Writing Papers in the United States—A Guide for Foreign Students

it is likely that as a student you have written many papers and essays in your home country. You may feel confident about writing essays in English because of your past writing experience. Perhaps your only concern is that some weaknesses in grammar and vocabulary will cause problems between you and your American instructors. Many foreign students in the United States have thought this way and have been disappointed when their teachers returned papers or compositions with critical comments on the content rather than the form. The reason for the students' unpleasant surprise is that paper writing in the United States generally follows certain rules and conventions. This guide will help you attract a reader's attention, state clearly what you want to achieve, structure your ideas effectively, keep the reader's attention, and conclude your paper—all within a format familiar to American readers.

 

This guide will not teach you much about grammar or style. If you need help in those areas, you can contact your university's writing lab or writing center, practice on PLATO or a similar computer program, consult native speakers, study books, or take additional English courses.

 

I shall assume that you already adequately understand prewriting, the process of finding a topic and generating and organizing ideas. Presumably you have had to write papers that required some research. Should you need assistance with any aspect of prewriting, you can talk to your instructor or refer to the list of books at the end of this guide.

 

One last word. In any academic setting you are expected to indicate all of your sources. You must never plagiarize, that is, use someone else's words or ideas without acknowledging the source.

 

Topics, Thesis, and Introduction

 

While prewriting steps are the same in most cultures, the actual structure of a paper in the United States may be quite different from the papers you have written in your home country. Put very simply, American instructors will expect you to write papers following this format: state the point you wish to make (introduction and thesis); prove your point (body of the paper); and sum up what you have written (conclusion).

 

Foreign students (as well as many Americans) are often not aware of the crucial distinction between a topic and a thesis and, therefore, write papers without a purpose. If, for example, an instructor asks students for a paper on the general topic "Public Transportation in the United States," students will frequently research the subject conscientiously but write down only their findings. These students might give statistics and show that most people travel by car, plane, and bus while only a few take the train. Their papers deal with the topic by describing a situation without facing issues and taking sides, leaving the reader without a sense of

direction.

 

A writer gives the reader a sense of direction by writing a thesis. This thesis provides the specific, central idea of the paper. For example, for the previous topic, the thesis, or focus, could be "The federal government