(Total
value: 20%)
|
Due Date: 8/16/11 by 11:59 p.m., in the D2L drop box,
on the due date; if the drop box records a submission time of one minute late
or more, the paper is one calendar-day late. Expect to lose 10% for each calendar
day the paper is turned in late. Must be turned in as a MS Word DOC or DOCX
file. Consult the syllabus for all turn-in requirements and associated
penalties. |
General Guidelines:
·
Required
word count is 1100 to 1200 words. If your paper falls short of the minimum
required word count, the grade will certainly suffer.
·
Work
in a Times New Roman 12 point font, and use all formatting guidelines
established in Lecture 2 and all other lectures.
·
Use
MLA Style Guidelines.
·
Remember
to title your essay and neither part should read Research Paper, or Essay, or
anything of the like.
·
Use
a document header, as you should on all assignments, regardless of their
length.
·
Review
the course lectures. I suggest that you read them very carefully.
·
Do
not use humor in your title or in any other part of the paper.
·
Locate
a minimum of five scholarly articles, which you must quote and paraphrase from
in your paper.
Prompt:
Choose
ONE short story, play, or a group
of no more than three poems that we have read or will read this semester. Write
your paper over your selection, which means that the final sentence of your
introductory paragraph must be your paper’s thesis. IF YOU CHOOSE POEMS, THE GROUP MUST BE APPROVED BY ME BEFORE YOU BEGIN
YOUR PAPER.
· Using the Temple
College library resources, either online or at the physical facility, locate five scholarly sources that relate to the focus of
your paper.
· Below I list the
criteria for what constitutes a valid outside source for articles.
Research Paper Steps:
1)
Very
Important: you cannot write over any text, short
story, poem(s), or play that you have written about previously in the Fiction
Paper or on any Unit Test. If you do so, it will result in a grade of zero on
this research paper.
2)
Decide
on a possible thesis statement/check with me.
(At that point, you will be ready to search for materials in which
literary critics discuss your primary text and support your thesis. In other
words, it will be up to you to offer examples from your primary text to support
the ideas you have chosen to discuss, and you must offer additional support
from literary critics; then, you will cite them in your paper.)
3)
Go
to the library (either in-person or virtually).
(a) Find out what
literary critics have to say about your primary text.
(b) Keep copies of
printouts and other material for evidence of content and bibliographical
information because you must turn in copies of all sources when the Research
Paper is turned in for final grading.
4)
Write
a draft.
(a)
Make
sure you’ve collected enough information to support your thesis, and review the
Assignments Calendar of the syllabus to be prepared for all peer revisions.
(b)
Incorporate
internal documentation.
5)
Revise
and edit your draft.
(a)
Get
help from me.
(b)
Get
help from Smarthinking.com.
6)
Write
your final paper using MLA format.
(a)
Place
in pocket folder.
(b)
Place
the paper and copies of all sources
in pockets.
(c)
Works
Cited will consist of a minimum of 5 sources beyond
your primary text (from TC library databases only) URLs should be included for
additional sources beyond the 5 required sources if the additional sources are
Web sources.
(d)
Under
no circumstances should Sparknotes,
Cliffnotes,
Wikipedia or any similar sources be
used, for it would have a negative impact on the grade your paper can receive)
Organize
the Fiction Paper itself according to the following:
The most fundamental
point:
In
this course, students must demonstrate that they have grasped the concept of
using literary devices to explain theme.
How to use devices to explain theme:
Begin by using devices and theme in the thesis:
Whether you are writing the Fiction Paper,
the Research Paper, an essay portion of a Unit Test, or the essay portion of
the Post-Assessment, your paper must include a thesis statement as the final
sentence of your introductory paragraph; the thesis must actually name all the
devices (plot, setting, symbols, and so on) that the paper will use to analyze
your primary text, and the thesis must state that the devices are being used to
better understand a particular theme.
Example of a possible thesis:
This paper will show that Shakespeare uses
symbols, allegory, and character development to illustrate the theme of
deception in Macbeth.
The example of a thesis above leaves no doubt that the reader of your paper
will understand exactly the literary devices that will be used to explain a
particular theme in your primary text. Your thesis should be equally as
clear as the example thesis.
The specific steps and how to structure them:
STEP
1:
An introductory paragraph of biographical information on your author; this
paragraph must fall between 125 - 150 words; if the word count does not fall
between 125 - 150 words, a minimum of 10% of the paper's grade will be
deducted.
Remember that in this paragraph you will be using
biographical facts that are all over the Internet, in our course book, and in
various databases such as The Dictionary of Literary Biography, so BE
CAREFUL NOT TO PLAGIARIZE IN THIS PARAGRAPH; plagiarism can be easily avoided by
using short direct quotations, by paraphrasing effectively, and by citing your
sources.
Do not treat lightly the possibility of committing plagiarism in this paragraph
of your paper; you cannot simply change some words here and there and call it a
paraphrase. Effective paraphrasing means putting the information entirely into
your own words.
In
short, your introductory paragraph should do the following:
· Introduce the name of
the author you are writing about along with the biographical information,
totaling about 100 words.
·
Put
most of the biographical information into your own words by paraphrasing your
source, and make certain to include appropriate parenthetical citations. For
the parts of the biographical information that are not in your own words, you
must use some VERY SHORT direct quotations from your source as necessary, and
of course, parenthetical citations are required here too.
·
Next,
include a transitional sentence that names your primary text. An example is
something to the effect of "One of Flannery O'Connor's most widely studies
short stories is "Everything That Rises Must Converge."
