The purposes of this assignment are for you to: 1) learn about some “issue” by researching it; 2) gain experience doing academic research and using academic sources; 3) learn what the so-called “experts” have to say about an issue and how they report their findings; 4) learn how scholars and researchers conduct their experiments and studies and develop their positions on issues and how they use analysis and argumentation in support of them; and 5) gain experience writing a research paper – that is – learning how to incorporate and synthesize research into your writing and not just write a paper that is a compilation of quotes and paraphrases from various sources.
The paper must be a minimum of 8 pages typed, paginated, and double-spaced (not counting the Works Cited page, cover page or any Appendices, etc). Have a cover page with your name, title of your essay, English 15, Section #, and date) and a Works Cited page. Indicate whether you used MLA or APA for documenting sources. Figures, tables, pictures, and graphics should be labeled to identify them and incorporated into the text whenever possible, but they may be included in an appendix at the end when appropriate.
The paper must be yours. Plagiarism will result in an F for the paper. Excessive quotations are not acceptable. For an academic paper: Make sure you properly quote, paraphrase, and cite sources that you use, meaning use signal phrases and endnotes. The paper will be evaluated according to how well you present a clearly organized discussion of the subject and incorporate sources into your writing. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, and neatness will count.
Your (minimum of 8) sources should be: scholarly and academic books, “news” books by reputable writers/publishers, and business books by professionals; scholarly/academic research journals or trade journals; good journalistic sources (Wall Street Journal; New York Times; Washington Post; Philadelphia Inquirer; NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox, or PBS news organizations; magazines like Time, Newsweek, Forbes, U. S. News and World Report, Commentary, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly; shows like Frontline, Sixty Minutes, Nightline, Meet the Press, Twenty-Twenty, Charlie Rose, etc.). Students may use subject encyclopedias, such as the Encyclopedia of Bioethics. These can be used to provide introductory, historical, or any background information on the issue and information on the different positions on the issue.
Your sources should include:
-a minimum of 2 scholarly or professional books (you can substitute a subject
encyclopedia for one of these);
-a minimum of 4 scholarly or professional journal articles and essays
-a minimum of 2 news articles or editorials from “reputable” news sources
You should go beyond Google and using Wikipedia. Using Wikipedia is like using a general encyclopedia (World Book, Britannica, etc.). At the college level you should go beyond such general encyclopedias. You can use Wikipedia but only for background information- go to the sources that they cite; for this paper do not cite Wikipedia as a source!
NOTE: You are responsible for ensuring that the sources you use meet scholarly, academic, and good journalistic standards.
You should:
Provide copies of 1 page from 5 sources (so a total of 5 pages) that you quote, summarize, or paraphrase from.
Have a paper that is a combination of your explanatory synthesis of an issue/topic and your explanation of the arguments and analyses of the issue made by your sources (these three approaches are described in our WIT text)- in effect- a summary of the issue along with the arguments and analysis of your sources. You are to (not necessarily in this order): 1) introduce the issue/topic (argument or controversy); 2) provide history and background on the issue, and 3) present the arguments and analysis from your sources concerning the issue or controversy so readers fully understand each side’s position.
The topic of the research paper is vaccines, Should the Federal or state government be permitted to mandate vaccines? Do individuals have the right to resist such mandates? Btw, my major is Computer Science in case you need an argument about my major in vaccine
