A term paper is really just a long essay, its greater length reflecting more extensive treatment of a broader issue. Both assignments present critical evaluations of what you have read. In preparing an essay, you synthesize information, explore relationships, analyze, compare, contrast, evaluate, and organize your own arguments clearly, logically, and persuasively, gradually leading up to an assessment of your own. A good term paper or short essay is a creative work; you must interpret thoughtfully what you have read and come up with something that goes beyond what is presented in any single article or book consulted.
You must first decide on a general subject of interest. Often your instructor will suggest topics that former students have successfully exploited. Use these suggestions as guides, but do not feel compelled to select one of these topics unless so instructed. Be sure to choose or develop a subject that interests you. It is much easier to write successfully about something of interest than about something that bores you. All you need for getting started is a general subject, not a specific topic. Stay flexible. As you research your selected subject, you usually will find that you must narrow your focus to a particular topic because you encounter an unmanageable number of references pertinent to your original idea.
You cannot, for instance, write about the entire field of primate behavior because the field has many different facets, each associated with a large and growing literature. In such a case, you will find a smaller topic, such as the social significance of primate grooming behavior, to be more appropriate; as you continue your literature search, you may even find it necessary to restrict your attention to a few primate species. Alternatively, you may find that the topic originally selected is too narrow and that you cannot find enough information on which to base a substantial paper. You must then broaden your topic, or switch topics entirely, so that you will end up with something to discuss. Don’t be afraid to discard a topic on which you cannot find much information. Choose a topic you can understand fully.
You can’t possibly write clearly and convincingly on something beyond your grasp. Don’t set out to impress your instructor with complexity; instead, dazzle your instructor with clarity and understanding. Simple topics often make the best ones for essays.
Begin by carefully reading the appropriate section of your textbook to get an overview of the general subject of which your topic is a part. It is usually wise to then consult one or two additional textbooks before venturing into the recent literature; a solid construction requires a firm foundation. Your instructor may have placed a number of pertinent textbooks on reserve in your college library. Alternatively, you can consult your librarian, or the library card file or computer system, looking for books listed under the topic you have chosen to investigate.
The essay or term paper you submit for evaluation must be original work: yours. Submitting anyone else’s work under your name is plagiarism and can get you expelled from college. Presenting someone else’s ideas as your own is also plagiarism. Consider the following two paragraphs.
The first example is fine. In the second example, however, the writer takes credit for the ideas of Smith and Jones; the writer has plagiarized.
Plagiarism sometimes occurs unintentionally, through faulty note-taking. Photocopying an article or book chapter does not constitute note taking; neither does copying a passage by hand, occasionally substituting a synonym for a word used by the source’s author. Take notes using your own words; you must get away from being awed by other people’s words and move toward building confidence in your own thoughts and phrasings. Note taking involves critical evaluation; as you read, you must decide either that particular facts or ideas are relevant to your topic or that they are irrelevant. As Sylvan Barnet says in A Short Guide to Writing About Art (1981. Little, Brown and Company, second edition, p. 142), “You are not doing stenography; rather, you are assimilating knowledge and you are thinking, and for the most part your source should be digested rather than engorged whole.” If an idea is relevant, you should jot down a summary using your own words. Avoid writing complete sentences as you take notes; this will help prevent unintentional plagiarism later and will encourage you to see through to the essence of a statement while note taking.
Sometimes the author's’ words seem so perfect that you cannot see how they might be revised to the best advantage for your paper. In this case, you may wish to copy a phrase or a sentence or two verbatim, but be sure to enclose this material in quotation marks as you write, and clearly indicate the source and page number from which the quotation derives. If you modify the original wording slightly as you take notes, you should indicate this as well, perhaps by using modified quotation marks: “ . . . . . .”. If your notes on a particular passage are in your own words, you should alsoindicate this as you write. I precede such notes, reflecting my own ideas or my own choice of words, with the word Me and a colon; my wife, who is also a biologist, uses her initials. If you take notes in this manner you will avoid the unintentional plagiarism that occurs when you later forget who is actually responsible for the wording of your notes or who is really responsible for the origin of an idea.
