Research paper assignment: This week you will take the outline from last week and transform it from an outline to an essay-style research paper. The research paper should run no less than four pages long, not counting the title page, the outline page, or the Works Cited page (so no less than seven pages long if you include those in your count).Sources: You may add another source or two to your paper if the three sources from your annotated bibliography aren’t sufficient, but those three EbscoHost sources need to be the sources most cited and relied upon in your paper. No Wikipedia citations are allowed ( And don’t define any term in your paper using a dictionary–find a scholarly source that defines it and quote it). Find sources from either government databases, research databases, academic journals, published magazines, published newspapers. Avoid all stand-alone websites.
Study this sample paper: I strongly recommend you study this “Sample Paper” (copy and paste this address into your search bar if it doesn’t let you link): http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/resdoc5e/pdf/Hacker-Orlov-MLA.pdf (Unlike the sample paper, however, don’t include section headings within your paper.) Also see the two sample student papers posted with this assignment that include my comments.
Title page: Your research paper should begin with what is called a title page. Look at a good example of a title page here: http://www.dianahacker.com/pdfs/hacker-levi-mla.pdf ). Create your title page with your title and the information about yourself and the class that is usually found on the first page in the upper left-hand corner of your papers (don’t forget the name of assignment and the university name). Your title page should be double spaced (you may choose to have a running header or not on the title page, but the rest of the paper after the title page must have a running head).
Outline page: On the page after your title page, copy and paste your outline from module 3. (The sample student paper above doesn’t have an outline, but I now require it.) If you want to make changes to the outline to improve your paper or because you have reorganized your paper, you may do that.
Beginning-of-essay page: At the end of your outline, insert a hard “page break” (look for it on the Insert tab of Word’s ribbon) to begin your research paper essay. Then on that new hard page, copy and paste your title (but not your name, date, etc.) at the top of the page. This title sits right above the introduction paragraph with no extra line spacing between them.
Quote placement: Study the Formatting Checklist for how to handle quotes. Don’t start any paragraph with a quote. The first sentence of each paragraph should be your words in your voice as a scholarly writer. And, as a rule of thumb, don’t end any paragraph with a quote. Add a sentence of interpretation or summary (of that quote) after any quote near the end the paragraph.
Don’t stack quotes right on top of each other: Sometimes don’t quote but paraphrase an author’s idea instead. Other times simply have your own writing voice explain what everything means in terms of your thesis. Some students over-quote and never provide their own voice in the discussion. Usually don’t quote more than once in a paragraph, though this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. So find a good balance of your own writing voice, summaries of the research, and quotes and paraphrases.
Use a combination of all four kinds: Vary the types of quotes and paraphrases in your paragraphs.
•Author-centered quotes: Smith and Perez write, “This is a new, more sophisticated approach to space exploration” (45)..
•Idea-centered quotes: “This is a new, more sophisticated approach to space exploration” (Smith and Perez 45)..
•Author-centered paraphrases: Smith and Perez think NASA has reached a new level of sophistication in exploring space..
•Idea-centered paraphrases: NASA has reached a new level of sophistication in exploring space (Smith and Perez)..
Block quotes: If a quote you are using is long enough that it wraps onto a fourth line, MLA requires you format it as a block quote, which is formatted differently than regular quotes are formatted (for example, no quote marks). For an example, see “Long Quotations” on this Purdue OWL helpsite: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/
Present more than just quotes: Don’t use your sources only as a way to find quotes and paraphrases. Also sprinkle your research paper with facts, statistics, examples, anecdotes, case studies, and definitions. This is the single biggest difference between the “pretty good” papers I receive and the excellent ones–the average and pretty good papers are full of good quotes and paraphrases but few other supporting materials, while excellent papers have a variety of evidence types (not just quotes and paraphrases but percentages, facts, examples, case studies, scholarly definitions, etc.) and your guiding voice between them. So you want a variety of evidence types in your writing to make your paragraphs more interesting and substantive. Make sure your paper has all or most of these: statistics, facts, quotes, paraphrases, stories, examples, case studies, definitions, illustrations.
Don’t forget your thesis statement: Throughout your paper, remind the reader of your thesis statement and keep bringing it back to the reader’s attention directly in the middle of a discussion and/or in the topic sentences in your paper.
No personal language: In more formal scholarly writing, you should not use the second person pronoun “you”–it is too personal and journalistic in tone. Also don’t use “we,” “us,” or other personal pronouns that assume we are all one happy family sitting around a fireplace discussing your paper topic. Also don’t assume everyone reading your paper in this class is an Amercian (chances are some aren’t). Don’t assume everyone knows you are writing about “our society”–meaning the United States (if you are). Instead, say “the United States” or “American society” if that is what you are referring to.
