Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

How you can best think about your project
What researchers do and how they think about it
Writing your paper

You have learned a great deal new about writing research papers, and it's only the end of the first chapter. We'll cover this ground again in later chapters, where we'll go step-by-step through the process of planning, researching, drafting, and revising your paper. Don't expect to walk though those steps exactly as we lay them out—research is too messy, with lots of looping back and jumping forward. But if you stay flexible and take it one step at a time, you'll get through the process easily enough.

1.4.1 Focus on Convincing Readers, Not on Filling Pages

For now, we would like you to focus not on the steps but on creating an overall mental picture of research that you will keep in mind as you work. Unfortunately, the two most popular pictures are ones we hope you will avoid. In the first, you think of your project as no more than looking up information. All that matters is the hunt. What comes after is an afterthought:

Q: How's your project coming?

A: Good. I dug up lots of information from lots of sources (even including a bunch of print sources from the library). All I have to do is figure out how to organize my notes and then I can just write it all up.

In the second picture, you think of your project as filling up pages. All that matters is mounding up enough information to fill the assigned number of pages:

Q: How's your project coming?

A: Good. I have a four-point outline and I've found three pages of stuff on the first two points. All I need is three more pages on the second two points and I'm done.

If you think of your project in these ways, you'll doom yourself to failure.

Although you and your teacher might say that your assignment is to write a research paper, we urge you to think instead in terms of a research project. Writing a research paper is only one step in a complex process in which (1) you find a research question important to you and to your readers; (2) you decide what information you need to find based on the question you ask; (3) you use the information you find to select and then test the best answer to your research question; and (4) you finally present that answer and its support in a way that anticipates readers' questions.

As you begin to plan for your project, let these principles be your guide:

✵ Don't think that your primary task is to collect and organize information from sources (though you will have to do that). Your task is to ask and answer a research question that interests you and your readers.

✵ Don't think that when you write your paper your goal is to fill up a certain number of pages with the information you've found. Your paper is what you say to your readers, what you use to communicate your question, its answer, and your argument supporting that answer.

✵ Most importantly, don't think of research as a solitary endeavor. Keep your readers with you from start to finish.

If right from the start you focus on asking and answering questions, you'll find it easier to do the things that will produce a successful paper. Focus on finding stuff to fill pages, and you're sure to go wrong.

1.4.2 Picture Yourself in Conversation with Your Readers

As you plan, research, and draft your paper, picture yourself in an imaginary conversation with your readers. Imagine those readers as interested and inquisitive colleagues, even partners, who want an answer as much as you do. You welcome their questions because they help you know what to say and how to say it. If you can do that, your paper will be better. But just as importantly, you'll be preparing yourself for the day when your readers are indeed colleagues who need from you the best answers you and they can find.

Imagine that conversation taking place not in a classroom, but sitting around a table. Your question grabs their attention because they recognize that they'll be worse off if they can't find an answer. You share not just your answer, but all the information you can find that is relevant to deciding whether your answer is a good one. In sharing that information, you try to anticipate their questions. You are candid enough to acknowledge any information that challenges or complicates your answer, and you address objections they might have. Even so, they have many more questions, alternative explanations, and other issues—each of which you consider and address as fairly as you can. In short, you join with your readers in working through the task of finding and testing the best answer you can find. If you think of your project in these terms, you'll make more good decisions and waste less time as you write your paper. You'll also find that in making your work matter to your readers, you make it matter to you as well.

WORKING IN GROUPS

Find Surrogate Readers

You can help yourself think of your paper as a conversation with readers if you talk about your work to your family, friends, and classmates. Later we will suggest that you form a writing group for testing your storyboard and draft. But it may not be too early to form an informal group even before you find a question. Recruit three or four classmates who will join you for coffee or lunch just to talk over your earliest ideas. At this point, you don't need suggestions, just a sympathetic ear. You will also learn just from listening: the more you experience what your readers will, the easier it will be to imagine them.