An introduction where you introduce the topic, give context explaining why it’s important and current, and then state your research question and why we need to answer it, including your hypothesis (the projected answer to your research question);
Several body paragraphs in which you discuss different aspects of your research question and give quotes and paraphrase from your sources to explain them further. Try to use the 1+1 method here. That is where you use one quote or paraphrase from a given source and another from another source to draw a conclusion about your topic. For example, if I’m writing about the threatened Pacific Northwest tree frog and trying to discover what’s impacting its population decline, I might be discussing ground water pollution in a paragraph. I could use one source that gave statistics on the increase in ground water pollution from paper plants and another source detailing the increased number of paper plants in the area — then I could draw the conclusion that the pollution must be greatly increased, thus poisoning the frogs’ water. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES “write” a paragraph in which you simply paraphrase from one source. This is plagiarism and will send you down the road of multiple rewrites;
A conclusion in which you sum up all your findings, give your thesis (the answer to your research question) and explain what this knowledge will help with in the future.
