Argumentative Research Paper

This assignment has several portions; the first is a proposal, the second an outline, the third an annotated bibliography listing sources of research you intend to use in your paper, the fourth a rough draft of the paper and the fifth a final draft of the paper. I suggest strongly that you keep up with this assignment and visit The Write Place if you need any help.
Topics: Because National Geographic Magazine and various documentary films have been at the center of our learning experience, I want you to keep this manner of research in mind as you select your topics and write your own research papers. While you are expected to conduct scholarly research, you will also have the opportunity to include your own investigative information in your paper through methods like photography, interview, and location visits.

Think of something that needs attention or change locally and then expand or narrow the topic to make it into an argumentative research paper. Some possible topics include campus violence, school nutrition, ESL instruction, bullying in our schools, drinking water safety, etc. You may use those or come up with something on your own. You should select something that really gets into your craw or something that you want to expose or honor. You need to be able to make an argument about it. What I don’t want are papers about abortion, gun control, legalization of marijuana, that type of thing that has been beaten to death. Feel free to contact me via email and discuss ideas you have with me.

Following are the components of the paper. I will give extended directions for each as we begin to work on them, but I have them each listed here as well.

1. Proposal: A word processed, neat, and professional-looking proposal. This may be in the first person, and should tell me about the subject you’ve chosen, why you’ve chosen it, and what kind of research you intend to do. Please give me your anticipated topic and thesis statement as well as your anticipated audience and where and how you plan to conduct research. This should be 1-2 pages in length

2. Outline: You will create an outline for your project (see OWL at Pudue online for outline examples). The outline will be correctly formatted and include Roman numeral ascending organization (this site will show you how to arrange an outline. Full sentence or bullet point is fine: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/03/) This outline will be your plan for writing the project paper. It will help you create an introduction, thesis, supporting topics and conclusion. While outlines are rather short, allow yourself time to create this portion of your project because a good outline often leads to a well-organized paper. This is the game plan and it is the place to add or subtract information, especially when shooting for a page limit in your ensuing paper. In other words, it’s much easier to add something here, than to try to tack it on to a paper that’s coming up shorthttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/544/01/

3. Bibliography– Annotated means that below each entry you give a brief description of this source and what it will add to your project. See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/614/1/

You should list a minimum of eight entries in your bibliography, and of these eight at least one must to be a primary source (interview, questionnaire, visit to a place, a brochure, etc—perhaps something you gathered on your own)or a map chart, etc. At least three must to be secondary (journal articles, publications, books, etc—no Wikipedia or unscholarly sources) —outside of that, you may skew the numbers as you wish. Remember all secondary sources should be from academic sources if possible—If not, discuss with me please, in advance. You may not wind up using each and every entry in your actual paper, but you may.
The actual paper you create later using these tools will be eight to ten pages of text (excluding graphs, charts, maps etc). You want to keep this in mind while creating your outline.
Paper:
*MLA style format with a standard works cited page, including only sources you actually used in the paper—a minimum of six including one primary and two secondary. Use your bibliography and outline to guide your writing, and you may find this paper nearly puts itself together. You do need to introduce your thesis topic clearly and have sub topics that tie in to the main one neatly.
You are likely to be arguing for a change in either perceptions or actions to take place, but you are writing an academic research paper, and must stay in the third person voice. This means you will not address the reader as “you” or say things like “I think blah blah blah” Third person is “he, she, it, they,” no “I, we, you”. You should also strive to use SEAE (Standard Edited American English) at all times—no slang or casual speech. This is the type of paper in which you want to speak in a manner that is both professional and academic. Pages should be numbered in the upper right.