Composing A Decent Research Paper With Annotated Bibliography
If your assignment includes creating an annotated bibliography it’s quite a good news, in fact, although it may seem to the contrary to you. Annotated bibliography means simply adding an annotation to each source you cite on the reference page of your paper. Requirements to this assignment may vary: sometimes it implies just a brief summary of the source, in other cases it includes some critique, but mostly it appears to be a combination of both elements mentioned.
Properly composed annotated bibliography will help you doing your whole research and save you a lot of effort. In addition, it’s not really a difficult task if you split it into steps and perform them one by one.
Step-by-Step Guide to Writing an Annotated Bibliography for Your Research Paper
- Find enough sources.
- Study the chosen sources thoroughly.
- Write a summary of each source.
- Evaluate the sources.
- Check and revise the whole thing.
You need some time to collect proper sources. Hasty browsing a couple of related materials will not do for creating a solid annotated bibliography. Always try to gather a bit more sources than you may need for your work.
You should read and evaluate each source to write a sensible annotation on it. It is useful to make notes while reading, to point out the key ideas and useful quotations and to write down your own thoughts and comments on author’s statements.
Cite your sources in proper style.
Check with your professor, which citation and writing style is appropriate for your assignment in advance.
This should include highlighting the key ideas, especially those relevant to your own thesis.
List the main pros and cons of the source, state whether it was useful for performing your research, estimate its level of credibility.
Read the complete reference page and make sure it is composed without mistakes of any kind and includes all the necessary information.
Main Reasons to Employ an Annotated Bibliography
- It helps you understand the materials better.
- It improves the quality of your research.
- It saves your time.
In addition to evaluating the sources, the proper study of them before making the annotations enables you to check their credibility and remove the useless ones.
As you can’t skip proper study of sources, in this case, the expert level of your survey will surely rise.
Although this kind of bibliography requires more time to compose it, then it saves a great deal of time for writing your whole paper. Since your thoughts are structured already, you will cope with the writing task fast and easy.