You probably cannot take notes in your own words if you do not understand what you are reading. Similarly, it is also difficult to be selective in your note taking until you have achieved a general understanding of the material. I suggest that you first consult at least one general reference text and read the material carefully, as recommended earlier. Once you have located a particularly promising scientific article, read the entire paper through at least once without taking any notes. Resist the (strong) temptation to annotate and take notes during this first reading, even though you may feel that without a pen in your hand you are accomplishing nothing. Put your pencils, pens, and note cards or paper away and read. Read slowly and with care. Read to understand. Study the illustrations, figure captions, tables, and graphs carefully, and try to develop your own interpretations before reading those of the author(s). Don’t be frustrated by not
understanding the paper at the first reading; understanding scientific literature takes time and patience.
By the time you have completed your first reading of the paper, you may find
that the article is not really relevant to your topic after all or is of
little help in developing your theme. If so, the preliminary read-through
will have saved you from wasted note taking.
Some people suggest taking notes on index cards, with one idea per card so
that the notes can be sorted readily into categories at a later stage of the
paper’s development. If you prefer to take notes on full-sized paper,
beginning a separate page for each new source and writing on only one side
of each page will facilitate sorting later.
As you take notes, be sure to make a complete record of each source used:
author(s), year of publication, volume and page numbers (if consulting a
scientific journal), the title of article or book, publisher, and the total
number of pages (if consulting a book). It is not always easy to relocate a
source once returned to the library stacks; the source you forget to record
completely is always the one that vanishes as soon as you realize that you
need it again. Also, before you finish with a source, it is good practice to
read the source through one last time to be sure that your notes accurately
reflect the content of what you have read.
Writing the Paper
Begin by reading all your notes. Again, do this without pen or pencil in
hand. Having completed a reading of your notes to get an overview of what
you have accomplished, reread them, this time with the intention of sorting
your ideas into categories. Notes taken on index cards are particularly easy
to sort, provided that you have not written many different ideas on a single
card; one idea per card is a good rule to follow. To arrange notes written
on full-sized sheets of paper, some people suggest annotating the notes with
pens of different colors or using a variety of symbols, with each color or
symbol representing a particular aspect of the topic. Still, other people
simply use scissors to snip out sections of the notes and then group the
resulting scraps of paper into piles of related ideas. You should experiment
to find a system that works well for you.
At this point, you must eliminate those notes that are irrelevant to the
specific topic you have finally decided to write about. No matter how
interesting a fact or an idea is, it has no place in your paper unless it
clearly relates to the rest of the paper and therefore helps you develop
your argument. Some of the notes you took early on in your exploration of
the literature are especially likely to be irrelevant to your essay since
these notes were taken before you had developed a firm focus. Put these
irrelevant notes in a safe place for later use; don’t let them coax their
way into your paper.
You must next decide how best to arrange your categorized notes so that your
essay or term paper progresses toward some conclusion. The direction your
paper will take should be clearly and specifically indicated in the opening
paragraph, as in the following example written by Student A:
Most shelled mollusks, including clams, oysters, muscles, snails,
and chitons, are sedentary; they live either attached to a hard substrate
(like rock) or in soft-substrate burrows. A few bivalve species, however,
can actually swim, by expelling water from their mantle cavities. One such
swimming mollusk is the scallop Pecten manus. This paper will describe the
morphological features that make swimming possible in P. Maximus and will
consider some of the evolutionary pressures that might have selected for
these adaptations.
The nature of the problem being addressed is clearly indicated in this first
paragraph, and Student A tells us clearly why the problem is of interest:
(1) the typical bivalve doesn’t move and certainly doesn’t swim; (2) a few
bivalves can swim; (3) so what is there about these exceptional species that
enables them to do what other species can’t; and (4) why might this swimming
ability have evolved? Note that use of the pronoun I is now perfectly
acceptable in scientific writing.
