COLLEGE PAPERBUDDY IS NOW AVAILABLE!

It’s the beginning of the second term, which means that the deadlines for those big research papers will soon begin to loom over students’ heads. While some paper assignments might pose specific questions and set specific parameters for the research, some assignments might be more open-ended as instructors let the students select their own topics to write about. And, unfortunately, these open-ended assignments can be even scarier. It’s difficult enough trying to find sources, conduct research, and then write the paper. And to find an interesting paper topic on top of all of that? Ridiculous! (Ha ha). Since it's sometimes difficult to think of a good paper topic—especially at the eleventh hour—below we’ve included some Slacker Skills for quickly locating that awesome paper topic. Good luck!

• Talk with friends or roommates over lunch or drinks about the papers they’ve written for their classes. Their paper topics might help you think of a topic, and they might be able to give you ideas for finding sources!

• Skim through past paper assignments and look at the papers that interested you. These papers might lead to additional ideas—plus you might be able to recycle some of your research!

• Post a Facebook message asking your friends for paper ideas and paper help—you might even find a friend who is also working on an open-ended paper assignment. The two of you could share leads on helpful sources.

• Google. It seems really simple, but sometime students forget about the simple act of entering random words into the search field and then seeing where the results (and sub-results) lead them. If anything, you might learn something as you research.

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a fun time celebrating the start of 2012. At CPB, we’re all very excited for the start of this new year. Last month our friendly little guide began appearing in campus bookstores, and we’re excited to see the other bookshelves across the country that become host to PaperBuddy. (Our Buddy even made a quick trip to the Big Apple to meet some academic publishers!) To learn more about the latest information on CPB, and where you can purchase a hard copy of the book, stay connected with us on Facebook and Twitter.
 
After pouring over each page of the manuscript to finalize it for publication, we re-familiarized ourselves with some of our favorite parts of the book, such as the popular end-of-section “Slacker Steps.” At the end of each section we re-cap in a bulleted list the main tips and ideas of that section. In other words, if you’re a slacker (and there’s nothing wrong with that!) you can still gain a lot of information from reading these steps and checking out the “For Example” boxes. We love the whole slacker concept so much that we’ve decided to create a new series of blog entries on the website called “Slacker Skills,” where we give quick tips for finding information and getting work done in a short amount of time. (And, let’s face it, after this past weekend of celebrating, we’re feeling like slackers ourselves this week—ha!) So, with tomorrow’s blog post, we’ll be posting the first entry in this series. We hope you enjoy this inaugural set of Slacker Skills. Cheers!

A few weeks ago, we decided to begin a series of “Grammar & Style” blog entries in which we would spotlight a particular grammar or style issue that seems to be troublesome for many college students. (These entries might also be a sort of copout when we don’t feel like being creative and writing a blog entry that takes a lot of brainpower, ha ha.) Since the last entry covered the em dash, we thought that it would be fun to tackle a style issue in this latest entry. So, today we are going to discuss “parallel construction.” This fun writing tip will help you not only construct awesome sentences but also revise your papers for clarity and readability. Enjoy, and happy sentence constructing!

Parallel Construction

According to Merriam Webster, the term parallel refers to entities that exhibit “parallelism in form, function, or development.” So, when discussing writing, the term parallel refers to the parallel constructions of various phrasal elements. In basic terms, when a series of words and phrases don’t match in form, then the construction isn’t parallel. When writing a series of verbs or verbal phrases, the tense and form of the words should match. And, generally speaking, when writing any sort of series, the form and function of the words and phrases should match. Does this all sound a little confusing? Well, it’s a little confusing to describe, so below are examples to illustrate the concept of parallel construction. Each section includes a sentence that is not parallel and then a revised version of that sentence.

Not Parallel: At the football tailgate, we grilled food, drank beer, and were playing bags.

Parallel: At the football tailgate, we grilled food, drank beer, and played bags.

Not Parallel: We watched the butterfly as it flew to the flower, sipped on the nectar, and the cat saw it.

Parallel: We watched the butterfly as it flew to the flower and sipped on the nectar. The cat saw it . . .

Not Parallel: Cooking dinner, we cut all of the vegetables and washed all of the fruit.

Parallel: While we cooked dinner, we cut all of the vegetables and washed all of the fruit.

Woo-hoo, it's the weekend! For many of you, this weekend is extra special if it marks the beginning of winter break—or at least a long week for Thanksgiving. Therefore, since football, food, and fun are on most of our minds (especially for this writer—bring on the bubbles!), we’ve decided to scale back the academic talk in this blog entry (i.e., totally slack off!).

So, for this entry, we decided to create an informal end-of-term checklist that students can use as they wrap up their classes. The main focus of the list is centered on ways students can better prepare for subsequent terms—and even gain an advantage in future classes! This is definitely not a comprehensive list, but hopefully it will provide a good foundation for when students complete a term and prepare for a new one. Enjoy, and happy Thanksgiving!