· Finish the paragraph
with the thesis statement, which must specifically name all the literary
devices the paper will use to analyze the theme of the primary text. The
specific theme must also be named in the thesis statement. All of this should
put the paragraph at a word count of 125 - 150words.
STEP
2:
This
section can be a single paragraph or more than one paragraph that is an
analysis driven by one of the following: irony, symbols, allegory, point of
view, or conflict.
For
example, if you have chosen to analyze symbols in "The Things They Carried,"
then you could claim that Martha's letters are a symbol for whatever you
believe the letters symbolize. Include a reference to or quotation from a point
in the primary text where the letters are the focus, and cite your reference or
quotation. Follow this with your analysis that explains how/why the letters
symbolize whatever you have claimed they symbolize.
Following this procedure would demonstrate adequacy; however, a superior effort
would take one additional step, which would be to explain how your analysis of
the symbol illustrates the theme that you identified in your thesis statement.
If you have more than one symbol to analyze in this section, repeat this
procedure for each symbol analyzed. Place much importance throughout your paper
on how the devices illustrate theme, for this is a critically important element
in determining the grade your paper can receive.
STEP 3:
This
section can be a single paragraph or more than one paragraph that is an
analysis driven by one of the following: character development, setting, or
foreshadowing.
For example, if you have chosen to analyze
setting in "Young Goodman Brown," then you could claim that the
forest as a setting . . . (whatever you believe the forest as setting helps
readers to understand). Include a reference or quotation to a point in the
primary text where the forest (whatever you believe the forest as setting helps
readers to understand), and cite your reference or quotation. Follow this with
your analysis that explains how/why the forest (whatever you believe the forest
as setting helps readers to understand).
Following this procedure would demonstrate adequacy; however, a superior effort
would take one addtional step, which would be to
explain how your analysis of the symbol illustrates
the theme that you identified in your thesis statement. If you have more than
one symbol to analyze in this section, repeat this procedure for each symbol
analyzed. Place much importance throughout your paper on how the devices
illustrate theme, for this is an critically important
element in determining the grade your paper can receive.
STEP 4:
This section can be a single paragraph or more than one paragraph that is an
analysis of theme using plot; this section should be between 200 - 225 words.
If this section does not fall between a word count of
200 - 225, a minimum of 10% of the paper's grade will be deducted. Conclude
this section with two or three sentences that serve as a conclusion to the
overall paper, and avoid the phrase, "in conclusion," or anything of
the like.
|
Adequacy
versus Superiority: More about devices, theme, and references to and
quotations from your primary text: |
Devices
and Theme:
When
writing papers that are driven by an analysis that uses literary devices to
illustrate a theme, students often make the fundamental error of doing too
little to explain theme.
For example, using a device to illustrate the theme of lonliness
is an acceptable approach, but if your analysis does little more than state
that the forest is a lonely place, then theme has not been illustrated well.
Remember that a device is simply a tool through which the more important issue
of theme is understood better.
References and Quotations From Your Primary
Text:
By "references to your primary text," I mean that if you are writing
about "The Things They Carried," and you state that Jimmy Cross
burned Martha's letters, you should include a parenthetical citation that gives
the page number from our course book, which allows the reader of your paper to
reference that event in the story by going to the exact page where it occurs.
These types of references to your primary text should certainly be a part of
this section.
By "quotations from your primary text," I mean that if you are
writing about "The Things They Carried," and you state that Jimmy
Cross feels guilty about the death of Ted Lavendar,
you must locate the place in the primary text where the narrator or Cross states this, and then include the quotation and cite
it parenthetically. These types of quotations from your primary text should
certainly be a part of this section.
MLA Style Guidelines are a critically important aspect of this course, and your
written works are an opportunity to demonstrate your skill level, so paraphrase and quote from your primary text and from
scholarly sources.
Other Important
Points:
Remember
that MLA Style Guidelines is a critically important element of this course, and
if you negotiate them at an exceedingly low skill level this paper will receive
an unsatisfactory grade at best.
Criteria That
Determines a Valid Outside Source:
·
You cannot use magazines, newspapers, websites, or
any web-related material that can be reached with just an Internet connection.
In other words, you must use the Temple Library interface to use databases to
which the Temple library subscribes.
· Your outside source must be an article from a peer-reviewed scholarly
journal, and the article must have the equivalent of a works cited section at
the end, which might also be titled as one of the following: references,
bibliography, sources cited, and so on. Alternatively, there may be no such
section at the end, but the article might be footnoted throughout, which is
also acceptable if the footnotes give the publication information that is
typically found in a works cited citation.
·
The
article must be a minimum of five pages in length, or it will be considered
invalid.
·
Do
not use articles from anonymous authors, or they will be considered invalid.
Additional Sources (optional):
Students may use additional outside sources
beyond the two valid sources, and they may come from newspapers, magazines or
websites, but do not use these to replace the five required valid outside
sources. Books are also considered to be additional sources and would not count
as part of the five required scholarly articles.
*This research paper
grade counts 20%. However, you cannot
pass this course if you do not submit a research paper!
Papers that usually
do not earn higher than a grade of 60 include:
Plagiarized papers
will receive a grade of ZERO and may result in your being removed from this
class.
|
Due Date: 8/16/11 by 11:59 p.m., in the D2L drop box,
on the due date; if the drop box records a submission time of one minute late
or more, the paper is one calendar-day late. Expect to lose 10% for each
calendar day the paper is turned in late. Must be turned in as a MS Word DOC
or DOCX file. Consult the syllabus for all turn-in requirements and
associated penalties. |