RESEARCH PAPER HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Invaluable sources for you Go to “MLA The Owl” and you will get a tremendous MLA site Go to http://gdecubellis.weebly.com/research- paper-handbook.html Go to my website Honors 117 quarter 2 and flick around a little. You are better off floating around on Mr. Decubellis’ however! This gives you everything you need to write an effective research paper

PARAMETERS FOR YOUR PAPER 5 OR 7 PAGES (115 OR HONORS) NOT INCLUDING WORKS CITED PAGE 8-10 SOURCES MINIMUM 3 must be from hard covered book Your internet sources must be RELIABLE sources WHAT IS A RELIABLE SOURCE? 1. EDU sites 2. National, respected organizations that are not BIASED

WHAT ARE UNRELIABLE SOURCES? Sites with spelling errors Wikipedia LARGE FONT, SIMPLISTIC SITES. A stereotype I know… BIASED: IF YOUR PAPER IS TRYING TO ARGUE AGAINST ANIMAL CRUELTY, DO NOT USE ASPCA: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. FIND AN OBJECTIVE SITE FROM NY TIMES, A HARVARD SITE, ETC. It’s better research. Sites with numerous ads Triangulate research….find something in THREE places RULE OF THUMB: 90% OF ALL INTERNET SITES ARE NOT RELIABLE AND SHOULD NOT BE USED

Random hints Find a tremendous variety in your sources. It makes your paper more powerful if you have a variety of people who all back you up. For book sources, you do not need to read the entire book. Use only what you need. In the paper itself, each paragraph should be “BEEFY.” USUALLY ¾-1 FULL PAGE.

Each paragraph should also cite at least 4 DIFFERENT SOURCES Each paragraph should also cite at least 4 DIFFERENT SOURCES. If your parenthetical citations are from Jones, Smith, Thomas, Anderson, Jones again, Smith again and Harvey, and they all supported your paragraph point about how video game violence under the age of two produces more violent acts in pre-schoolers, it’s hard to argue

If all your citations in the paragraph were from just Thomas, though, it’s easier to argue. Let’s say Thomas was a known quackjob? No offense, of course, to quackjobs Your paragraph was just ruined. Four people are harder to challenge than one

CUT AND PASTE BASICALLY, THE RESEARCH PAPER IS JUST AN EXERCISE IN CUTTING AND PASTING THE PROFESSIONAL IDEAS OF OTHERS. YOUR OPINION DOES NOT GO INTO THE PAPER THE RESEARCHING IS THE KEY…IN ANY JOB, YOU WILL BE ASKED TO GO AND PROVE SOMETHING BY BACKING YOURSELF UP WITH RESEARCH

EXAMPLE You work for an advertising agency and your boss asks you to find out the best way to advertise a product…jeans Well, you will need to go and RESEARCH the personalities of age groups (kids, teens, young adults, middle age…) You will write up a report that analyzes pop culture, evolution of style, the change in workplace environment (dress down days), etc.

Ways to take notes You are expected to develop 50-60 notecards where you break down the information from your sources There are three methods of taking down information Summary- mostly Paraphrase-second mostly Direct Quote: sparingly

Summarizing and paraphrasing needs to be done properly to avoid plagiarism Put things into your own words so that the paper, even though it is a compilation of the ideas of others, actually sounds like YOUR style and voice Let’s say we are taking info from the following source: Callahan, Gerry. "The Media is Violent." Media Violence. 11 Mar. 2009 www.mediaviolence.com. You have labeled this source #1 Let’s try some…

A paper on media violence The debate is over. Over the last three decades, the one overriding finding in research on the mass media is that exposure to media portrayals of violence increases aggressive behavior in children. The National Institute of Mental Health has reported that "In magnitude, exposure to television violence is as strongly correlated with aggressive behavior as any other behavioral variable that has been measured." In addition to increased aggression, countless studies have demonstrated that exposure to depictions of violence causes desensitization and creates a climate of fear. SUMMARIZE THIS

As the evidence linking increased aggression to excessive exposure to violent entertainment has grown, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other physicians and mental healthcare providers have joined the call for limits on the amount of violent depictions to which children are exposed. PARAPHRASE THIS

Individuals with greater exposure to media violence see the world as a dark and sinister place. Television programs present a narrow view of the world, and the world they present is violent. Thus, people who watch a lot of television are more likely than those who watch less to see the world as being violent and overestimate their chance of being involved in violence. Nowhere is the media's distortion of reality greater than in the portrayal of individuals with mental illness. A 1997 content analysis of programming found that television characters with mental illnesses were highly likely to be shown commiting acts of violence. In fact, mentally ill characters were 10 times more violent than the general population of television characters, despite mountains of evidence that show that individuals with mental illnesses are no more likely to be violent than mentally healthy individuals. SUMMARIZE AND INCLUDE A WOVEN DIRECT QUOTE

Start sifting through your sources and taking down notes on notecards SEE PACKET OF HOW TO AND ASK QUESTIONS