Term papers and essays tend to be tricky for many students. As an educator, I’ve noticed that students find it particularly difficult to decide when to opt for secondary, external sources and when to stick with prescribed reading. Thankfully, there is a simple way out of this conundrum.

In general, students only have to pay attention to the learning objectives that drive term paper and essay assignments to figure this out. That is, if you are asked to identify the central thesis of a text (let’s call this Scenario A; we will be revisiting this in more detail later) you need not necessarily cite secondary sources. Unless of course you are making a claim about the thesis, or contesting its validity. In these instances, you will be expected to have looked for texts that either directly or indirectly respond to the prescribed text, and show that you understand the relationship between your chosen texts and the primary text.

If you’re doing the latter when asked to identify the central thesis of the prescribed text, please recognize that you are doing more than the learning objective requires you to. Truth be told, not all professors or evaluators are likely to see this as additional effort. Some—in fact, from my experience, a significant number of them—might penalize you for not adhering to the stated learning objective. This may seem pedantic or draconian, and in some cases it is, but there is good reason to stick with the stated objective. At the undergraduate or postgraduate level, being given learning objectives that require you to stick to the prescribed text means that text is likely deeply important, seminal, and quite possibly difficult also. More often than not, this might be a text you’ll be studying across a semester—sometimes, even across semesters.

Here’s something else I wish I’d known as a student: being asked to stick to the prescribed text does not mean professors are necessarily underestimating our intellectual ability. On the contrary, it is an invitation for careful reading, which, notably, is the bedrock of high-level criticism, which is what professors are expected to prepare students for.

Moreover, we cannot really tease out the strengths, weaknesses, and inconsistencies of seminal texts without careful reading. This may be a lot of work, but it has its rewards. Jumping to secondary texts too quickly means, more often than not, foregoing the opportunity for our own Eureka moment(s). Whether we like it or not, secondary texts influence our approach to primary texts, and if we’re not careful it is really easy to produce essays that merely summarize the arguments developed in different texts without positing any useful connection at all between them. Worse, it robs us the opportunity to really engage with the primary text.

The question then is, “How do I know if I have to stick to the prescribed text?” The good news is, professors typically let you know if they want you to stick to the prescribed text or if additional reading is a requirement. In the latter case (let’s call this Scenario B), a significant portion of the grade is usually reserved for students’ choice of additional reading; parameters typically include the text’s novelty, its relevance to the primary text, how well you’ve understood the new text, among other factors.

On the other hand, some assignments require students to choose their own thread of inquiry (let’s call this Scenario C). In these cases, our choice of topic, the learning objectives couched in the topic, and our adherence to these objectives are significant factors in our grades. These are a little more tricky because we’re on our own, and sometimes our grades suffer because we either go overboard with additional texts or limit ourselves to too little, or—worse—draw from unrelated or obsolete texts.

In these assignments, evaluators mainly look for clarity, and the easiest way to ensure clarity is to state, at the very beginning of your paper, why you’ve chosen a particular topic.

This involves stating why you think the topic merits scholarly attention, and the rest of the paper will therefore be in support of this initial statement. You cannot, however, simply state that you’ve chosen a topic because you find it interesting. This is not a scholarly statement. To avoid this pitfall, explain very briefly how your topic relates to the larger, overarching theme described in the course syllabus (every course has one), and whether the topic adds to or contests this line of thought, and why.

Let’s Break It Down:

Let’s look at how to tackle the three scenarios described above in greater detail.

For Scenario A, you only have to identify and summarize the central thesis. With some texts this can be a fairly straightforward process. With yet other texts this can be tricky. Typically, these assignments are designed to encourage careful reading of the Introduction and the first few chapters. They allow us to ease into texts. With tricky texts, it helps to begin with the Preface, which more often than not includes the most succinct summary one can find of a text.

Now all you have to do is look for the following:

(i) statement of the central thesis
(ii) the larger contexts and traditions the prescribed text responds to
(iii) the pros and cons of the chosen approach, as described by the author(s)—your own views can be reserved for higher-level assignments, as in Scenario C
(iv) and statements about how the authors expect their work to add to the larger context they are responding to

Next, cite every claim. This applies to all three scenarios. In Scenarios A and B, citations show that you’ve read the text. This not only encourages accountability in scholarship but also enhances the academic ecosystem by enabling new ways of looking at a text. In Scenario C, you can even use citations to put forth creative, sometimes even contentious, interpretations of texts as long as—this is very important—you acknowledge that your suggestions are contentious. I’ve dealt with this aspect of academic writing in greater detail here.

Additionally, make sure you follow the prescribed style sheet and citation format. Read your course syllabus carefully to find out how professors expect you to format your papers. It’s not unusual for professors to allocate a significant portion of your grade for formatting. When I was a student, some professors even allocated 50 percent of the grade for formatting. Which means in addition to making our arguments sound and persuasive, we also had to ensure crisp, error-free formatting. When in doubt or in a hurry, It is prudent to use a citation tool. You can also choose from plenty of video tutorials online if you want to do your citations manually.

Choosing Secondary Texts

If your learning objective requires you to look for additional texts, you can rely on the following techniques:

(i) Check out the footnotes and endnotes in the primary text
More often than not, these include recommendations for further reading. Some authors even go to the trouble of explaining how these recommendations relate to their text and what readers can expect from these texts. Sometimes, authors may even mention works they would have liked to explore further, but couldn’t. These works are especially ripe for picking.

(ii) Check out online databases
Sites like Wiley, JSTOR, Academia, Google Scholar, and Google Books are especially useful. If your college library holds a subscription with any of these databases, you won’t have to sign up to gain full, unlimited access.

As always, read Abstracts (in the case of research papers) and Introductions (in the case of books) carefully to ensure you’re picking relevant texts

A Few Final Tips

Assignments at the beginning of a semester or an academic year will mostly likely require you to summarize particular aspects of your primary text. You can even expect similar learning objectives if you’re taking on a new primary text well into a semester. This is not at all to say that you won’t be asked to do more than just summarize in these scenarios. The best advice is, always pay close attention to the learning objectives.

For term papers, on the other hand, you cannot just summarize certain aspects of the primary text. Since these are submitted at the end of a term, they must necesarrily reflect your learning arc. You must necessarily assess the strengths and weaknesses of your primary text and chosen texts, but more importantly, you must develop your own thesis and try and defend it as best as possible. 

Academic writing is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. Its rigor can seem excessive or off-putting, but if you are interested in a career in research or academia this rigor is a fundamental requirement.

Author Bio: Dennis Wesley is an independent educational researcher and blogger. His interests include STEM and Humanities education, especially interdisciplinary practices and methods. He mainly writes about sustainability, mental health, and academia. You can follow his personal blog here.