Essay 3: I-Search Research Paper
Description:
1,600-1,900 words, plus a separate MLA-formatted Works Cited page
Sources:
● A minimum of five secondary sources.
○ This should include at least one peer-reviewed article.
○ One of these sources can be the one you found/used for Skill Focus 2.
● At least one course text of your choosing.
○ This does not count towards the other secondary source requirement.
○ That brings the total number of required sources to six at minimum.
Total Points:
250 (in the Essay category of your grade)
Due:
Final draft due Friday 4/5
Overview and Purpose of this Assignment
For this assignment, you will write an essay that analyzes a topic of your choice that is related to our course focus. This essay should be a response to the Inquiry Question that has guided your research throughout the unit. The essay has a number of different components, including finding reliable sources, accurately attributing outside information to the source’s authors, and conducting an in-depth description of your research process. Your essay should be about 1,500-1,800 words in length and try to convince your audience of your claim.
Layout of the Paper
Unlike other research papers you may have written, the I-Search paper has a pre-established format. The goal of the paper is to help you learn about a topic that interests you while accounting for the research and writing process that is involved in a traditional academic paper.
For this paper, you’ll work with the following outline.
Section 1: Introduction (approximately 300-400 words)
○ This would include your inquiry question and introducing the “so what?” of the paper/topic, why it matters, and why your paper would be a worthwhile read.
Section 2: What I Knew (approximately 200-300 words)
○ This would be what you knew about the topic going into the research.
Section 3: My Search Process (approximately 400-500 words)
○ Here, you would describe and reflect on how you found their sources, what types of sources you found, how you assessed the sources’ credibility, etc.
○ Think about how you undertook this process, what worked for you, and why.
Section 4: What I Learned (approximately 700-800 words)
○ This is the research paper-ish part of the assignment.
○ In this section, you would bring in your sources and explain what information about the topic is currently available.
○ You would also work on answering the “so what?” that they established in the introduction.
Section 5: Conclusion (approximately 250-300 words)
○ This is where you describe their most important takeaway(s) about the topic, whether what you knew matched with what you found in your research, etc.
○ This would be more of a reflection than a typical conclusion would be.
Criteria for Evaluation
Does the paper use the required number of sources?
Does the paper explain the research process in sufficient detail?
Is there a clear accounting of what has been learned in the research process?
Does the writing use style and voice to demonstrate rhetorical awareness of the assignment’s audience and purpose?
Does the writing make use of the expectations for academic writing, including transition phrases, attributive tags, strong verbs, appropriate word choice, and MLA citation format?
