Helpful Tips For Writing An Academic Paper

Whether you like them or not, papers are an inevitable assignment at any level of education. Teachers assign them so they can get a feel for how well you understand a certain subject, or to see how well you can argue for or against a specific point.

Many students don't even know where to begin when writing an academic paper. I have listed some points that I have found to be quite useful in my own personal experiences with academic papers.

Start as Soon as Possible- A major reason students hate writing papers is because some tend to leave them until the last possible minute. Trying to cram all of the necessary research and the actual writing of the paper into a small time frame is a recipe for disaster, and can lead to anxiety. Try starting your paper as soon as your teacher assigns it. That way you only have to do a little work at a time.

Say your teachers assigns a 20-page paper due at the end of the semester. If you sit down and write at least one page a day, you could finish your entire paper in under a month. That will leave you with plenty of time to review your paper and make any needed changes or improvements.

Don't Focus on Writing the Introductory Paragraph First- The introductory paragraph of any paper can be the hardest to write. It represents the first impression of your paper. You only get one first impression so it has to be good. People can waste too much valuable time staring at a blank screen, totally stumped on how to start their paper.

Try writing your middle paragraphs first. This is where you go into detail or present the facts to support your topic. If you have done proper research, this part should be much easier to write as you are simply stating your case. After you have written the body of your paper, you might find it easier to come up with a solid intro that clearly informs the reader the main points of your paper.

Have a Plan for your Paper- Ask yourself this, would you want someone to build your house without designing what it will look like first? The obvious answer is no, you wouldn't. So then why would you want to start writing a paper without having some kind of structure in place for your paper?

Think of this plan like a mental map for your paper. You need it to help you figure out where you must start, where you must finish, and what road you must take to get from the start to the finish.