Credit: coreagency.com
Many TED speakers are published researchers, and many of them base their TED talks on their research: before you look for other sources. Choose a TED speaker that has published on human trafficking and write a literature review on it. Use only published, peer-reviewed articles for your references. Although you are building up to your own argument and documenting your research process, try to avoid a personal tone. Statements like “I believe” or “I could not find…” put the focus more on you than on your topic and make you seem less credible. You usually don’t need to talk about yourself unless you have a really good reason e.g. personal experience–used sparingly–or primary research–interviews, surveys, etc. that you have personally written and conducted. Think of the paper as a conversation – what would you need to have a successful conversation with someone about your topic? Use this idea to spot places where more background information is needed, or where the evidence could be more convincing. What annoying conversational habits might you be committing in this paper? Try to keep each paragraph focused around some main point or topic; look for natural shifts in focus or transitions between important ideas, and use these as chances to break to a new paragraph. Mix in different types of evidence to support your claims. Don’t patchwrite! Just mixing together bits and pieces of other people’s writing is not original research or composition. Make sure you paraphrase thoroughly, and keep the focus on your own discussion. Try to find the original published source of the data, ideas, or quotations you are using. If you read a statistic on Wikipedia, track down the original source and cite that. If you read in Mental Floss about a scientific study done at the University of Notre Dame, track down the actual journal that published the study or find the research program’s website.
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