RESEARCH PROJECT, PART 5: The Research Paper
PURPOSE: When learning how to do research and document it, it is possible to go through the steps of writing a paper without actually writing it. However, only by writing a paper at the end of the research, organization, and analysis process can students and instructor clearly see what their skills have yielded. Writing coherent, well-documented, substantive papers is also good practice for the possibility that the student may someday have to do something similar in a professional capacity.
OBJECTIVE: To sum up and synthesize the results of the research project in a properly sourced paper that shows facility with the topic, the sources, and the student’s own acquisition of the skills learned throughout the course in a critical discussion of the topic that asserts a claim of their own that is supported with reasoning and appropriate use of sources.
REQUIREMENTS: Write a research paper, synthesizing your research with your own thinking about the topic, centering your own thesis and citing your sources. Your paper should be 5 to 8 full pages long, not including the Works Cited page, illustrations, or long quotations. If you have a thesis, it should be clearly stated. If the paper is a survey of material, you should make clear the limits of what you are surveying and have a stated opinion or point of view about the material. There should be at least six allowed sources used if you wish to make an A on the paper. (Four is the minimum for “Meets Requirements.”) If you are using materials from sources such as children’s adaptations or pop culture, your purpose in doing so should be clear. A Works Cited must be attached.
The paper must CITE everything (direct quotations, paraphrased quotations, information, or theories) that you take from one of your sources. See the information below about CITING YOUR SOURCES, or see HERE. Each citation must refer to an item on your Works Cited page. The Works Cited page should not contain any item NOT used as a cited source in your paper. (In other words, do NOT include everything you looked at; just include what you used.) For an example of what a Works Cited page should look like, see HERE. Citation style and bibliographic entries must be in MLA style, and that includes punctuation of titles, forms of authors’ names, and all other details.
Your paper should be written in clear, formal English, with appropriate grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Don’t worry about avoiding use of the pronoun “I.” Your paper can be both personal and humorous, but it should still engage seriously with your topic and it should not be chatty. You should also avoid angry rants or moralistic judgments; strive for objectivity. Do not write a paper that sounds like an essay about your research difficulties.
Instructions broken out into steps:
Step 1. Go back over notes and sources to be sure you have everything you need to argue the thesis you wish to argue in your paper. Is your outline what you want it to be to write the paper you want to write. If it isn’t, re-do the outline. Don’t just ignore it and start writing the actual paper from scratch.
Step 2. Suggested organization: Deal with your main ideas or subtopics in the body of the paper, after the introduction. After you have laid out your main ideas (aspects, subtopics, evidence, reasons: however you think of the body of your research), you should have a discussion paragraph in which you analyze all your material as a whole, bringing it together to see how it fits (compares, etc.) to support your thesis. Then, in an argument paragraph, make your argument: in analyzing my data I have shown that my thesis is correct, for the following reasons. In this paragraph, or perhaps a following paragraph, you can rebut the any obvious arguments against your thesis. Then comes the conclusion.
Step 3. Write the paper. Working from your outline, start filling in the sections you have planned for your paper. Include information from your sources that will support your position. Whether this support comes from your notes or from the original articles, take care to use supporting information appropriately, paraphrasing unless you MUST use a quotation. Be sure also to acknowledge possible objections to your position and rebut those objections. Remember that you can use an author’s evidence to support a position contrary to their own, but you should be fair enough to acknowledge that their conclusions are different from yours. Don’t forget that your argument should focus on your own thoughts, based on both your reasoning and perhaps your experience, with your sources only used as support.
Step 4. You should formally cite your sources with embedded citations (Author pg#) and add a Works Cited page in which the articles you cite are listed separately by author. (See Step 5.) The Works Cited page does not contribute to the length of the paper. Five to eight pages (most will do about five or six pages) is not very much space in which to make an argument based on sources, so you will probably have to be fairly succinct.
Step 5. Make sure that your research paper:
A) Has introductory and concluding paragraphs. The first should outline your purpose and preview what you are going to say. The conclusion should sum it up, with a memorable final sentence to cap it. The intro and conclusion should not be too much alike! (Or at all alike, as far as possible.)
