Name:____________________________________________________January 29, 2016
As a condition of graduation, every senior is required to complete a passing research paper during senior year.
The following research paper assignment is the required paper to be completed by Ms. Di Re’s 12AP students.
Assignment:
 Select a short story written prior to 1950 and one written after 1950 by two different authors.
 Develop an assertion, which must be approved by Ms. Di Re, as it relates to understanding the
play as a whole (Theme).
 No two students may defend the same assertion.
 Locate research on each of the two short stories that will lend itself to defending your assertion.
 In defending the assertion, students will note any pertinent literary elements and/or techniques
(i.e. monologue, dialogue, soliloquy, stichomythia, repartee, flashback, foreshadowing,
symbolism, setting, motifs, etc.).
 Use the short stories as the primary source and at least 4 valid secondary sources (critical
analyses). Suggestion: Bloom’s Notes and Short Stories for Students. Both are on the library
database.
Requirements:
 Paper will be between 4-6 pages in length. Papers of less than 4 pages or more than 6 pages
will not be accepted.
 Paper will have 1 inch margins all around, 12 point font, double spaced.
 Paper must have a heading with your name, my name, date, and class period on it.
 Paper must have a Works Cited page (not counted in length of paper), which will follow the
MLA format, which can be found on the internet.
 Paper not properly cited will be heavily penalized, as it will be plagiarized.
 Students may use Noodle Tools software (under Library tab on school website) to
facilitate organization of sources, outline, etc. or my research methods for the same [see English
101 HW page]
 Paper MUST BE submitted to turnitin.com.
Grading:
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Identification of short stories due February 5, 2016 [titles]
Assertion to be defended due February 12 [Thesis statement]
Paper is due March 14
Papers submitted after March 14 will incur a 10 point deduction for each day late,
including days off from school.
Students who do not expect to be in school on March 14 should submit their research papers PRIOR to that
date. Unless the student is absent as a result of emergency or illness (which will require a parental and medical
note), the penalty points will not be waived.
Students may not email their research papers to the teacher.
Suggested Topics for Short Story Research Paper
The following suggested topics are provided to serve as a guideline to assist you in choosing a topic and then developing
an assertion (thesis) for your research paper.
Language
Rubric for grading:
Dialogue
Women’s Issues
Female Roles in stories written by females/males
Format (heading, title) 1
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
2
4
6
8
10
Paraphrasing
Character Development
Figurative Language
3
Use of Embedding & Quotes
Male Roles in stories written by females/males
Symbolism
2
Thesis Statement
Role of minor characters in short stories
Relationship between children and their parents
Relevance of character names/ or characters without names
Development of Thesis Statement (main points
elucidated in intro paragraph)
Conflict within a character
Conflict between characters
2
8
10
15
20
25
30
35
2
4
6
8
10
2
4
6
8
10
8
10
Citations in the report
The pathos of female characters
The role of blue collar workers in modern short stories
6
Written coherently & well organized
How setting impacts characters’ actions
The female psyche
4
Works Cited page
The role of morality/immorality/values
Importance of setting to the theme
Written w/o major grammatical errors
Relevance of trivial occurrences in storytelling
The role of minority characters (gender/race) in storytelling
Point of View/narrator
How characters serve as a foil for one another
How a reader’s perspective influences his/her reading or understanding of a story
Relationships between males and females
2
4
6