The first paragraph of your paper must state clearly what you are setting
out to accomplish and why. Every paragraph that follows the first paragraph
should advance your argument clearly and logically toward the stated goal.
State your case, and build it carefully. Use your information and ideas to
build an argument, to develop a point, to synthesize. Avoid the tendency to
simply summarize papers one by one: They did this, then they did that, and
then they suggested the following explanation. Instead, set out to compare,
to contrast, to illustrate, to discuss.
In referring to specific experiments, don’t simply state that a particular
experiment supports some particular hypothesis; describe the relevant parts
of the experiment and explain how the results relate to the hypothesis under
question.
In all writing, avoid quotations unless they are absolutely necessary; use
your own words whenever possible. At the end of your essay, summarize the
problem addressed and the major points you have made so that the reader will
remember the key elements of your paper.
Never introduce any new information in your summary paragraph.
Citing Sources
Unless you are told otherwise, do not footnote. Instead, cite references
directly in the text by author and date of publication. For example
Landscapes can be classified according to the dominant plant species
(Slobodkin, 1988). Jones (1981), for example, refers to white oak forests.
At the end of your paper, include a section entitled Literature Cited,
listing all references you have referred to in your paper. Do not include
any references you have not actually read. Each reference listed must give
the author(s), date of publication, title of article, title of journal, and
volume and page numbers. If the reference is a book, the citation must
include the publisher, place of publication, and a the total number of pages
in the book, or the page numbers pertinent to the citation. Your instructor
may specify a particular format for preparing this section of your paper.
Creating a Title
By the time you have finished writing, you should be ready to title your
creation. Give the essay or term paper a title that is appropriate and
interesting, one that conveys significant information about the specific
topic of your paper.
Good title: Behavioral and Chemical Defense Mechanisms of Gastropods and
Bivalves
Poor title: Molluscan Defenses
Good title: The Effects of Spilled Fuel Oil on the Breeding of
Shorebirds
Poor title: Pollutants and Birds
The following are good sources of information for developing essays and term
papers:
General biology textbooks
Specialized textbooks, such as general texts on human physiology,
invertebrate zoology, marine biology, and ecology.
The science section of major newspapers, such as the Boston Globe, the New
York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. Most major daily newspapers have a
science section once each week.
BioScience
The New England Journal of Medicine
Oceans
Science News
Scientific American
SeaFrontier
392 Appendix
____________________________________________________________________________
(This section is adapted from a Short Guide to Writing About Biology by Jan
A. Pechenik. Copyright@ 1987 by Jan A. Pechenik. Reprinted by permission of
Scott, Foresman and Company.)
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
Tips for Selecting A Great Book(s):
1. Check the cover. Does the dust jacket catch your eye? Don't judge the
book only by its cover.
2. Read the summary on the inside flap. Does the book sound like something
you would enjoy?
3. Look at the illustrations and skim the text. Do the words and pictures
make an interesting combination?
4. Try the obvious. Look on the return cart and check the books waiting to
be shelved. You’ll find some good choices here. Look at the new book
displays as well. Especially if you read a lot.
5. Ask the librarian, who knows hundreds of great books and would be glad
to
make some suggestions.
6. Look at what your friends are reading. Ask them for recommendations.
7 Think about books that your teachers may have shared. Would you like to
reread a favorite?
8. Read other books written by your favorite author and/or authors.
9. Read about your hobbies or other special interests.
10. Browse through the non-fiction section. Something will certainly catch
your eye here. Look at the books on display.
11. Read variations of your favorite folk and fairy tales.
12. Be alert for book reviews. How about reviews in newspapers, magazines
or on the Internet?
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
NEW BOOKS AVAILABLE THIS MONTH AT THE HILLSIDE HIGH MEDIA CENTER LIBRARY
FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT!