Writing an Essay

What is an argumentative essay? The argumentative essay originates from the North American writing tradition and follows a clear, comprehensible structure. Its goal is to convince readers through a coherent line of reasoning and to encourage further reflection. At the center stands a clearly formulated thesis statement or research question that you address through argumentation. …

Using AI as a Writing Buddy

What can a digital writing buddy do? When writing, we collect ideas, develop them further, put them into a good order, and discard them again. We write, rewrite, write anew. That is normal, because: writing is a thinking process. By formulating ideas so that another person understands them, the thought develops further. As long as …

Can I Write My Own Opinion?

Your actual independent contribution It is essential that an academic paper includes your well-founded, logically comprehensible conclusions based on what you have worked out, read, researched, investigated, thought about, and presented in the paper. This creates something new even in a student paper – something that makes it worth reading. You ask questions, compare, evaluate, …

Effective Research: Tips and Tools for Getting Started

What does research actually mean in this context? In this context, research aims to gather existing knowledge on a specific topic and integrate it into your own research process. A thorough search allows you to close your own knowledge gaps, identify research gaps, and place your work within the context of existing studies. To navigate …

Managing Literature with Zotero

Zotero is a free, open-source reference management program that allows you to collect, organize, and cite academic publications. Zotero offers numerous advantages for managing literature and knowledge: Efficient collection and organization: Zotero allows easy collection of literature sources from various databases, catalogs, and websites. With the Zotero Connector, bibliographic details can be directly imported from …

Improving Your Literature Search

OPAC With the help of the OPAC, the university’s digital library catalog, the entire print and digital collection of the TH Nuremberg library can be searched. Searches can be conducted both by formal criteria (such as authors or titles) and by content-related aspects (including keywords or subject terms). Via the tab “Union Catalog/Interlibrary Loan”, you …

Creating Indexes for Tables and Figures

Info: Here you can find an overview of the overall structure of a paper in the Social Sciences. What do lists of tables or figures look like? A list of figures or tables contains the titles and page numbers of all figures or tables in the text, in the order they appear. These lists are …

Citing in the Harvard Style

What is the Harvard style? The Harvard style is what is known as an author–year citation style. This means that the source is named directly in the text – usually in round brackets – and not in a footnote. At the end of the paper, you include an alphabetically sorted reference list with all sources …

Starting Researching

How can I research? Finding suitable literature for your topic depends on the right search in the library catalogs. First, search for authors and keywords you already know in connection with your topic, e.g., from seminars or entries in reference works. There are different catalogs and research options you should become familiar with. The library …

Creating a Table of Contents

Info: Here you can find an overview of the overall structure of a paper in the Social Sciences. Golden thread The table of contents must be complete and logically consistent. It reflects the structure of your paper: a meaningful, systematic sequence that covers the topic coherently. In a well-structured paper, subpoints connect logically rather than …

A Good Table of Contents

Info: Here you can find an overview of The Structure of a Thesis in Engineering and the Sciences. Formatting The table of contents carries the title “Table of Contents.” It lists all sections of the paper, including the bibliography, any other lists, and appendices. However, the table of contents itself is typically not listed as …

Writing an Essay

What is an argumentative essay? The argumentative essay originates from the North American writing tradition and follows a clear, comprehensible structure. Its goal is to convince readers through a coherent line of reasoning and to encourage further reflection. At the center stands a clearly formulated thesis statement or research question that you address through argumentation. …

Planning Your Thesis

How much time should I plan for? Generally speaking, you will be expected to complete work on your Bachelor’s thesis within a period of six months, with the actual workload expected to correspond to about three to four months (after all, you still have to do a few other things at the same time). If …

The Writing Process

Phases of writing a scientific paper Writing a scientific paper consists of several phases. However, these steps rarely follow this seemingly ideal order – you may often find yourself working on several stages in parallel and going back over what you have already done. Keep asking for feedback whenever possible and plan for several content …

Setting SMART Goals

Every person has goals. Often we set something for ourselves but then do not manage to follow through with the goal until the end. This is not because the goal is unattainable, but because of the way we formulate it. The criteria of the SMART method help to define goals clearly. What is the SMART …