No matter in study or at work, everyone must have been exposed to papers. Generally speaking, the paper consists of title, author, abstract, key words, text, references and appendix. I believe many people will find it difficult to write a paper. Here are the eight steps I have carefully arranged to write my thesis. Welcome to share.
The first step is to determine the title of the paper.
Broadly speaking, you can write anything on any topic within your major, as long as you have new ideas, new discoveries, new perspectives, new research methods, new materials and so on. However, the "five innovations" behind this greatly limit the topic selection of the paper. This is because most authors are writing such a long academic paper for the first time, lacking experience and profound knowledge accumulation, which is difficult to grasp; At the same time, the condition of 20,000 to 30,000 words also has great constraints on the topic selection. If the topic is too big, it can't be carried out in this relatively narrow range. Therefore, whether the topic is appropriate or not has a great influence on the success or failure of the paper. Some people even say that a good topic is half the battle.
According to the experience of many papers, the topic selection at this level can be considered from the following aspects: the research blank of this major, controversial topics (my own point of view is relatively full), comparative topics, topics of this major from the perspective of other majors (this is a marginal effect of topic selection), old topics with new insertion angles, and new problems of this major that have just emerged.
The second step is literature retrieval.
In fact, it is to review the relevant theories and research around the topic of the paper. This step of work is very hard, so you need to be mentally prepared. This step is necessary. Without this step, the content of your thesis is likely to repeat what others have done, which is equivalent to doing it in vain; The process of searching is also a process of stimulating ideas and generating sparks of opinions. If you don't take this step, you will cut off the source of your new ideas, new perspectives and new materials. This is also to prepare for the next step in terms of viewpoints, angles and materials.
The third step is to put forward the theoretical hypothesis of the topic or the specific problems to be studied.
Topic selection refers to the general direction and scope of the paper to be written. If you really want to start writing, you will encounter two specific problems. The first category belongs to opinions: what is my specific opinion? You can imagine one or several ideas, but they are just a hypothesis. Through a lot of evidence and materials, through rigorous argumentation and appropriate argumentation framework structure, prove that your hypothesis is established and can form the main body of the paper. The second category belongs to practice: what problems should be demonstrated specifically? You can put forward many reasons, whether the influence of various environmental conditions is related to the demonstration and to what extent, all of which require scientific investigation and analysis.
In either case, this involves the central idea or the theme of the thesis, which must be clear and run through the whole thesis. Some authors can't grasp the full text, writing and writing, virtually divorced from their original assumptions or specific problems, and said many things that have nothing to do with the central idea or the theme of argument.
The fourth step is to determine the research methods.
The research methods of humanities and social sciences can be roughly divided into two categories, speculative research and empirical research, and the latter can be divided into qualitative research and quantitative research. In order to explore social facts or social phenomena, people adopt different research orientations, and different research orientations have different research methods, different research hypotheses, ways of collecting data and criteria for judging results. However, various research methods are increasingly showing compatibility and internal relations in current thesis writing. Generally speaking, according to your own topics and specific issues discussed, you can take one research method as the main one, supplemented by other methods. For example, studying the situation of "people" as recipients of mass media information determines that the research itself should be based on quantitative analysis, but it also needs some historical, cultural, political and economic speculative research.
The fifth step is to design the framework of the thesis.
This step is also needed in the writing of general articles, but it is more necessary and detailed for papers. Generally speaking, a paper should have a preface, a first chapter, a main chapter and a conclusion. Chapter setting should have a general layout logic before writing to make its structure reasonable; There is a logical connection between chapters to prevent scribbling, drowning the theme and being unintelligible. This step is rarely completed once, and often changes according to the situation of collecting materials and the new situation encountered in the investigation and interview. However, just as an architect must have drawings before building a house, at the level of writing a paper, the general framework of the article should not only be kept in mind, but generally written in words, which is more detailed, and it is best to be specific to the "festival" (but the level of the "festival" should not be fixed at the beginning), so as to facilitate writing.
When it comes to designing the framework of the thesis, because it is a textual chapter design, it is a good opportunity to solicit opinions from other experts in addition to the guidance of the tutor before formal writing. The framework is not a very thick paper, and it takes little time to read, so you can roughly see the value or existing problems of the article. At this time, it is much easier and easier to modify the structure of the paper than to modify it after writing, and the time is wider. Don't miss this opportunity.
The sixth step is to analyze and classify, enrich the content to all parts of the paper, and then explain and demonstrate.
This is actually the thesis writing itself, so this description is to let the author know the process of thesis writing. Materials and arguments are not born to prove arguments or explain specific problems. Only through the author's organization and demonstration of materials can they become full of vitality and serve their own themes naturally and effectively.
In this step, you need to review your knowledge of logic or social investigation and statistics, use correct logical thinking and rigorous' data organization mode', closely focus on established theoretical assumptions or specific problems, mobilize all kinds of knowledge you have learned, and demonstrate opinions or problems through positive theory (this is the main), counter-theory, hypothesis, refutation, metaphor, etc., draw conclusions, and complete the paper.
There will inevitably be problems such as the use or lack of materials, logical reasoning, and the mismatch between arguments and topics. It is necessary to stop to find information and interview experts, enrich or reduce the content in the original paper framework, and make local adjustments to the framework structure when necessary. This situation is normal and common. In terms of time arrangement, we should make a good plan for this. If the time is not properly arranged, sometimes the writing time is too tight to adjust the structure of the paper, which leads to the failure of the paper and is not worth it.
The seventh step is to re-evaluate the topic and modify the scope of argument if necessary.
This is another situation that happens at the same time as the sixth step, that is, through extensive consultation and my own thinking, I feel that the original topic is not suitable for me or difficult to complete, so I should adjust the writing plan of the whole paper in time and change the topic. This situation is also normal. The key is not to hesitate for a long time, but to make a decision quickly so as to have time to start over. Because there has been a lot of thinking and literature retrieval on the academic research of this major, even if you start over with a different topic, you won't spend too much time, so don't worry too much about it.
Another situation that the topic selection is inappropriate and difficult to complete is not the topic itself, but the scope of the topic selection argument is too large. It is not difficult to solve this problem, but it narrows the scope of the argument. The biggest obstacle here is that the author is unwilling to "give up love" and spends a lot of time preparing his thesis. Once many materials are not used, it is difficult to give up. This situation will certainly involve the redesign of the framework structure of the paper. However, it is always much easier to narrow the scope of larger parameter objects than the opposite.