like the Globe and Mail. These databases might be available on CD-ROM in the library or you might have to plan a search with the reference librarian who'll then conduct the search for you online.
A third source of information in a library are the collections of abstracts and reviews. Abstracts are non-evaluative summaries of academic articles or books, usually regularly published in thematic or disciplinary collections. Thus, abstract collections can be an accessible window on recent scholarship in a given field. Reviews, too, can be of help to locate recent books or other materials. You'll either find them in collections of reviews (many of which are online) or in the reviews sections of journals.
Another source of information in a library are the specialist dictionaries and encyclopedias, most often stored in the reference section, that can help you find a starting point to your research. Often the explanations will include cross-references to other articles. Remember, too, that the authors of the entries will be listed somewhere in the book. You might want to see what else they have written.
Many libraries also maintain collections of subject files. These are usually files of newpaper clippings, pamphlets, photographs and other bits and pieces arranged by subject. Sometimes, too, they contain notes deposited by other researchers. Archives often have finding aids, booklets or manuscripts that list some of the archive's holdings on various topics. Ask a librarian if your library has these resources.
Once you have located and begun using library materials, you will need to keep track of what you have looked at and what you have copied information or made notes from (also noting the page numbers).
In academic, and many other kinds of writing, books are identified by five main features:
Journal, magazine and newspaper articles have four main features that identify them:
Whatever style of referencing you're going to be using, you will need all this information plus the page numbers of anything you're likely to include in your paper to document your sources of information properly.
Other sources of information, like videos, laws, information kits, finding aids, audio tapes, computer programs or CD-ROMs have somewhat different identifying features. You should refer to the APA/MLA information to be sure you have recorded everything you're going to need. In general, however, you should try to identify the author, the title, the publishing information, and make a note of what type of material it is.