• Class Notes: If the class relates to your major, then it would be a good idea to save class notes in a binder just in case they’re needed for a review or future study guide. It might even be helpful to go on course websites to pull any PowerPoint slides or other documents before your access to the site expires.

• Papers: It’s usually a good idea to save all class papers, because you never know if you’ll be asked to write on a similar topic again. CPB recommends creating electronic folders for each term where you can move all papers and conveniently store them. Sometimes, it’s also helpful to store the research for these papers as well.

• Textbooks: Evaluate whether or not the previous term’s books will be useful for future classes or research papers. It’s important to ask yourself, “Is the refund make it worth it to part with this book?” You can also check to see if a friend or roommate might need the book for future classes—and they might have a book that you can have.

• Class Handouts: Before throwing all of your class papers into the air a la Dazed & Confused, it would be beneficial to peruse through them first to see if any handouts or other papers might be useful resources for future classes, such as for future paper assignments.

In the most recent CPB newsletter, we answered an awesome question from a returning adult student regarding grammar and style refreshers. We recommended The Elements of Style, which provides the nuts and bolts of grammar and style in a clear and concise format. In addition to thinking about some of our favorite grammar books (and how cool we must be to have favorites within this genre—ha!), we also began thinking about some of the common writing issues that seem to plague college writers. Therefore, we’ve decided to create a “Grammar & Style” series of blog entries that will address a specific writing issue. As this is the inaugural Grammar & Style entry, we hope you enjoy it and find it helpful!

Em Dashes

The em dash is by far the coolest punctuation mark out there. An em dash (—) can be inserted from the Insert toolbar section in Word, or you can type two hyphens immediately after the last letter of a word, and then immediately follow the second hyphen with the first letter of the next word, which will prompt the document to create an em dash. Here are a few of the most common uses for the em dash:

• To create emphasis. Insert the em dash when you want the reader to take a dramatic pause or to create a slight sense of anticipation. For example: I knew who stole the keg from the party—it was the professor!

• To set off a key idea within a sentence. Separate a key idea from the other elements of a sentence by setting it between two em dashes. For example: The tailgate party—which included 250 simultaneous games of bags—raised a ton of money for the fraternity.

• To set off a short series or to add clarifying information. Set off a short series or information that is meant to add clarification between two em dashes. For example: The college student’s roommates—Emily, Andy, and Kota—trashed her room while she was at the library studying.

Happy Halloween! We hope everyone enjoyed the weekend and had fun celebrating. We definitely did not do any partying late into the night on both Friday and Saturday. And we most certainly did not go to any house parties or bars. No, no, we definitely studied up on writing at the library all weekend . . . ha!

This entry marks our return to the CPB blog! We have spent the past few months converting the CPB e-book to a hard-copy format. It’s actually getting printed right now and will be available soon. Stay tuned for updates on how to purchase a copy of the book.

In the meantime, we’ll be posting CPB blogs on a regular basis, so come back to the site to find exciting information on writing papers and performing well in college. Also, don’t forget to check us out on Facebook and Twitter.

Cheers!

The countdown has begun! The term is almost over and soon you’ll be tossing all of your papers into the air and running throughout the quad yelling with joy that it’s summer break. Sunshine, vacations, and little to no homework are heading your way . . . after you finishing writing your final papers.

Sometimes, just thinking of a topic to write about is half the problem. Therefore, below I’ve listed some possible topics that usually provide a lot of material to research and write on. Even if one of the specific topics doesn’t interest you, a couple of them might help you to think of related themes or subjects that you might find interesting and worthy of writing about. Also, if you’re in a major writing slump, you can also try one of the brainstorming activities that I described in an earlier blog post. Read, set . . . Topic!

• How a specific music genre represents an era
• Health care (the U.S. plan versus a different nation’s plan)
• The guidelines for labeling a product “organic” (Is organic food truly healthier?)
• The Internet and its influence on politics (Facebook’s influence on political movements)
• Animal testing (What are the current regulations and are more actions needed?)
• College tuition (Should colleges continue to raise their rates? Should the government provide more assistance?)
• Dating (How accurate is the science behind the popular dating websites?)
• The effects of performance-enhancement drugs on today’s popular sports
• Coconut water, green tea, and pomegranate juice (Do any of these beverages truly benefit a person’s health?)
• The Internet and camera phones (Do we have less privacy today than what our parents had?)
• The videogame debate and violence (Has anything been proven and what?)
• How important is it that students choose the “right” major in college?
• Global warming (What should be done? Does anything need to be done?)
• Sushi (Is our love for new maki rolls depleting the ocean of its fish?)
• Earphone use and hearing loss (Are iPods and smartphones helping or hurting?)

