The expectations that professors have for their students' writing will vary greatly. The level of scholastic expectation you will face depends on the class and quality of the college and university, the temperament of the professor, and the relationship, good or bad, that you enjoy with you prof. Some teachers will be content with a solid effort- does your writing reflect an understanding of the lessons learned in class discussion and readings, and is your custom term paper written in reasonably correct English? It is relatively easy to get an A or a B if these are the expectations. Some teachers, though, have made it their mission to impart all their grammatical knowledge to their students, and this is when stress, mistakes and bad grades usually occur. The question is, how can you make your writing safe from the critiques of a harsh, demanding professor?
First, you have to understand what the demanding teacher wants from you. The first thing they usually want in a custom term paper is a perfect comprehension and demonstration of formatting, be that in APA, MLA, Chicago or Turabian. In order to show the professor that you possess this, you will have to be on your details. Proper formatting takes into account margins, spacing, quotations, attribution and punctuation. If you are not a detail oriented person, this can be a difficult aspect of a research paper. If the formatting is APA, you will have to put the author and year after every source you utilize or quote. If it is MLA, you will have to put the author and page number where you got the information, when available. Also, these two formats have significant differences when it comes to the works cited or bibliography. I find it useful, when writing a custom term paper, to have open in my browser examples of the formatting style I will need for the paper. The OWL at Purdue is a fantastic resource for sharpening your formatting skills.
Professors also want to see that their students have a deep comprehension of the proper grammar rules, and this can be even trickier. It is sometimes easy to forget that English is not an easy language, and grammar does not just encompass punctuation. Proper use of sentence clauses is part of grammar, as is the correct use of commas, semi colons and colons. If you understand all of the above, then you can avoid the one mistake that the Grammar Nazi hates most- the run on sentence. For example, here is an incorrect followed by a correct use of commas and semicolons.
Incorrect:
Many voters do not properly take into account a candidate's moral values, they look at issues that are created by the news media to make their decisions; and most people don't really know what they want in a candidate.
Correct:
Many voters do not properly take into account a candidate's moral values; rather, they base their decisions on issues that are often the sole creation of a media driven by its own agenda. In fact, most people don't really know what they want in a candidate.
The important thing to remember here is that a semi-colon starts a new thought in a sentence, whereas a comma helps with transition, or with listing things that are alike in some way.
While it can be difficult to satisfy all the requirements of a tough professor, one of the most important things you can do is show a real effort at improvement if you are given a chance to do revisions. Most professors will offer students a chance to revise low graded papers because they see it as a chance to educate. Many students will feel frustrated and won't take their professor up on this opportunity, but you can and should. Look for the biggest or most common mistakes you made on your custom term paper and try to correct those. If your professor feels that you are making a conscious effort, he or she might raise you a letter grade or more.
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