Paper Three

McKercher Wr 2 Paper Three

Four pages minimum, five scholarly sources, MLA bibliography

The purpose of the first essay was to get a sense of who you are as a writer and of as a person. The second was for you to get familiar in general terms with an environmental issue. This time we are going to get much more specific. This essay has three goals:

1) To use the new library research tools we've learned about to find and evaluate high quality sources.

2) To learn in some depth about the topic that will become your final project.

3) To get some experience in working together as a group and time management.

As we learned in the library orientation, you should do some general reading (as in specialized encyclopedias on your topic so you'll have some context, but this paper should not be a general overview. Your final project will be an argument that tries to get someone who has the power to take some action, so you'll need to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about with specifics and reputable sources, so a slight rephrasing of a Wikipedia entry won't get the job done (and would probably get you laughed out of the room). In order to have some depth, this paper should be four pages bare minimum, with five academic sources; it’s recommended that two of these be scientific (Academic Search Complete is a good starting point).

I recommend sending the paper to your group Wednesday (even better, bring hard copies), but in any case we'll workshop it Friday for you to revise for Monday. On Friday, you might want to adjust your approach, based on what your group finds useful and interesting, but the interests of individual group members should be respected. The final research project will be the largest and last paper we do, so it should reflect all you have done and learned this quarter, so it will naturally be a large part of the final grade. The final paper will be assessed based on these criteria. To do well, you need to start now and work steadily on it. If someone is flaking out on you (not sending or reading drafts would be an early warning sign), let them know you're not appreciative. If they continue to be a drag, let me know. At the end of the quarter you'll do a presentation based on your work, and there's a feedback sheet so everyone will get the credit they deserve.

Resources for Writers on the College Eight wiki has a number of helpful resources, including five good ways to start (and end) a paper in Writer's Reference in the prewriting and drafts section. You might find these flow charts of the writing and revising process useful too.

Let me know if you have questions or suggestions