While you are working on the paper

1. Take advantage of the free services at the Writing Center. You can make an appointment online or in person; they're located on the ground floor of HB Crouse. This is not a requirement but rather a recommendation.
2. Make an appointment to meet with me during office hours, or send me an email, an IM (AIM = "ProfBfromWV"), or a Facebook message (I'm "Rebecca Moore Howard"). Don't send me whole papers with questions like "How good is this paper?" Instead, ask me specific questions, such as "Should I give page citations for my paraphrases?" or "Is this an analytic thesis?"

What should go in the paper

1. The introduction should include your thesis statement. The best places for positioning the thesis are at the end of the introduction or perhaps at the beginning.
2. Your paper will also need to include brief summaries of the sources you are using; otherwise, it might be hard for a reader to follow your argument. The summary might be a sentence or a paragraph; do what you think your audience will need.
3. The body of your paper should focus on the evidence for your thesis.
4. You should also include counterevidence: your doubts about the thesis, and objections that reasonable people might raise to it.
5. Throughout the paper, you should make it clear who is speaking, and you should provide context for and explanations of quotations. (Follow suggestions in Chs. 3 & 5 of They Say/I Say.
6. And you'll need a conclusion. Look in your Thomson Brief Handbook, sects. 2f and 7g, and see if you get some useful ideas there.
7. You should attach a list of works cited to the paper, following MLA style as detailed in Ch. 13 of the Thomson Brief Handbook.
8. Manuscript preparation: When you have produced a final draft, follow the specifications here.

Length

1500 to 2000 words.

How I will grade the paper

As I grade the final draft, my primary concerns will be whether you have a clear thesis; whether you provide evidence for the thesis and also incorporate counterevidence; whether you represented your sources accurately and cite your use of them; how well you have introduced and explained quotations, paraphrase, and summary; and whether it is always clear who is speaking. I care, too, about the precision with which the manuscript has been edited and proofread, and the extent to which the paper is formatted and transmitted according to the manuscript specifications. If you do the assignment as requested and hand it in on time, you'll get a "C." If you do it especially well, you'll get a "B." If you do it exceptionally well, you'll get an "A." This assignment counts as 20% of your final course grade.

Due date

Send final draft of the paper to me by 4:45 p.m. December 10. Send it as an email attachment; the manuscript specifications tell you how. I will not be able to accept papers later than this date.