Tips for Seminar Preparation
How To Write A Seminar Paper – A Practical And Actually Useful Guide
This will make your life easier. If you need to write a seminar paper and all you see is this big mass of work ahead, just take a minute’s time, read this, and you’ll see that it’s actually easier than you might think now. Also, your professors will probably not like what stands here, but, hey, they won’t notice if you apply it.
The Literature
Google a few books which cover your subject. Then go to the library and take the first one from the list. Don’t go in deep, just check if it’s really covering your subject. Then take the literature list from the book (usually in the last section) and get the books which stand there, but only take the ones which have your subject in the title (or as many as there are in the library). Don’t worry if some of them are not available. Go through the literature lists of these books again. Do this three or four times and write down the books which come up often. Those are the ones you are interested in. You will now have about twenty books. Now browse through those and sort the ones out which do, after all, not cover your subject that much. In the end, you should be left with around ten books. Good start. All this will take you two hours.
The structure
A research paper always has the same structure: * Introduction * Aim * Theoretical background * Research * Conclusion
Now take each one of these sections and make subsections. Go with a presumed structure. You will most probably change it again. The important thing is, break the whole paper down into sections which, in the end, will cover about a page or even half a page. Now you have slots and can start to fill them. It’s much easier, because you can concentrate on one thing at a time and you don’t need to have the whole paper in mind.
The Actual Writing
The introduction usually covers what you will do in the paper. Leave the introduction until the end of the work. Then write down what you
This will make your life easier. If you need to write a seminar paper and all you see is this big mass of work ahead, just take a minute’s time, read this, and you’ll see that it’s actually easier than you might think now. Also, your professors will probably not like what stands here, but, hey, they won’t notice if you apply it.
The Literature
Google a few books which cover your subject. Then go to the library and take the first one from the list. Don’t go in deep, just check if it’s really covering your subject. Then take the literature list from the book (usually in the last section) and get the books which stand there, but only take the ones which have your subject in the title (or as many as there are in the library). Don’t worry if some of them are not available. Go through the literature lists of these books again. Do this three or four times and write down the books which come up often. Those are the ones you are interested in. You will now have about twenty books. Now browse through those and sort the ones out which do, after all, not cover your subject that much. In the end, you should be left with around ten books. Good start. All this will take you two hours.
The structure
A research paper always has the same structure: * Introduction * Aim * Theoretical background * Research * Conclusion
Now take each one of these sections and make subsections. Go with a presumed structure. You will most probably change it again. The important thing is, break the whole paper down into sections which, in the end, will cover about a page or even half a page. Now you have slots and can start to fill them. It’s much easier, because you can concentrate on one thing at a time and you don’t need to have the whole paper in mind.
The Actual Writing
The introduction usually covers what you will do in the paper. Leave the introduction until the end of the work. Then write down what you