Learning to Write a Literature Term Paper

Learning to Write a Literature Term Paper
Speaking as an English major and literary lover, it is the author’s humble opinion that writing a literature term paper is one of the best opportunity’s you will ever have as a college student. This is due in no small part to the sheer amount of interesting literature and English courses offered these days. Linguistics courses, courses which study the deeper meanings of fairy tales, courses which deal entirely with female writers – there is a whole world of literature out there, a whole spectrum of intriguing characters, stories, and poems. You can also find some more research paper topic ideas.

More often than not, when you are asked to write a literature term paper, you are going to be asked to explicate something about what you are covering in your class. This is especially common in poetry courses, but you can certain explicate prose as well. What that means for you as a student is that, quite often, you will find it easier to use the expository term paper style. In other words, you will simply choose to explain something in your paper.

That still leaves you plenty of room to consider a number of term paper ideas. Again, it simply depends on what you are studying in your class. Let’s say you are studying currently studying plays and short stories – Chekhov, Ibsen, et cetera. In Ibsen’s “A Doll House” alone, there are myriad ideas on which you can choose to write your paper – and that is an excellent base for an expository term paper, as there are plenty of things to explain.

Now, generally, expository papers further take the format of the famed five paragraph term paper. You might not always be able to use this style when writing a literature term paper. Yet again, it depends on what you are writing about, what course you are taking, et cetera. If, for instance, you are taking a Shakespearean class and have decided to write your paper on some aspect of Hamlet, five paragraphs probably will not be enough.

Let’s face it, in order to write a descriptive term paper about Hamlet, you need a lot of room. It would hardly be possible to even discuss lovely Ophelia’s madness in a mere five paragraphs. You certainly could not discuss the Prince’s own madness, meddling, and melancholy in so short a length of space. And let’s face it further – literary papers deserve a lot of description! Learn more about a sample research paper you can get online.

No matter what your literature term paper is on, whether it is on the similarities between Virginia Woolf and her tragic Mrs. Darrow or Jane Austen’s similarities to a lot of her female characters, you need to be enthusiastic, imaginative, and factual. Term paper writing may be a technical exercise, but in literature especially, you have to use some artistic flair. At the very least, you are paying proper homage to the writers, poets, and playwrights you are studying. If you want a good grade, you have to delve beyond proper format and structure. Your term paper ideas need to be both illuminating and intriguing. Otherwise, your work is going to be sub par and mediocre – and no one wants to be average, even when they are simply writing a paper.

Tags: descriptive term paper, expository term paper, five paragraph term paper, literature term paper, term paper ideas, term paper writing