A college English term paper usually has one of two primary objectives: to demonstrate the student's writing skills or to discuss critically a topic that is relevant to the literature of the English language.
In both cases, topic selection is critical. One cannot write well if one chooses an unsuitable topic. The topic must be narrow enough that the student can cover it well within the required length of the college English term paper; otherwise, the instructor will assign the paper a lower grade due to gaps in argumentation and/or explanation. The student may narrow his or her topic by creating a topic tree, a list in which each term is a specific subset of the preceding term. For example, the student who wants to write a college English term paper about American literature could narrow that topic as follows: 1.) American literature, 2.) twentieth-century American literature, 3.) William Faulkner, 4.) "The Bear," 5.) Ike McCaslin. "Ike McCaslin," the fifth term in the topic tree, should be narrow enough that a student could write a focused term paper. Choosing a narrow topic is a great portion of the task of writing a college English term paper.
Students who write college English term papers to demonstrate their writing skills should be especially diligent to narrow their topic choices to the fourth or fifth term in the topic tree. The instructor may encourage students to write about whatever interests them, but an unfocused topic leads directly to writer's block and to an underdeveloped paper.
Instructors grade college English term papers with a strict eye for form as well as for content. Even if a student provides excellent content, he or she cannot write a superior college English term paper without sound spelling, grammar, and punctuation. If a student is weak in any of these areas, he or she probably has three resources that can answer any questions: the instructor of the course, the English department's style manual, and the college's writing lab (if available).
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