Making a Case for Writing Research Papers.

The article provides guidelines for writing research papers. When asked to prepare a research paper, many first-year college students tend to submit a position paper filled with opinion and unsubstantiated claims rather than a research paper. Recently, the author has tried a new approach that seems to be helping students understand the task more thoroughly before they begin. Through a series of three PowerPoint presentations that the author prepared, he presented to students the analogy that writing a research paper is like being a lawyer defending a court case.