A recap from February Prof-Talks by: Maahin Ahmed and the A-Team.
Different disciplines have varying standards for what a good academic paper is, and given the variety of courses that we can take in our undergrad, especially in first year, writing a good paper for each course can be a daunting task. Professor Griffin, who has done a fair bit of both writing and marking, says that four things tend to make a good paper stand out: thesis, arguments, methodically cited sources, and acknowledgement of a counter argument.
A very common problem for students when writing papers is that they don’t state their stance or thesis clearly. Professor Griffin says that stating a clear, narrow and debatable thesis in the beginning of a paper is important for two reasons. Firstly, as a writer it is easy to drift away from our topic while we write, but having a thesis statement in the beginning can be a good reference point for us to refer back to see if the content of our paper is relevant to the topic. Secondly, from the viewpoint of a reader, a clear thesis sets the paper up for debate. One way to formulate a good thesis is to start with a research question. A good research question would be one that is broad enough that it requires an argumentative and analytical response; yet it should be narrow enough to be answered within a given word limit.
Once we have a clear, narrow and debatable thesis, the second and third components of planning a paper go hand in hand. That is to say, we list our main arguments in favour of our thesis, and methodically cite our primary and secondary sources as evidence to support our arguments. To cite our sources methodically means two things: firstly, our sources should be relevant to our arguments; secondly we should make sure that we explain our choice of any source we choose to cite.
Finally, in Professor Griffin’s opinion, acknowledging alternative views or counter arguments to our own argument is something that distinguishes a great paper from a good paper. Showing an awareness of plausible arguments contrary to our own shows that a person is intellectually awake—not ignorant of other opinions.
Having organized our thoughts properly, we are all set for writing a great paper!
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