Research Paper

Your finished paper should be a presentation of your own thinking backed up by your practice training experiences possibly the ideas or information of others in the field.

A paper can be:

ANALYTICAL = using evidence to analyze facets of an issue

ARGUMENTATIVE = uses evidence to attempt to convince the reader of your particular stance on a debatable topic.

The choice of one of the two types will determine the purpose of the paper you are going to write.

“To analyze means to break a topic or a concept down into its parts in order to inspect and understand it, and to restructure those parts in a way that makes sense to you”.

In an analytical research paper, you do research to become an expert on a topic so that you can restructure and present the parts of the topic from your own perspective.

In this brand of research paper you go into the researching stage with a specific topic about which you have not made any kind of conclusions.

This is often called a research question.

Your task is to survey the information and views already out there both before and once you become familiar with the topic.

That will require critical thinking and reading plus evaluation of the resources you may decide to handle.