ORGANIZING: EXPLANATIONS

You must organize your research material into a tentative plan before you begin writing. An outline will provide a logical organization and guide during writing.

1. Compose a thesis statement. Your thesis statement is your argument and the answer to your research question. You must have a thesis statement before you begin writing. Your thesis statement is the basic organizing principle of your paper: all information must be directly related to the thesis.

2. Outline the main themes that will support your thesis. From various note headings you should have a collection of issues, factors, reasons, causes, aspects, variables, and/or categories. Rather than citing a shapeless list, attempt to reduce these elements to no more than three or four main topics or themes.

   For example, if you have a number of "causes" try to find a defining or unifying element that shows an interesting relationship between the causes. State this relationship as one of your themes.(Adapted from Gordon Taylor, The Student's Writing Guide for the Arts and Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 97-98.)

3. Sketch out the causes, examples, illustrations, arguments, and evidence that substantiate or validate each theme. Organize this information into paragraphs. Each paragraph outline should include a topic sentence and the research notes that support the sentence. Temporarily discard any research notes that do not fit logically into this plan. (You may discover during writing that this information is significant so do not discard the notes permanently.)

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