Help needed! I am working on my third draft for my research paper...How do I use the information from the previous draft? Need some suggestions or advice on this!

Question

hba · Answer

• Go through your readings once and mark with a highlighter everything you think plausibly relevant to answering the assignment.

• So that you can get a sense of it all, go through a second time, skimming what you have highlighted.

• Go through a third time, marking passages that seem most central to your assignment. Try to assign to each passage a key word that will help you sort them later.

• Now try to categorize those passages according to how they might support different points. Which ones support one point, which ones support another point. (Spend the time it takes to find data that might support different, even opposing, points. You need such data so that you can critically balance one point against another.)

• On a piece of paper, jot down what you think are the central concepts that emerge from this analysis.

• To these central concepts attach subsidiary concepts. Use some sort of symbol to represent the kinds of relationships that the subsidiary concepts have to the central concepts and to one another: cause and effect, similarity, contrast, more important-less important, earlier-later in time, and so on. Spend time playing with these relationships. Make lists of the central concepts, order and re-order them, find categories and subcategories.

• Then create a working outline around topics suggested by your categories of evidence.

anonymous · Answer

Wow...thanks! That will definitely help me in my draft. I will work on that right away! I appreciate your help @hba!

hba · Answer

@Sapphire511  ur welcome