It is not a good idea to make your own mistakes when writing a term paper; you can usually become an expert, but you can’t expect to get a high grade. Of course, students who are responsible and honestly trying to do the work without any help deserve the respect of a teacher, but if a student is not very confident in his abilities – it is better not to take the risk.
After all, writing a term paper is not as easy as it may seem at first glance. That’s why it’s always a great idea to address coursework writing service, which professionally deals with essays, lab reports, dissertations, term papers, and speeches. The service can prepare the term paper on the topic of any complexity and at the most affordable price. It’s not a secret that many students use such essay writing platforms. However, only by contacting the best writing services can you compare and discover all the pros and cons of different sites like WritingAPaper. By the way, if you are ready to write a paper on your own, you should know about the mistakes, which students often make.
Choosing a “too simple” level topic
The topic of the term paper should reveal some problematic issues, it should be quite narrow and controversial. Taking a broad topic will be very difficult to write – enough for more than one dissertation and will work on everything and nothing. If you take a “hackneyed” topic, it will be straightforward to find information, but it will be difficult to systematize it and bring something new to the research question. Plus, students are faced with the problem of how to learn it all. Many solve it by trivializing the information and stating the most obvious so as not to miss the mark. This mistake usually costs a lot of money and leads to a low defense grade.
The topic of the coursework is not covered
A topic that is too well researched is bad, like the lack of a problem in the research topic. However, if you take something ‘exotic’ as a topic, you may encounter a lack of literature and difficulty in finding material to write about. And in such a case, it is not uncommon for the topic not to be disclosed and for the purpose and objectives of the paper not to be achieved. Indeed, the topic may also not be disclosed if the student simply avoids the approved plan.
When studying a topic, we may discover a previously unknown aspect and sail off into the intricacies of the study. But, in that case, one should either re-approve the plan or simply take the idea and present it in a future conference abstract, research paper, or master’s thesis. Otherwise, the result will not be very good. The committee will simply point out the topic’s inconsistency with the work’s essence.
Failure to meet the requirements for this type of work
Despite what chic ideas will be reflected in the term paper, it is important not to forget about the basic requirements for design. You can find out how a term paper should be written, how long it should be, how the sources of literature used should be arranged, and many other nuances by following the guidelines.
Plagiarism or exceeding the permitted percentage of borrowing in the text
It is certainly necessary to refer to the work of scientists and make your conclusions based on their work. Nevertheless, in science, the rule of ‘good tone’ will be the presence of borrowings in the range of 30% in the text. It is better to use different points of view covering the theoretical aspects of a problem. The rest of the texts should be the author’s texts. To avoid plagiarism, it is not enough not to mindlessly copy text from the Internet. It is also necessary to make proper references, and not to borrow too large chunks of ready-made text.
A disproportionate volume of sections and subsections
The rule of a 50/50 ratio of theory to practice in a term paper or identical subdivisions in the text of the paper is unspoken. But, agree, it looks strange work, in which 30 pages of text are devoted to the genesis of any institution and only a few pages are allocated to the practical side of the issue. A term paper would be no better if the history of an institution in the Middle Ages were spread over 15 pages, while contemporary research is given over only a few pages.
The greater the significance of the work – the higher the content of the practical material should be. Progress should be made in this direction and, if possible, the ratio of theory to practice should be 20/80.
Irrelevant references
It has probably not occurred to the rare student the idea of adding a reference by text in the hope that no one will compare. However, this is a direct violation of citation rules, the same as referring to a textbook rather than to the primary source it mentions. The result of such dishonesty will be an accusation of plagiarism and a low score in the defense. If the deception is uncovered (which is unavoidable) you will have to work too much with the sources. After all, a few new references will entail changing the entire reference list and “moving away” numbering. There are three ways out of this situation:
- First, generate automatic links that will update the numbering in square brackets. To implement such a thing, you’ll have to surf the Internet and improve your computer skills;
- you may use extraneous footnotes in your work (not all departments allow this, so you should check this right away);
- when writing a paper, make a list of references in the order of citations in the text. This option is simple and “safe”.
Lack of connection between the parts of the coursework
The theory should ‘justify practice’, and aims and objectives should be achieved as a result of the research and described in the conclusions – seemingly straightforward, but many students ‘crumble on this’. It is important to think through the research strategy first and to model the results to be had. This will allow theoretical research to be carried out without deviating from the practical part of the problem and the applied analysis that will be implemented.
Use of outdated sources
When writing research papers, it is advisable to use literature that is no more than 3-5 years old (approximate timeframe). This is because everything in the world is changing very rapidly and research tends to age morally. Old sources do not meet the criterion of relevance. In addition, over the years that a book or article has existed on the Internet, it has probably already been analyzed many times. What is the point of doing it again?
By using old literature, there is a higher risk of stumbling on plagiarism. It is unlikely that a student will go to the library to look for a book from the 70s or 80s, that he copied from someone else. But it will only take a few minutes to find a new journal.
Existence of grammatical errors
Spelling plays a significant role in the general perception of a paper. Especially now, in the world of modern technology and a huge number of online resources for checking grammar and spelling, errors in a paper look simply depressing. It should only take a few hours at most to check this aspect – you should take the time to do so. In addition, will a person who is pursuing higher education be pleased to hear that he/she wrote a word with a mistake or missed a coma?
We hope that the most common mistakes made by students we have discussed will never be made by you. It is best to learn from other people’s mistakes and submit a good paper to the department whose quality will satisfy even a demanding teacher. If you cannot cope with writing a term paper or simply do not have time, we advise you to seek help from the best college essay writing service to order a term paper. The authors of the company “WritingAPaper” know exactly what mistakes should not be made in the term paper.
