 Writing your Research Paper
Your research paper is
another very important aspect of your project. Click on
the link for tips on what resources to use for your
research. click
here
A good research paper
should include the following:
- A title
page
- A table of
contents
- An introduction -
this should include the purpose of your project, your
hypothesis, the problem, an explanation of what prompted
your research, and what you hope to achieve
- Materials and methods
- use detail to describe how you collected data. A
good paper enables the reader to duplicate your experiment
just by reading the paper
- The results - don't
forget to include statistics and graphs in this part of your
paper
- Discussion - Include
a discussion of possible errors, what you would do
differently, how the data varied among each trial, and how
your results were affected by uncontrolled events.
This should be the essence of your paper!!
- Conclusion -
summarize your results in this section of the paper.
Don't generalize, be very specific and never discuss
anything in this section that has not been introduced in
another section of the paper.
- Don't forget to give
credit to anyone who assisted you by adding an
acknowledgments section
- Finally make sure you
have a complete reference list - check to see what format is
required for your references (APA
or MLA)
You will probably be
required to write an abstract. Abstracts should be no
more than 250 words and should be on one page. Make sure
that your abstract includes the following
- purpose of the
experiment
- procedures
used
- data and
conclusions
An abstract should focus
on the current work done and should not include the
following
- acknowledgments
- work or procedures
done by your mentor
Click on this link to print out the
"How to Write an Abstract" work sheet click
here |
