P1. Pick a Topic for Your Paper

Over the course period you will write one paper. The purpose of it is to get experience in structuring a whole scientific paper, in the most common format of a prototypical science paper: In the form of a study requiring formulating hypotheses, designing an experiment, obtaining and presenting empirical data.

What To Do

Your first assignment for the writing project is to pick a topic: Decide on a topic to write a paper on.
Ideally you should pick something highly relevant, e.g. topic you'd like to explore, something you are actually working on, proposed thesis topic, etc.), so that you are not simply writing a “hypothetical paper”.

(In general, you will learn better if the homework you do is somehow relevant to your proximal thoughts and actions, rather than some distant time, past or future. This goes for any and all learning, by the way!)

The teacher will will help you pick the best available topic (the topic must be approved by the teacher – not all topics are equally well suited for the purpose of learning how to write scientific papers). Discuss your ideas with your instructor before submitting!

How To Do It

Describe your topic/paper idea and send it in flat text via email to [ thorisson - at - gmail dot com ]). PLEASE PUT “REM4” IN THE TITLE OF YOUR EMAIL, SO IT GETS CLASSIFIED CORRECTLY IN THE TEACHER'S INBOX, and include the assignment number, e.g. REM4:P1. Thanks.

When your topic is fixed you need to find a title for your paper. This will be a tentative title at first – it will be honed as the paper progresses. The title should be as descriptive as possible and as short as possible. Obviously these are counteracting goals – the shorter a title is the less descriptive it is, and vice versa. Therein lies the challenge. The teacher can help you with this too, if you wish.

SUBMIT SHORT DESCRIPTION OF TOPIC AND TENTATIVE TITLE ON MYSCHOOL IN TXT FORMAT.

Typical format of a txt file turned into MySchool:




APPROVED TENTATIVE TITLES 2015

Not Quite There Yet



Examples of Student Paper Titles from 2014