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You have probably asked yourself this question: Well, here is my answer. You need a In fact, if you want, you don’t even need the term “outline”…but replace it with “strategic plan”.  Strategic planning will take time and effort but the research paper will be made with good planning and patience. The time and effort put into developing an effective strategic plan will save you time and effort in the coming weeks. The process of identifying what the paper’s purpose it and then how to achieve this purpose is known as . And it’s important for any organized paper.  Without a clear picture of where you paper is headed the path will be rocky. There will be indecisiveness, second guessing and heading off into directions that you don’t want to pursue. To help you get started in this process, watch the following video on YouTube and then complete the Collaboration Forum for the Unit 4 Introduction. The following YouTube video may help you envision how to set-up your outline as well. Often student writers are taught short-term solutions to the problem of organizing an essay. The most common short-term essay is the “five-paragraph essay” format. The five-paragraph essay uses the following organization: It is easy to see how you could arr

ange an outline around the five-paragraph essay.  However, most student writers find that college professors often demand far more expansive essays.  Indeed, student writers should know that an essay’s organization can be pre-planned.  What follows are some common ways to organize a research paper. Often students are asked to consider large and important issues in their writing assignments. These so-called “big ideas” essays present students with some large generalization and then ask students to analyze it. For example, in a political science class a student might be asked to write an essay on the freedom Americans have, and how it compares to that enjoyed by citizens of Mexico. Or in a psychology class a student might be asked to write an essay on the importance of honesty in personal and professional relationships. Both of these topics require students to answer difficult and possibly unanswerable questions. Because students feel the need to discuss all possible aspects of the topic, students respond to such general topics by writing . As you learned in , the solution to this is ! Students need to focus their discussion of the large and general issue by focusing on . A good outline, like an essay, presents more examples than ideas.