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English 102 |
The Research paper is due in the last week of class, so it's time to begin planning it. The topic will be your choice. The research paper should be in third person with no person shifting unless you are your own evidence in a body paragraph. The Research paper should be 4-6 pages, approximately 1200-1500 words, with at least four different sources with a Works Cited page. Paragraphing rules from other papers still apply with five sentence minimums and so on. As usual, consult the reference text for help on organization, development, and other information.
Read the text for format info, such as footnoting, MLA style, end notes, and Bibliography. Minor errors in style in the Bibliography (or Works Cited) are acceptable, but you should demonstrate that you know how to cite your references properly. If you know the APA style, I'll accept that as well.
See DUE DATES PAGE (link at top of page).
The last assignment is your research paper. Writing a research paper is a requirement for English 102. Marilyn Fry covers research paper information extensively in the text, pages 72-74, 23-29, 15-22, so be sure to read these pages very carefully as you begin to type your paper. ESPECIALLY NOTE THE SECTIONS IN PAGES 15-22 ON PLAGIARISM!!! I require a bibliography or works cited page. You will write a paper between four and six pages long, approximately 1200-1500 words, using four to six sources. These sources may be of any type, such as Internet, books, magazines, CD-Roms, newspapers, personal interviews, reports, and others that fit your subject matter.
Examples of the various types of quotation are given in the text, but if you want detailed information of quoting every possible source, consult an MLA handbook, or go to the Internet: http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocMLA.html.
You will never use a quote or a question in your thesis statement or in any of your topic sentences. These must be your ideas, not someone else's. The idea in a research paper is that you are making a point with a controlling idea that is supported by the research in the body of the paper but NEVER in your thesis or topic sentences!
The rules of paragraphing remain the same in a research paper as they are in any other paper for my class. Every paragraph MUST have a MINIMUM of five sentences. Try to balance them so you don't have one paragraph that is vastly longer than the others. It makes the others look weak and under-researched. Here, if you have never outlined before, it is a good idea to start. Research papers that haven't been outlined are pretty easy to spot because too much space is devoted to one section and the other sections are glossed over. If you find that you are saying a great deal about one aspect, maybe you should re-evaluate the topic and spend the whole paper on that one section and develop it. You can definitely have more than five paragraphs in a research paper, but keep to your outline, and be aware of balance as you develop your paper. Don't be afraid to change your focus as you write and then go back and change your intro if you discover that your paper is going in a different direction than you planned. That's what revision is all about!
Here is where it is a judgement call. I don't want to see huge paragraphs all being a quote from someone else. Then, it looks like all you are doing is pasting quotes together. I want it to be mostly YOUR writing with facts, statistics, certain opinions, and so forth quoted to support your statements. You should have, as a ball park figure, I'd say at least two quotes from each source you list, so that would be a minimum of eight to ten quoted citations in your paper that will be documented in your Bibliography.
The basic format for MLA in-text citation is as follows:
If the author's last name appears in the citation, then only a page number is required:
When only a single author is listed for a text, typical bibliography entries will appear as follows:
The following web site is a source of information for you to look up how to do your endnotes and Bibliography pages:
General page on citation of sources:
Research other sites on the WEB, too!
Read some example papers on the Research Paper Examples page.
For your last group assignment, go to 10.4, page 169. Read the selections, and send an e-mail to your Web Board saying which one whose prose style you find the most appealing to you. Write several sentences explaining why, and be specific in those few sentences (a paragraph only).
See Due Dates page (link at top of page).
Download (now) and print out or save on a disk William Faulkner's classic short story "A Rose for Emily" at the following web site:
http://www.online-library.org/fictions/emily.html
Also, go to my notes on the story and print them or put them on a disk to bring to the final:
If this isn't a story that takes to psychological criticism (in next week's reading), nothing will! The final will involve questions on this strange story. It will be a timed paper in the evaluation style, possibly combined with another style, of two hours' duration, and as usual, I will give you a list of optional topics. There will also be some choices that involve comparing the Macomber story to Emily, so be prepared with that material if you think you might want to try these. I will also have a choice or two that is not based on the literary sample but that you will apply other argument techniques to.
Page was last updated: 11/19/02
E-mail your instructor: Meri Rogoff
Copyright © 2002 by Meri Rogoff. All rights reserved.
