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Research Paper Requirements
English 1302
Note well: Any research paper shorter than 1400 words and without the
required number of acceptable sources may receive a zero.
Consult the syllabus for draft and final copy due dates.
Topic
You may write on The Windup Girl. Your primary job will be to find what other
scholars have said about the piece(s) in question that you choose to discuss, and
to integrate those ideas into your essay. Show that you can conduct a scholarly
investigation (inquiry), conversation, and argument over some theme or idea
intimately connected to the work or works in question, a theme or idea of interest
to you and the scholarly community of commentary attached to the body of that
work.
The purpose of this paper is to teach the following:
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To better understand the work and its author(s)
To enhance research and library skills
To improve writing and language skills (handling arguments, usefulness of
citation, quote integration, and documentation)
To sharpen thinking processes—especially interpretation, evaluation, and
synthesis of other authors' words and ideas
Length
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The essay must be a minimum of 1400 words (with a length of five to
seven pages). (In Microsoft Word, you can check your word count by
clicking on the Tools menu and choosing Word Count.)
Organization
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The essay must be more than five paragraphs long. This is not a five
paragraph theme paper; it's a research paper. Make sure that you do not
end up with an essay with paragraphs that are pages long ("sheet o' text";
the rule of thumb is that paragraphs should be no longer than a page. You
should produce a paper in the 5-7 page range.
Sources
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Your Works Cited page must include a minimum of five academic
secondary sources, with at least one citation from each source. You may
use some sources more than others, but do not rely too heavily on a
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single source. That can skew your argument. In addition, you should have
a citation for the primary source—the play, case, or story and film.
Guidelines for academic secondary sources:
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Although you may cite them, Masterplots, Magill Surveys, Cliffs Notes,
Monarch Notes, Pink Monkey Notes, and other reading aids and
supplements do NOT count as sources because they are neither scholarly
nor academic. Neither can you count general encyclopedias such as
Encarta, Wikipedia, or Compton’s, general reference sources such as
Bartlett’s Book of Familiar Quotations, short book reviews or the brief
articles on web blogs or in general periodicals such as Time and
Newsweek, or the Bible or some other primary religious text.
Do not get all of your sources from a single collection such as Twentieth
Century Literary Criticism or a single book of essays. Use a variety of
sources. Also, cite only complete sources, not abstracts, summaries, or
short reviews.
Although you may cite Internet sources, you must be very careful to fully
evaluate the validity of the material because the literary criticism on the
Internet is often poor and lacks clear documentation. Therefore, you
should use the Internet primarily to access electronic databases to which a
library subscribes, databases that contain material that has been
published elsewhere and, therefore, is more likely to have been peer
reviewed, written by people with academic credentials, and edited by
professionals. Of the criticism that is available in electronic form, no more
than four of your secondary sources may be electronic sources. In
other words, you may go to a library to find some printed books and
journals, but you can also use the library’s electronic databases.
Remember, the primary source is not one of your secondary sources.
Documentation and Format
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Use the Modern Language Association (MLA) documentation style. I
recommend you refer to Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) for
their Sample Undergraduate Research paper and up-to-date MLA
guidelines and format. Model the look and format of your paper on that
sample.
STAPLE YOUR PAPER. UNSTAPLED PAPERS WILL NOT BE
ACCEPTED.
The final copy must be double-spaced with 1" margins.
Use 10 or 12 point typical font (use a recommended font such as Times
New Roman--nothing weird such as Goudy Stout or curls
or comic sans)
For an excellent overview of the different considerations when writing a
research paper, see our Literature textbook, chapter 9 pp. 210-243. Useful
sample student research papers are available at the end of that chapter.
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Turnitin
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In our Angel course is a Turnitin dropbox. You will need to upload your
paper there. I will give instruction in class on accessing our Angel and the
Turnitin dropbox for our papers. If the paper isn’t uploaded to Turnitin, I
can only give it half credit.
EVALUATION: While there is a grading sheets on our course site that provides
more specific information on evaluation, your final paper will be evaluated on
whether or not the
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content, organization, and style are effective.
grammar, mechanics, and form are correct. (Use spellcheck and
grammarcheck in your word processor—if a machine can correct, humans
shouldn’t have to be plagued with uncorrected copy.)
sources are correctly quoted or adequately paraphrased and correctly
documented. A paper that contains inadequate paraphrasing or is missing
parenthetical documentation will receive no higher than a "C."
essay adequately supports the thesis. Paper has a thesis. Without a thesis
a paper cannot receive better than a “D.” E.g., “X is the case about this
work because of considerations A, B, C, and D.”
essay is the required length.
essay is well developed and uses analysis and examples in support of its
larger claims.
essay actually uses the minimum number of secondary sources (rather
than merely listing them on the Works Cited page).
essay shows original thinking, demonstrated in part by the selection of
pertinent passages from the work.
essay is your own work. If you choose to present someone else's work as
your own (plagiarism), you risk detection and a "0" for the paper.