Research Paper
You will be researching a topic and writing a paper to support a thesis. Your paper will contain MLA citations to support your thesis statement. At the end of your paper you will have a list of works cited.
Step 1:
Your first step will be selecting a topic and then researching some background information on your topic. If you find an article that will be useful to you, copy the entire article and save it in MS Word.
SIRS - SIRS contains the full text of articles that have appeared in magazines and newspapers. Click on SIRS Knowledge Source. Using the list of suggested topics provided by your teacher, click on one of the topics that interests you.
Step two: - On the handout provided, write the topic you have selected, the essential question from that topic and the viewpoint you will be supporting in your research paper:
Example: -Topic Advertising and Children
Essential Question: Should restrictions be placed on marketing that
targets children?
Viewpoint/Thesis Statement: Advertising restrictions would reduce
unhealthy behavior in children.
Step three: Read the background information in the At Issue box - click more to retrieve the entire article. Then click on the links beneath the viewpoint you chose to open the articles. Highlight and save the complete article to separate microsoft word documents. Make sure you save the entire article including the MLA citation at the very bottom.
Directions for Saving Articles to MS Word:
Open MS Word.
Copy the MLA citation from your article and paste it at the top.
Copy the entire text of the article and paste it below the citation.
Save one article per document.
Step Four From the Viewpoint/Thesis statement and/or the Essential Question, choose at least two or three keywords. Write these keywords on your worksheet.
Step Five Create a search strategy or strategies using your keywords and truncation or synonyms if needed.
TIPS:
Use truncation if it will be helpful.
Use synonyms to get all the results.
Truncation - Use one star to replace any number of characters following the root form of a word this will give you all forms of the word in your search results.
Example: teen* will get teen, teenage, teenager, teeaged
Synonyms - Use a variety of vocabulary.
Example: teenagers, adolescents, young adults
EBSCO MAS Ultra - Contains full text magazine and newspaper articles. Use the search strategy you created to search for articles in the EBSCO MAS Ultra database. When you find an article/s that will support your thesis statement, copy the entire article and paste it into Microsoft Word and then
Citation:
Click the Cite link at the right hand side of the page and copy the MLA citation.
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