B) Has enough paragraphs in the body to address the subtopics at enough length to describe them and convey your own opinion. Paragraphs should not be too long—no longer than about half a page. If a paragraph does stretch out, find a sensible place to break it. If a paragraph is too short, it may need to be combined with another in a way that makes organizational sense. Or it may be short because it skimps the material or analysis, in which case you may need to expand it.
C) Cites anything that you get from a source, and has a bibliographic entry at the end, on a separate Works Cited page, for each citation. The listing under Works Cited must match the name in the citation. Yes, I have already written this. I’m saying it again: that’s how important it is!
D) Follows format: 8 1⁄2 by 11 portrait orientation, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and in 12-point Times New Roman font. A proper header is a double-spaced block, on the front page only, that includes: name, class, name of assignment, and date. The title should be centered over your essay one double-space below the ID block. Spellcheck and proofread!
Statement on Plagiarism and Instructions on Citing Your Sources:
Students whom I catch plagiarizing and other students who fail to cite sources properly sometimes claim that they weren’t instructed on how to cite properly.
These are those instructions!!!
Direct quotations must be identified as quotations, with quotation marks for short quotations and an inset paragraph for long quotations, along with a citation for each that includes author and page number.
In addition, the following must also be cited:
anything you rephrase
any facts that are not common knowledge
any ideas or theories of someone else’s that you use
any summaries that are not your own
Remember, if you do not cite your source, you are plagiarizing! Plagiarism is a serious offense and will earn you a zero for the paper. I will also turn you in to administration.
Style of citation:
For your paper I prefer a simple in-text (or embedded) citation. Follow my examples.
Here is an example that does not quote the author directly, but summarizes some of his ideas:
Virgil used ancient myth for political purposes. In turn, he was
adapted by medieval authors for religious purposes [Sisson 25].
Note that the citation is enclosed in square brackets, which are to the right of the ‘P’ on the keyboard. (I prefer square brackets, because they are easier to see on the page, but the usual parentheses is fine. Just be consistent: don’t mix the two.) Sisson is the author, and the idea used was found on page 25. (The number is the page number, NOT the date of publication!) The period belonging to the sentence goes after the citation.
Here are two examples that quote the author directly:
According to C. H. Sisson, “Virgil seems to stand between the ancient
world and the medieval world which grew out of its decay” [25].
Virgil can be seen as standing “between the ancient world and the
medieval world which grew out of its decay” [Sisson 25].
Anything you cite should be found on your Works Cited page, under the name cited, in alphabetical order. If you cite Sisson’s introduction to his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, don’t have the book listed in your bibliography under Virgil’s name. If you cite an article by an author that is included in a book edited by someone else, your citation and bibliographic entry should be under the name of the author of the article, not the editor of the book in which you found it.
How often should you cite?
If you are using five different pieces of information from one source, all in one paragraph, with no citations from other sources in between and no interpretative remarks of your own, there is no need to have five different citations. After the last piece of information from that source, you can have one citation, such as [Sisson 21-26] or [Sisson 19, 23-26]. However, if you quote your source directly, you should cite the page immediately after the quoted material, as shown above. If you go back and forth in a paragraph between multiple sources, then you will need a citation each time you switch to a different source.
Remember, if you have a bibliographic entry for a source on your Works Cited page, you must use that source somewhere in your paper and cite it. If you cite a source, it must also have a bibliographic entry on the Works Cited page.
Late Assignments: I do accept late assignments, but if your paper is turned in after midnight on the date due, the best you can do is half credit. If it is not turned in by midnight of the following week, you get a zero for that assignment. If you are late, half credit may not seem like much, but some points are better than no points. (If you are an ADA student, get in touch with me about rules for late assignments.)
COMMENTS FROM THE RESEARCH PROJECT OULINE/THESIS FROM MY PROFESSOR.
Dr. Victoria Simmons at Thu Dec 5, 2024 6:52pm12/5/2024
You didn’t need to do BOTH styles of thesis paragraph, but okay. . . . It’s your time.
Your thesis isn’t a thesis: it’s just a clarification. Find something to argue for and gear your paper to support that argument.
This looks like a pretty long and complex paper. You might need to simplify it a bit. 5-8 pages isn’t really all that long.
Otherwise, looks good.
Keep in mind that there should be a paragraph BEFORE the conclusion in which you bring all the elements together and argue for your thesis.
Then you sum up your points in the Conclusion, with a final statement. The Conclusion doesn’t need to be long.