The Plan of the Term Paper: what it is and how to formulate it

A term paper plan is the beginning of the beginning. Ideally, with a term paper, the student summarizes everything he or she has learned about the subject during the course. It is not necessary to pack it all you learned in lectures – each term paper is devoted to a separate topic, usually quite narrow. But even on a narrow topic can be a lot of information. To avoid getting lost in it and to put everything in its place, you cannot do without a plan.

What is the plan for the term paper?

The term paper plan is the content or structure of the work. Usually, it is a list of questions on the topic, which you give answers to. The questions should be logically connected.

Engineering students often have term projects instead of term papers. The essence is about the same. The only difference is the presence of technical, economic, and graphic parts.

Why write a term paper plan?

Of course, you can write a term paper without a plan. It will just be more complicated. Probably much more difficult. I’ll recommend you to search for essay help websites to help you figure it out.  Some universities practice a typical approach to the preparation of term papers and any other academic papers – necessarily require a plan at the initial stage of work.

And in general, to make plan coursework is very useful:

  • Operating with short theses and thoughts, it is easier to look at the problem from all sides and do not miss anything important.
  • The plan will help to maintain harmony – not to make parts of the term paper too different in size, not to repeat.
  • With the plan, you will know in advance what should be in the text. And therefore it will be easier to find the information you need.

What should be in the plan

Introduction and conclusion

These sections may seem secondary, but often teachers are only familiar with them.

In the introduction, it is important to talk about the goals and objectives of your paper, what questions you have raised.

In the conclusion, you need to summarize the main points of the work. To make this easier to do, write micro conclusions at the end of each paragraph of the main part. Then simply assemble them from the conclusion, like a construction set.

Main part

In the context of coursework, except the introduction and conclusion, there are usually two or three points that make up the main part:

  • The first of them is more often theoretical – in it you need to formulate a modern view of the problem.
  • The second is an analysis of the theoretical part.
  • Still need to describe ways of solving the problem – sometimes this block is part of the second paragraph, but more often it is taken to the third.
  • The ratio of parts of the term paper and their content always depends on the topic and the specifics of the work. Engineering students devote the lion’s share of the work to calculations, lawyers – the study of jurisprudence. But there is always a structure – regardless of the subject orientation coursework.

The title of each paragraph of the main part should reflect the content. Formulate a question, a basic idea in one short sentence. This will be the title of the paragraph.