Last year, I posted (an awesome, of course) blog post on thesis statements. This post provided a general overview about the thesis statement, such as the structure and major components. I also briefly mentioned that the instructor’s language from the assignment sheet needs to be included in the wording of the thesis statement. Since this part is a pretty important component of crafting thesis statements, I’ve decided to specifically focus on this topic for today’s post. (Bonus: Using the instructor’s words totally makes writing the thesis statement a heck of a lot easier!) Plus, I wanted to also provide an example for all of the visual learners out there (just like me!). So, below I’ll explain in greater detail how to incorporate the instructor’s language into your own thesis statement, and I’ll also provide an example to illustrate how this is done. Happy thesis statement writing!

Incorporating the Instructor’s Language into the Thesis Statement

Before you begin to write your thesis statement, you should first pull out the de-coded assignment sheet.  Carefully review the important sentences in which the instructor describes what it is that you have been instructed to research and write about (i.e., those sentences that include the action verbs like analyze, argue, and compare). In the thesis statement, you will be turning these words into a statement of fact in which you address the proposed task. In other words, the instructor’s words will support the thesis statement’s basic foundation: X is Y, because of A, B, and C. You should also review the preceding sentence(s) for any basic background words and phrases about the topic, which you can also use when crafting your thesis statement, specifically the beginning of it.

Example

Assignment: Our city has recently decided to create a new professional sports team. The residents voted and it was decided that the city will establish a professional curling team. The city council members would like to select the team’s official mascot, and they are currently deciding among the following options: a pterodactyl, a marble, and a grilled cheese sandwich. All of the mascot options are special to our city’s residents; however, only one can become the official mascot. Explain which mascot you believe should become the official mascot of the professional curling team and why.

Thesis Statement: While all of the mascot options are special to our city’s residents, the grilled cheese sandwich should become the official mascot of the professional curling team because the stadium only sells cheese sandwiches at the concession stands, the new team can be honored at the city’s annual sandwich festival, and the grilled cheese mascot could lead to a co-mascot—the PB&J.

The previous blog posts this month have been rather long and serious, so, to change things up, this blog post will be short and fun! Following in the theme of “paper help,” this entry will provide links to online tools that are great resources for writers. Whether you’re a student writing a research paper or a professional trying to finish a report, you should consider checking out these useful websites—you might even find yourself bookmarking one or two of these resources. Happy writing!

Merriam-Webster 

Thesaurus.com 

Virtual Thesaurus 

Capital Community College Foundation 

Wordsmith

Last month, I offered suggestions on ways college students can receive free help with paper revisions. One of the suggestions was to ask a friend to read over a paper and to ask him or her for feedback. Since that suggestion is one of the easier ways to find paper help in school (i.e., most students have a friend, roommate, dorm neighbor, etc., that they can ask), I’ve decided to make that the focus of this blog entry.

Similar to the peer-review sessions that you have probably encountered in high school and in college English classes, “friend review” is when you ask a friend to review your paper. You can ask him or her for their overall feedback on the paper as well as ask them to edit and offer suggestions for sentence-level mistakes (macro and micro revising). The following serves as a basic checklist that you can use when you hand (or e-mail) a paper to a friend for their review (or when someone gives you their paper to read).

Assignment Parameters

• Does the paper relate to the assignment sheet? (Does it accomplish what the instructor had outlined?)
• Do the introduction and thesis statement incorporate the instructor’s language from the assignment sheet?
• Does the paper meet the page-length or word-length requirements?
• Are there a sufficient number of sources in the references/bibliography/works cited page?

Organization

• Is there an introduction that is followed by supporting paragraphs and a conclusion?
• Do the paragraphs that follow the introduction reflect the order and structure of the thesis statement? (E.g., is the first paragraph following the introduction the first thesis point?)
• Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical order?
• Are there transitions linking paragraphs together? Do each of the thesis points in the body relate to the overall argument in the introduction?

Research

• If required to do so, has the writer incorporated enough outside research to support his or her argument?
• Are the sources credible? Do they come from reliable sources?
• Are the sources cited properly within the text?
• Is the references/bibliography/works cited page formatted correctly?

Style

• Does the point-of-view in the paper reflect the assignment? (E.g., is a thesis paper written in a third-person objective point-of-view?)
• Is appropriate language used throughout the paper? (E.g. Is formal language used for a research paper?)
• Can the writer replace any weak verbs with strong verbs? (E.g. “The party featured a live band” is stronger than “the party had a live band.)
• Are there any clichés that can be replaced?

Grammar & Spelling

• Are there any grammar mistakes that are repeated throughout the paper? (E.g., comma splices and fragments?)
• Are all of the words spelled correctly?
• Do the sentences contain the correct punctuation?
• Has the computer’s spell check incorrectly changed a word?