ENGL 1102 - Kozee (Paulding) - Spring 2018: The Assignment

Essay Five (Research)

“It is personal. That’s what an education does. It makes the world personal.”

—Cormac McCarthy

Completed Papers are DUE to the Drop-Box in D2L on your

FINAL EXAM DAY—Check D2L for Specific Date and Time

English 1102 requires that students complete a short research paper. For our assignment, the choice of literature to be analyzed is open to the you with one caveat; you must choose a play, short story, or poem by any of the authors or poets whose work is on our course reading list. You may choose a work that we’ve already looked at or a work by one of the authors or poets on our reading list that we haven’t looked at; the choice is yours.

You can choose to focus your research in one of the following ways:

1. By examining one of the social issues explored in the play, poem, or short story you’ve chosen. If you choose this topic, remember that you’ll need to research the social issues happening at the time the poem was written and the social issues influencing your specific author or poet and your chosen play, poem, or short story. You will not be able to rely on speculation or current social issues to examine the play, poem, or short story.

2. By examining the influence of the literary movement on the play, poem, or short story you’ve chosen. If you choose this topic, remember that you’ll need to research the literary movements to determine which one(s) was/were ongoing during the time your play, poem, or short story was written, and how it/they specifically influenced your specific author or poet and your chosen play, poem, or short story. You will not be able to rely on speculation or assumptions to examine the play, poem, or short story.   

In any topic scenario, the research paper must present a cogent, argumentative thesis, and develop this analysis in part by the use of outside sources. These sources must be properly documented in the MLA style we’ve discussed in class. Additional resources and guides to MLA style may be accessed online at http://www.highlands.edu/site/engl-1102-writing-resources.  No fewer than five sources should be cited in the paper. The play, poem, or short story can be used as a source since it is a primary source. The four secondary sources should include a diverse range of credible research sources, i.e. scholarly books, journal articles, videos, newspaper articles, etc., as opposed to five websites. Encyclopedias and dictionaries may NOT be used as a source (this includes Wikipedia). Include no more than one source with biographical information about your poet/author, at least one source with material about either the social issues you’ve chosen to explore or the literary movement you’ve chosen to explore (depending on topic choice), at least one journal article connecting the social issue or literary movement with the author/poet (depending on the topic choice), and at least one more secondary source that is up to you—but that must be directly connected to the topic you’ve chosen.    

The paper should indicate an attempt by the student to integrate source material without relying heavily on direct quotations. Papers that rely primarily on integrating direct quotations from source material to form the majority of the paper, the substantive content of the argument, or to meet the minimum word count, e.g. including extended quotations when only two sentences from the passage were relevant, including numerous direct quotations, etc., will be penalized on the assignment. In other words, the majority of the paper should be comprised primarily of your own thoughts, ideas, opinions, and criticisms; your sources should only be used to support your argument rather than replace it. A good rule of thumb to follow is 75% your words/argument and 25% source material.

Papers should be composed utilizing MLA formatting and MLA style citation for any sources (primary and secondary). Direct quotes, paraphrases, and summaries must be cited in the text of the paper and on the works cited page. Primary and secondary sources must be cited. Papers should be written in 3^rd person. No “I,” “me,” “we,” “us,” “you,” or “your,” are allowed in this paper. Please double space, use 12 pt Times New Roman, and use one-inch margins throughout the paper. (Microsoft Word does not default to these settings so you will have to manually change the settings for your document.)

The completed paper must be at least 1,400 words in length, not including any words from the Works Cited page(s), as determined by Microsoft Word’s word count tool. Papers that do not fulfill any one of the Departmental minimum requirements will NOT earn a passing grade for the assignment, as per Departmental guidelines. If you have questions about a topic or need help selecting a topic, avoid procrastination and contact me as soon as possible. Completed assignments should be submitted via D2L as Microsoft Word documents (.docx or .doc).