Term paper advice pleaseee!!!

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Hi my name is Megan, I am in Developmental Psychology and have a term paper that's due at the end of this semester and counts for the majority of my grade, I have never written a term (fact) paper before. I'm not really sure where I can find articles or better yet where to even start my paper. I have look at so many other students papers but I'm still stumped as to where I need to begin and where I need to look to find the articles that I'm going to pull facts from for my paper. Any advice would help, my professor is being super vague and I'm just totally stressed over this assignment, and I know I need to work on it starting now so I don't procrastinate!

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You might want to look up information on research papers. Also, does your professor want MLA or APA format? You might want to ask if he/she hasn't said. I'm guessing APA if it is a psychology course.

You might also want to see what resources your school has in terms of writing papers. They may have a student help center/tutors/etc.

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hmm, well...First things first..find you subject matter for the paper.

Depends what exact parameters your prof set up, most want a thesis statement/intro paragraph, 3 or 4 body paragraphs then a closing paragraph

so start to brain storm that main subject matter by asking yourself what is important or noteworthy about what you are planning to write about. Find 3 or 4 focus points based off that main theme. Then, write as much as YOU know about those 3 or 4 focus points. You will be amazed at much you know or have heard about those points..

anyway, once you free-form write or 'blue-sky' the topic then you can start to gather research and by that point you will have narrowed down your HUGE idea into some focused ideas revolving around a central topic that will become your thesis statement.

There are tons of places to gather research data from, make sure you go to APA or MLA sites to see how to cite the work-do not plagiarize :)

Once you lay out the bones you can usually find assistance in the library. Most will offer workshops to help you or at the least review your paper before you turn it in. Some professors will offer extra points on the final grade if you can prove you went to get help...most of that help though is on grammar, structure and such not the content itself. You have to go to them with the content already.

Starting early is a great choice-I bet you will do a great job!

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I have a topic it's....How we development morals over the life span......and my prof said specifically that we do not put any of our own knowledge in the paper, it's cite cite cite for the wholllle dang thing....we have to have 10 pages...and i guess I'm feeling completely overwhelemed! lol

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Oh 10 pages shouldn't be too difficult. I had to do a 100 page paper once and that took a lot of pre-planning and research.

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You can do it that way too!

You have your 3 paragraphs, right? Early childhood to young adulthood, middle adult, older adult so that part is easy. What do you know about the differences in life for kids vs. adults vs. older adults? Start there and google away until you find some research direction.

Then your thesis just needs to say something to that pulls together how we start off in one place and our life experience and environment coupled with our personality shapes or morals, maybe something about how as our character develops so our morality changes...you could even compare and contrast a couple of view points-other than your own.

At your college library you should have a LifeSpan Development text that can be checked out...there will be a lot in it by different psychologists on morals and stages of growth.

Search on Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development-his theory is well-known. You could write the whole paper on his stages..I think there were 5 or 6. Piaget is a big one too

HTH

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I would check your schools library. See if you can access it online.

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Specializes in cardiac-telemetry, hospice, ICU.

Here is the best site for proper formatting of a paper. The Purdue OWL lab. You will find tons of tips on writing as well as formatting!

Purdue OWL

My other comment is to meet and talk to your librarian, you will get some great starting advice. Lastly, write an outline after you have done some initial research. Get started, and before you know it you will have some confidence.

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I have a topic it's....How we development morals over the life span......and my prof said specifically that we do not put any of our own knowledge in the paper, it's cite cite cite for the wholllle dang thing....we have to have 10 pages...and i guess I'm feeling completely overwhelemed! lol

That is a great topic and there is a wealth of material on it going back 100 years with many different theories and approaches. Get your nose into the peer reviewed data bases and start searching. Ask a library staff person to help you with the database search if you have never done so before. The database searches are different from Google. (Oh, yeah, do not use Google.)

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thanks sooo much for all the helpful advice! I think I know where I need to head from this point. I scare myself into thinking I'm not going to be able to do a good enough job or I'm not able to do it but I end up turning in work and am surprised when I get A's back...I guess you could say I'm too much of a perfectionist lol...thanks for the help! Also when forming a thesis/introduction what are the grounds for a quality one?

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