textbook: http://www.americanyawp.com/
- Choose a topic related to chapters covered in The American Yawp, (Chapters 1-15) that you would truly like to explore and that you are willing to spend some time on. Your chosen topic should be focused. Pose a question that you really want to answer. You may want to begin with more than one topic in mind.
- Do some preliminary reading on the topic(s). You may begin with the textbook, then further explore the information available. Refine your topic. Summarize your topic, your interest in the topic, the questions you want to answer, and a hypothesis you want to test.
- Gather information from a variety of sources. Use a minimum of four sources for your paper, and at least one must be a primary source.
- Primary sources are contemporary to the times under investigation.
- An example of a secondary source is our textbook, though the textbook also contains excerpts of primary sources, which you may use as a source in your paper.
- Outline the results of your research and the plan for your paper (you are not required to submit the outline).
- Write the final draft and be sure to include a Works Cited List, and use the correct MLA documentation style.
For some reason the absolute necessity of in text citing sources used in a research paper (on both directly quoted AND paraphrased material) either isn’t getting taught anymore or (and this one is my personal theory) it just isn’t sinking in anymore. You MUST both in text cite your sources AND provide an MLA style bibliography at the end. Failing to do either/both is a form of plagiarism, whether you mean it that way or not, and it will be treated as such so please just make sure to take care of business and in text cite those sources as you go while writing the paper, and include that MLA style references/bibliography at the end of the paper.
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