Research Paper Writing

I think that exercises involving writing a thesis and topic sentences that match would have helped me a lot in preparation for this research paper, and it would help a lot in general to keep the words in the paper close to the themes and arguments that we are trying to address. I feel like maybe one more short paper to briefly practice sketching an effective thesis and several supporting topic sentences would help the flow of my papers, and possibly the other authors in the class too. I don't think that in class writing would help as much as a take-home assignment because the term paper is take-home,  so the practice should simulate the final result as much as possible. I think the drafting process took place over an appropriate amount of time, and it wouldn't be greatly beneficial to make it either longer or shorter. If I could go back, I would initially put more focus in my arguments and topic sentences in relation to my thesis rather than spending most of my energy on the evidence supporting them. I think that using more than one stylistic guide could have helped me develop my traits as a writer better, but Graff was a good place to start for argumentative resources. One useful trick that I learned that I plan on using in the future is reading through my thesis and topic sentences as if they were a paragraph of there own to make sure I'm using similar language and continuing the flow of thoughts through my paper.