Tips for term paper

Do you have to write your first term paper and have no idea where to start? Don’t know what to write about? Or how to conduct literature research?

Here are a few tips from us!

Go to your lecturer’s office hours! There you will get helpful tips from the person who will ultimately grade your paper. If you don’t have a topic, it’s best to prepare a few points that resonated with you during the course. That way, you won’t be completely unprepared and you’ll show your lecturer that you’ve given it some thought. Your lecturer will also be able to help you find a topic that interests you and can be covered in the specified number of pages or characters.

An outline is often a good place to start to organize your thoughts and figure out where you want to go with your question. To begin with, you can also make a very detailed outline with bullet points for each chapter. This can also help with your literature research.

The more catalogs you search for literature, the more likely you are to find what you are looking for. There are various catalogs. The most important ones are probably those of the württembergischen Landesbibliothek (WLB) and the University Library. Each field of study has a few more that can help you. If you don’t know the catalogs for your field of study, ask your student group, fellow students (from higher semesters), or your lecturer. They will be happy to assist you. To find the basic literature for your research question, look at the footnotes and bibliographies of the literature you found during your preliminary research. This will help you find literature that is sometimes not displayed in catalogs unless you search for it explicitly.

You now have all your literature and know what you want to write, but still can’t get started? Here are a few approaches you can try: Write a provisional introduction so that the page is not blank. You can write down quotes from your literature which you would like to use later and that you can then use as a guide when writing. Or you can start with a specific argument, formulate it, and then piece the individual sections together into a larger text.

It is essential to cite correctly. There are specific guidelines that you must follow. If you are not familiar with them, ask your lecturer! There are also computer programs such as Citavi that can help you with citations and keep track of your literature.

Last but not least, you need to proofread your work. Feel free to ask friends or fellow students to help you with this, as it is difficult to spot your own mistakes. It’s good to have someone else take a look at it. Fellow students can also help you with the content problems, for example, by pointing out that an argument has not been sufficiently developed. Before submitting your paper, make sure that you have adhered to all formal requirements, such as font size, font type, etc.

The Language Center’s writing workshop (ggf. verlinken) also offers a wide range of support for writing academic papers. Feel free to stop by for more tips.