Top Ten Tips for Writing Research Reports

By Amelia Harper
Writing research reports is an important skill for those in high school and college and is a
necessary skill for many careers. This type of writing is extremely practical and requires a
writer to gather, analyze, and organize information and then present it in a clear and
cohesive fashion. Though some parents and students tend to avoid research writing because
they consider it difficult, mastering this skill can carry over to many other areas of academia
and ordinary life. In fact, many online courses rely heavily on such writing projects.
Any good writing curriculum can help you learn the mechanics of writing research projects
(see sidebar for a writing guide). However, whether you are writing a simple elementary
report or a full-fledged term paper, here are ten simple tips that can help improve your
research report.
1. Pick Your Passion
Some students consider research reports a waste of timebut if the project helps them gain
an understanding of a topic that they want to explore or that fits their future goals, the
project gains significance. As a homeschool mom, it is helpful to offer your student some
freedom to choose a report topic.
As a student, even if you are assigned a general topic, you can often still choose the focus
of your thesis. Try to choose a subject or an approach that interests yousomething that
tickles your intellectual curiosity. This can make the project much more interesting and will
bring out your best efforts.
2. Remember Your Purpose
The purpose of most research reports is to inform the reader about a certain topic;
however, depending on the assignment, some research reports also require the writer to
draw conclusions about the facts or to persuade the reader to accept a particular theory
about the facts presented. As you write, keep the purpose of the assignment in focus. Facts
need to be presented clearly, and conclusions should be drawn in a logical manner.
Remember that your goal here is to inform, not to entertain.
3. Know Your Audience
Most research papers are written for a teacher in order to satisfy a class requirement or to
educate your academic peers. Therefore, most are written in formal English, avoiding
contractions and slang language. You should also avoid using the pronoun I in the report.
The only exceptions are if you are asked to express a personal opinion or are presenting
your own research or eyewitness testimony as supporting evidence. These situations rarely
arise in student writing.
4. Consider Your Questions
One of the best ways to begin organizing your outline and research is to compile a list of
questions that you would like to answer about your topic. Compiling this list can help you
focus on the aspects of the report that interest you most and help you hone a particular
thesis statement as well. Remember that you are writing a report, not a book, so you
should limit your report to an area that can be adequately covered within the assigned
parameters identified by your instructor. After you determine the focus of the report, cross
out the irrelevant questions and use the relevant ones to help you begin your online
research.
5. Organize Your Thoughts
Once you have established the main thesis of the paper, you need to make an outline of the
information you wish to present. This outline is important, not only because it helps you
structure your paper but also because it gives you a framework for research. The more
detailed you make your outline, the easier it will be to write the final paper.
However, remember that your outline is only a tool and can be adapted as you get further
into the research phase. For instance, if you cannot find anything to support a point, simply
omit it or substitute with another. The data may not be there because the point is too
obscure or, possibly, wrong altogether.
6. Tackle Your Details
As you begin to conduct your research, focus your time and effort on looking for details that
support your main points. This support may include a variety of information such as facts,
figures, statistics, examples, definitions, or quotations from reliable experts in the field. If
you are having trouble gathering research, try going to your local library and asking the
research librarian for assistance. Most are more than willing to help you locate a wide
variety of excellent resources available to you in this cyber age.
As you gather pertinent information, be sure to label each bit of information with a title that
fits one of the points or subpoints in your outline. If you are writing on note cards, you can
label a card at the top according to the information recorded there.
If you are gathering information on a computer, you may want to create a separate page or
folder in which you would file supporting details for each point. Find the system that works
best for you and use it to keep track of ways that the information you gather will fit into
your overall plan in the best way. This will really simplify the writing process when you
finally begin writing the actual paper.
7. Cite Your Sources
As you compile information based on your research, carefully note the source of each piece
of information so that you can properly cite the source later. Most student papers use MLA
(Modern Language Association) formatting, and you will need to cite each source in the
body of the paper as you use it, as well as in the Works Cited or Bibliography page at the
end.
If you are not sure how to cite sources, please refer to the sidebar within this article, where
you can find more details about MLA formatting and citation generators that make this task
fun and easy. Citation generators are great online tools that allow you to enter the
information for a source, and then the generator magically creates a proper citation.
Also remember to evaluate your sources to determine whether or not they are reliable.
Consider the potential bias of the book or website, and examine the credentials as well. For
instance, Wikipedia, despite its popularity, is not usually considered a reliable source
because its content is not always written by experts in the field and its data are not always
verified. However, Wikipedia (or its more conservative counterpart, Conservapedia) may
be a good place to obtain a general summary of the topic and to look for related links to
additional, helpful information. Just be careful to verify all facts by using another, more
reliable, source and quote that source instead.
8. Unify Your Ideas
Your introduction and conclusion can make or break a research paper. The introduction
should prepare the reader to explore your topic by exciting interest in the topic or by
demonstrating how and why the information is relevant to the reader. It should also
introduce the main points of the paper.
As you write the body of the paper, make sure that your ideas stay focused on the topic you
introduced: discard extraneous information that, though it may be interesting, distracts
from the ideas presented in the introduction. The conclusion should restate and summarize
the ideas presented in the introduction, thus unifying your presentation.
9. Connect Your Dots
Good transition words, phrases, and sentences help your readers connect the dots from one
idea to another. You can use words such as first, second, third, finally, etc. to help highlight
different points of your outline as you convert the organizational ideas into prose form.
Words and phrases such as however, moreover, in addition to, on the other hand, and
consequently help the reader understand how ideas relate to one another, whether by
expanding the previous idea, contradicting the previous idea, or showing the consequence
of the idea. The use of good transitions adds clarity to your writing and is the mark of a
mature and logical writing style.
10. Strengthen Your Style
As you advance to the final stages of your project, take time to polish your paper by
working to improve your style. There are several ways to accomplish this: (1) Check for
grammar and spelling errors that may overshadow all your brilliant work. (2) Make sure that
your sentence structure has good variety and is not monotonous. (3) Check to see if you
can convert any of your passive-voice sentences to active voice instead, as it is usually the
stronger and clearer voice. (4) Review your vocabulary choices and determine if you can
make better word choices, words that clearly and accurately convey the information and
appropriately represent the literary level of the project. (5) Incorporate literary elements
such as parallelism to make your writing more elegant and quotable.
As with all your writing, the final step should be to read the paper aloud to yourself or
someone else. This is the best way to catch awkward wording that could trip up a reader. By
following these guidelines, almost anyone can produce a great research report. For more
helpful aids, see the Research Resource Guide (sidebar) to find sites that will set you on
your research adventure.
Research Resource Guide
A Research Guide for Students: How to Write an A+ Research Paper
www.aresearchguide.com/1steps.html
Free Britannica Research Guide E-Book for Elementary Students
info.eb.com/training/materials/RSR_BSE.pdf
Internet Public Librarywww.ipl.org
Guide to MLA Formatowl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01
Citation Generators
EasyBibwww.easybib.com
KnightCitewww.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/index.php
CiteFastwww.citefast.com
Amelia Harper is a homeschooling mother of five and a pastors wife. She is also the author
of Literary Lessons from The Lord of the Rings, a complete one-year literature curriculum
designed for secondary-level homeschooled students. In addition, she is an English tutor
and a freelance writer who contributes regularly to newspapers and magazines. For more
information, go to www.homescholarbooks.com.

Copyright 2012, used with permission. All rights reserved by author. Originally appeared in
the July 2012 issue of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, the family education magazine.
Read the magazine free at www.TOSMagazine.com or read it on the go and download the
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