Crafting An Outline For A Research Paper On Down Syndrome

Down syndrome is the most common genetically-based birth defect resulting from an extra chromosome. When doing your research and choosing your topic, you will find there’s a lot of different angles you can select from. There is a broad spectrum of functionality between affected persons, so that’s another idea you could cover. Despite having similar physical traits, those with Down syndrome have an array of different cognitive, emotional, intellectual and social capacities.

Constructing your Outline

Once you have your topic decided upon, do some brainstorming. What are the things that interest you about your topic? What are some questions you want answered? What do you hope to present to your readers?

Develop a list of points you hope to reveal and analyze. What are your central ideas? Here is where your reading and studying come into play. What are the main themes that seemed to emerge, related to your topic?

Structure your main points into a ladder, so to speak. Each one is a different rung on the ladder. Each main point will be the main focus of each paragraph. Underneath each rung of the ladder, list the supporting points that fit with each main point. These could include examples, details, evidence, quotes, other peoples’ findings and so forth. Make sure they all fit together in a logical pattern.

Problem Solving

Having troubles constructing your outline? Do you have too much material, too many main points to be able to cover? If so, your topic is too broad. Look at the main ideas and use one or a few of them to tweak your topic in such a way that it becomes narrower. Now you can toss the main ideas that no longer are relevant to your newly focused topic idea.

Do you have the problem of too little source material directly related to your topic? If so, your topic may be too narrow. Add another dimension to it to solve the problem.

Putting it all Together

  1. Find the topic idea that interests you the most. Narrow it down to something you can cover effectively within the scope of your paper.
  2. Perform an adequate amount of research, read background material, find relevant sources, take good notes and so forth.
  3. Construct an outline. Begin writing, following the outline at each step. Write your first draft.
  4. Edit, revise and proofread your first draft to form your final draft.

 

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