In the last lesson, you wrote the thesis statement for your individual research paper and used it in a paragraph. In this lesson, you will build on that effort to create a concept map or outline of your individual paper. Don't worry if it's not yet complete.
The outline is a traditional technique for organizing writing. The outline forms the structure for your paper and organizes what you say about your chosen topic. In Lesson 2, you may have explored Purdue University's Online Writing Lab's useful tutorial on writing a research paper. It includes excellent information on the how and why of outlines.
If you would like more information on outlines, please visit this web page on outlines from Indiana University.
Many writers find concept mapping to be a useful strategy to help them understand the relationships of their ideas and the information they've collected. Further, a concept map can help organize and plan your research. Take a look at this tutorial on Concept Mapping in Research and Writing.
The third screen of the tutorial suggests you maintain a log to keep track of details about citations and quotes. If you have access to Inspiration software, you can use the Notes feature to do the same thing more conveniently.
Once you develop a concept map, you can easily convert it to an outline. In the outline form, it is easy to consider sequence and flesh out details of the topic.
There are a variety of concept map tools available - some at no cost. We'll highlight some of those in the Technology strand of this lesson.
| Many thanks to the Graphics Communications classes at City College of San Francisco for making the icons used on this page and for making them publicly available. |