No opinions: Never give your opinion in a formal paper–nobody really cares what you or I think or “feel” except perhaps our mothers. What readers do care about is your point, which is different than an opinion. Points are publicly available assertions (feelings and opinions are internally shaped preferences formed by our individual histories and experiences alone) for which you give evidence and reasons all readers can consider and evaluate. So also avoid overuse of “I” language, and when you do use the first person singular pronoun, make it point to the thesis of the paper and not draw attention to yourself.
Write descriptively (informatively), not prescriptively: What this means is that you should describe facts and what experts believe and say, etc., but avoid prescribing what should be or what ought to be.Instead, write in is language, informing us what is the case, not what you think should be the case. The point in this course is to work on scholarly writing that sheds more light than heat, more information than opinion, more illumination about a topic than persuasion.
Persuasive/prescriptive (don’t write this kind of thesis statement):
• That tree should be cut down.
• The tree is good.
• That is a bad tree.
• The tree is dangerous and needs to be axed.
Informative/descriptive (do write this kind of thesis statement and throughout your paper):
• There are three reasons the anti-tree party wants to see the tree cut down.
• The tree is rotting from the inside and experts believe it could fall on the road during a wind storm.
• The tree is rotten in its core.
• The Republicratic party claims that the tree is dangerous and needs to be axed.
Indirect quotations: What should you do when you want to quote a quote you find in a source that was a quote from another source? The Bedford MLA website, which has a lot more specific examples if you get stumped ( http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/resdoc5e/RES5e_ch08_s1-0001.html), states thi
s point number 23:
s point number 23:
Indirect source (source quoted in another source): When a writer’s or a speaker’s quoted words appear in a source written by someone else, begin the parenthetical citation with the abbreviation “qtd. in.” Researchers Botan and McCreadie point out that “workers are objects of information collection without participating in the process of exchanging the information . . .” (qtd. in Kizza and Ssanyu 14).
A student’s question about how often to attribute (which means to name) authors and sources:
Dr. Miller, By no means am i trying to work ahead or anything but I wanted to clarify a few things about when we start our research paper. I know that you do not want our papers to be persuasive. My question is when we paraphrase or summarize, do we always need to begin with The author states, or The author contends…? I know in my annotated bibliography most of my sentences did not start that way. So does every sentence, whether a paraphrase, summary or direct quote need to start like that in order for it not to be persuasive. Also, Is it the same if we are just putting things in our own words. I do know that they need to be cited but if we just put something in our own words and do not start with The author says, is it still considered persuasive? I apologize for all the questions but I am just slighty confused and want to make sure I know what I am doing before I do it. Thanks in advance, Kayla
MY REPLY Great question, Kayla, and there is no cut-and-dried answer to it. It is a matter of developing judgment. Novice research writers tend to the extreme on either side–either not attributing at all or doing it all the time. The basic principle is to give the author’s name for two reasons: to give credit where credit is due, and to make it easy for the reader to find sources if she is interested in the topic. But readers don’t want to be annoyed by attributions every sentence. That usually means you are unsure what YOUR thesis is and what YOU are doing in elaborating on that thesis. My rule of thumb: Your voice should be something more than half of the writing in your paper with quotes and paraphrasing brought in to support and develop what you are writing. If you are giving statistics and describing case studies and presenting examples from your research, and if you are analyzing and explicating and making sense of the those things in terms of your thesis statement, you will find that your writing voice will come alive and you won’t be hanging your paper on a series of quotes and paraphrases.
Another guiding principle is that quotes always need attribution and page number (who said it and on what page or paragraph), paraphrases of specific ideas or thoughts always need attribution (who said it) but not page numbers, and summaries only need the attribution once a paragraph as long as you are clear to the reader that you are summarizing an author’s ideas. But let me add that with paraphrases that run several sentences long you don’t need to give the author’s name every sentence (and shouldn’t). That would also be disruptive and even insulting to the intelligence of the reader. I can tell you are wanting to be careful on this issue, so I suspect your tendency will be to over attribute. I want you to give yourself some freedom on this.
Another student email that I agree with: OK, I get it now. Writing research papers becomes fun when you stop and take the time to write you own personal analysis of the facts (why something is important, if it was handled correctly) after providing the straight-up facts of the case.
ScholarMatic: Explanation & Answer
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