Research Paper Final
Eight pages
Ten sources
MLA style documentation
The purpose of the research paper is to help you progressively build a typical college research paper of 8-10 pages with ten sources. You will build on your five-page draft by adding three more pages and five more sources. Ideally, the draft plus the final research paper will give you experience writing a research paper so that when you are assigned one in one of your subjects, you have an idea of how to go about the project and how much time it takes.
You are welcome to make corrections and improvements to your research paper draft as you revisit it. For the final research paper, please revise your thesis statement, introduction, conclusion, and topic sentences as necessary to accommodate the additions to the paper.
Here is an anatomy of a possible research paper with many of the parts that might go into it. You do not need to use all the parts of the research paper, but, for the research paper final, you should at least make a claim that a situation exists, provide evidence that the situation exists, give the causes/effects or compare/contrast it to analyze and evaluate it, and provide solutions. Add other sections as needed to develop your paper.
Pay careful attention to essay form and sentence structure, as usual, but for any research paper, reserve time to make sure you are documenting your sources accurately in the assigned format (in this case, MLA), and read and revise sentences that contain quotes and paraphrases to make sure they are correctly punctuated and that your sentences surrounding quotes and paragraphs are logical and grammatical. This might involve an extra step for any paper that uses sources.
Ways to organize and develop a research paper:
Make a claim about a situation that exists; perhaps a problem or an opportunity, and support that claim with examples, narration, description, facts, statistics, studies, expert opinion, and so on. Some of this evidence can come from your personal experience or public knowledge, and some of it can come from your sources.
Define any key terms needed for your audience or key terms whose definition is at question or you seek to redefine. You can define terms from your own experience and/or use sources.
Give history or context if needed.
Explain the process for doing something if needed.
Give the causes and/or effects of the situation you describe. Examining causes helps you to propose solutions or recommendations. Describing effects helps to evaluate the situation as good or bad.
Compare and/or Contrast the situation to others. This helps to evaluate and also propose solutions.
Present opposing viewpoints or counterarguments to your proposal. This is not necessary but might help you to counterargue if needed or find solutions to relevant objections.
Anticipate obstacles to your proposal.
Give a refutation, make concessions, and/or provide solutions to objections, obstacles, and challenges.
Propose a solution or give recommendations. Your proposal or recommendations may be brief and general (and can even be your conclusion) or very detailed. It may come from your own ideas alone, present experts’ ideas and opinions, or be a combination of both. You can be very definite about which options you recommend, or you can recommend a more nuanced approach.
A hypothetical paper about fast fashion might first define what fast fashion is and give examples of it, then describe the negative effects on the environment and humans, and then propose solutions. One possible solution might be for consumers to begin asking manufacturers for information about where clothes are sourced and then buying brands that provide it. If you are focusing on a topic that is not a problem but an opportunity, like the benefits of meditating, you could begin by defining and describing meditation, and then giving suggestions for how to practice it or fit it into your day.
A student paper posted on Blackboard makes a claim that gymnastics is demanding, dangerous, and abusive and supports that claim with personal experience in the form of narration, examples, statistics, and expert opinion, then makes recommendations for how to solve the problem. You can make up your own solutions, use others that you researched, or a combination of both. We will do a freewriting exercise in class where you can brainstorm and search solutions for your paper.
Document your sources using MLA format in three places: 1. where the source begins as an author tag; 2. where it ends as a parenthetical citation, and 3. at the end of the paper in a Works Cited. The lecture notes from class detail how to do these. Put quotation marks around direct quotes (the exact words of others) and make sure paraphrases (the ideas of others that you put in your own words) are entirely your own words. Paraphrases need to be cited exactly the same as direct quotes since you are using the ideas of others. Pay attention to the punctuation surrounding quotes; we will discuss this in class, and the lecture notes are posted in the unit on MLA citations.
Even though this paper uses sources, it will be improved if you have a personal connection to the topic or at least really care about it. Think about the main point you want to make about the topic which will be expressed in your thesis statement and topic sentences and consistently developed throughout the essay. Write or revise an interesting introduction, conclusion, and title to draw the reader in, and use examples, descriptions, narration, varied word choice and sentence structure, figures of speech, and so on to write persuasively about your topic.
Since all this takes time, make sure to start this paper early and work on it in stages; it will help to get a tutor from the writing center to review your paper for you at least once.
