The short answer, bring your draft to the library and ask for help. My advice is general because I don’t know what’s wrong. “My papers are poorly written” can mean many things. It’s like telling a doctor you don’t feel well, or the IT guy that your computer won’t start.
But generally, a good paper has structure. I don’t know how common my experience is, but a lot of papers written by undergraduates tend to sound like a video essay’s script. That’s fine if you’re a video essayist, but we’re in the wrong genre. A research paper has fixed sections so I can hop between sections quickly. All the literature review is placed before the actual analysis because this is what you should know to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. Don’t tease me with your findings. Tell me how you did everything, then tell what you found, and arrange it in a logical order.
This structure also makes writing easier. I can write my analysis and edit my literature review as I go because papers that felt irrelevant gain relevance as I write. I can find stuff easily and I can move entire paragraphs around because everything’s where it should be in the first place.
And even though it’s structured, there’s still room for creativity. One paper I wrote intentionally presented several hypotheses that failed to be statistically significant because I wanted to demonstrate how these p-values motivates us to take a closer look at what’s happening and examine the implicit assumptions I unpacked in the literature review. Which in turn explains why all these hypotheses failed to be statistically significant even though they should be. Another thing I like to do is to ask the reader a question at the beginning. It’s a video essay thing, but if you phrase it correctly, it immediately contextualises the research gap in my paper. I once read a book which does this brilliantly. Why are Balinese temples relevant to how water resources are managed? I don’t know, but that’s the one question the book answers in excruciating detail and that’s fascinating.
But all this creativity works only if your paper is well-written in the first place. So really, Step 1 is to bring your draft to the library and look for a research librarian or the university’s writing center for help.
Comments
The short answer, bring your draft to the library and ask for help. My advice is general because I don’t know what’s wrong. “My papers are poorly written” can mean many things. It’s like telling a doctor you don’t feel well, or the IT guy that your computer won’t start.
But generally, a good paper has structure. I don’t know how common my experience is, but a lot of papers written by undergraduates tend to sound like a video essay’s script. That’s fine if you’re a video essayist, but we’re in the wrong genre. A research paper has fixed sections so I can hop between sections quickly. All the literature review is placed before the actual analysis because this is what you should know to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing. Don’t tease me with your findings. Tell me how you did everything, then tell what you found, and arrange it in a logical order.
This structure also makes writing easier. I can write my analysis and edit my literature review as I go because papers that felt irrelevant gain relevance as I write. I can find stuff easily and I can move entire paragraphs around because everything’s where it should be in the first place.
And even though it’s structured, there’s still room for creativity. One paper I wrote intentionally presented several hypotheses that failed to be statistically significant because I wanted to demonstrate how these p-values motivates us to take a closer look at what’s happening and examine the implicit assumptions I unpacked in the literature review. Which in turn explains why all these hypotheses failed to be statistically significant even though they should be. Another thing I like to do is to ask the reader a question at the beginning. It’s a video essay thing, but if you phrase it correctly, it immediately contextualises the research gap in my paper. I once read a book which does this brilliantly. Why are Balinese temples relevant to how water resources are managed? I don’t know, but that’s the one question the book answers in excruciating detail and that’s fascinating.
But all this creativity works only if your paper is well-written in the first place. So really, Step 1 is to bring your draft to the library and look for a research librarian or the university’s writing center for help.