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Research Papers

  • Paraphrasing: Putting information into your own words.  
  • Student voice: When a reader can tell you wrote it. I.e. Your voice versus the author’s voice. 

Paraphrasing and using your voice while writing takes practice to get good at it. The more you do it, the faster you get better at it.

Your brain takes in information, processes it, understands it, and applies it to other things. It then becomes your knowledge that is based on the author’s information.  When you use that knowledge in your assignments, you should use your voice (your own words and phrasing) because it’s coming from your brain, but the original information is still from the author, so you need to cite it. 

Using Student Voice

  • When reading text, look away from the material and summarize each paragraph in your own words.
  • Tell someone else what the article/text means. This forces your brain to understand it.
  • Begin with a full-sentence outline using your own words 
  • Learn how to integrate resources into your writing effectively
  • Use Grammarly during the writing process. It will help with grammar and can also help identify writing that is from another source (plagiarism). 

Your Ideas

Part of academic writing is adding your thoughts, ideas, interpretations, and analysis to the conversation. Because you will have researched your topic to have some expertise, you should have also developed your study of the topic being discussed.

  • Know the parts of a paragraph
    • Have a strong topic sentence for each paragraph to ensure a clear purpose.
    • Avoid ending a paragraph with a direct quote or a paraphrase of what someone else has said. The evidence you use is for your supporting sentences, but the end of your paragraph is where you should add your own ideas or analysis.
  • Know the difference between the four voices of academic writing: own voice, external voice, indirect voice, and direct voice.
  • Identify ways to add voice to your writing:
    • Add more explanation
    • Clarify your writing
    • Develop a concept
    • Present an argument
    • Restate the relevance