And remember to ask a librarian if you need assistance coming up with keywords or looking for sources. Search the databases with the keywords you selected to find relevant articles. A first draft is a way to elaborate on the main points of your essay stated in your outline, giving them a sample form. Sometimes your first draft may become the final one due to it being rather satisfactory, but in most cases, it requires further work. Some keywords will work better than others, and some keywords may lead you to different articles than you found in your first search. A first draft is a rough sketch of your future piece of writing. "Fast food" or junk food" and health and effects
Once you've narrowed your topic, expand your search to focus on those factors that you're discussing in your paper for example: You can do this with any phrase - such as: Using quotation marks around phrases like "food waste" tells the database or search engine that you want to search those two words together as a phrase (rather than two separate words). For example, if you are writing about landfills and food waste, you might search: If you are looking for a phrase, put phrases in quotation marks, so the computer will search for those words together. You can combine your terms with "and." If you need to list terms that mean the same, you can use "or" to connect the terms. They might introduce a narrative, if appropriate, or a related story that provides an example of the topic being discussed. Now that you have a topic and/or a working thesis, you have several options for how to begin writing a more complete draft. Use only the essential words for searching. Writing a First Draft CC0 Public Domain Image from Max Pixel.
Unlike Google, our databases don't do well with searches using whole sentences. KeywordsĪs you think about what concepts you want to write about, think about what particular words might be found in a good source about that topic. In order to help you find more related sources about your topic, you'll want to identify keywords to help you search. Soda ash is the common name for sodium carbonate. Introduction: The goal of this experiment was to quantify the amount of sodium carbonate in an unknown sample of soda ash, using the method of back titration. As you read, you might tweak or adjust your topic/thesis. Determination of Sodium Carbonate in Soda Ash. What aspect of the topic do I want to focus on?Īs you start to narrow this down into a rough draft thesis, you'll want to continue to look for more sources. Remember your assignment requirements and consider what you've read thus far. Once you've done some initial background reading, it's time to narrow down your topic to what you really want to write about.