Posted: July 6th, 2015

research paper

The capstone of Composition II is an 8-9 page research paper that takes a stand and argues a particular viewpoint regarding a contemporary, debatable issue. Students will take into account the rhetorical strategies studied and discussed through the semester, and develop a provable thesis, logical supporting points, and evidence rooted in research and authority rather than personal opinion.

Some paper guidelines include:
– The paper will be double-spaced in typed in Times New Roman, 12-point font.
– The topic will be debatable, substantive, and timely; not dated, obvious, or superficial.
– Page numbers will appear in the upper right hand corner.
– The word processor will be set to paginate and double-space; students should not be inserting these manually.
– Utlilize Toulmin and/or Rogerian strategies when possible, and devote part of the text to acknowledging and refuting oppositional points of view.
– MLA guidelines will be followed for parenthetical citations of sources and for the works cited page that appears at the end of the paper.
– A minimum of six (6) scholarly, print sources will be used in the essay. These include books, peer reviewed journals, and substantive magazines/newspapers.
– No more than one source from the open web may be used.
– Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for college-level research and will not be accepted as a source.
– Students are encouraged to utilize the college library databases for research materials as much as possible. These sources should precede open web searches done on Google.
– All content that comes from sources and that is not common knowledge needs to be cited within the research paper.

Also, while many issues are debatable in these contentious times, several are also overdone, go-to choices that discourage branching out into new areas of research and understanding. For this reason, the following topics will not be allowed for the research paper:
– abortion
– gun control
– legalization of drugs
– gay marriage
– adjusting the drinking age
– the death penalty
– obesity
– steroids in sports