The Professional Writers Blog

The move from an analog to a digital culture is raising a new set of challenges for educators and students when it comes to writing and critical thinking. The following study examines what web sources students rely on and how educators can help students develop better citation and writing skills.
Key findings include:
• Plagiarism is going [...]

What is a literature review?
A literature review is a description of the literature relevant to a particular field or topic. This is often written as part of a postgraduate thesis proposal, or at the commencement of a thesis. A critical literature review is a critical assessment of the relevant literature. It [...]

Apart from selecting the right research topic, it is quite essential for you to opt for professional assistance on the collection and analysis of the data that has been collected for the research purpose. Qualitative and quantitative methods are not simply different ways if doing the same thing. Instead, they have [...]

What is a proposal?

A proposal is a request for support of sponsored research, instruction, or extension projects. Good proposals quickly and easily answer the following questions:

What do you want to do, how much will it cost, and how much time will it take?
How does the proposed project relate to the sponsor’s interests?
What difference will the [...]

In between the choosing of a topic and the final typing of the last revision lie a series of skills which, if learned thoroughly, might well be the most important and most permanent academic possession acquired in four years of college. Specifically, you need to learn how to: delve deeply into a topic; find [...]

The key idea is that you should read the paper in up to three passes, instead of starting at the beginning and plow- ing your way to the end. Each pass accomplishes specific goals and builds upon the previous pass: The first pass gives you a general idea about the paper. The second pass lets [...]

Get Organized: Lists, Outlines, Note cards, etc. Before starting to write the paper, take the time to Think about and develop a list of points to be made in the paper. As you progress, use whichever Strategy works for you to begin to order and to organize those points and ideas into sections.
A. Balanced Review [...]

Teaching Yourself
From the outset, keep in mind one important point: Writing a research paper is in part about learning how to teach yourself. Long after you leave college, you will continue learning about the world and its vast complexities. There is no better way to hone the skills of life-long learning than by writing individual [...]

Your choice of topic for research is likely to be influenced by such factors as:
Relevance: its perceived relevance to the academic department(s) in which you are studying;
Supervision: the availability of tutors/supervisors within the department(s) who are interested in the topic and their willingness to supervise such a thesis;
Interest: your existing knowledge of that topic and [...]

The goal of a writer is to present information to readers in a way that will help them understand complex topics or follow a series of intricate instructions.  While many  writers do have a background in the industry that they are writing about, it is not necessarily a requirement of the job.
Becoming a successful writer [...]