ENG 1920: Investigating/Explaining: Academic Research Paper, Exploring Causes and Effects
Your assignment is to write an essay in which you examine the causes and effects of a topic related to a social justice issue (local, national, or international). This should be an informative paper, and your topic should naturally evolve from the reading and journaling that you have completed this term. In your essay you should relate what sources say are the initial causes related to your issue/topic and report their speculations concerning all of its possible effects.
Keep in mind that this is a journalistic informative piece only, NOT AN ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY.
Social justice & inequality are very broad topics, so there are a multitude of issues that you may choose as a focus for your paper.
You should begin by doing a general search of the web to learn what some possible topics might be and to get a feel for what the causes and effects of a particular issue might be. Just understand that these are sources that you CANNOT cite in your paper. The information for your formal research paper must come from a library or library database.
Some Past Student Essay Topics
-Teaching to the Test: No Child Left Behind's Effects on Subgroup Populations and Their Title 1 Funding
-Child Soldiers: The Effects of Joseph Kony and the Lords Resistance Army's Exploitation of Child Soldiers in Uganda and the Possibility of Peace
-The Indigenous People of the Amazon: How Government and Large Companies Value Profits More than People & The Environment
-Illegal Immigration: The Negative Social and Economic Effects within the Hispanic Community
-Healthcare for the Homeless
-The U.S. Use of World Resources
-Exploitation of Child Soliders in Sudan
-Inequailty in the Workplace & The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
-Corporate Power and Food Safety
-The Social Injustice of a Federal Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
-The Rights of Women in the Middle East
-The Global Problem of Sex Trafficking
Here are a few links to get you started:
Also, don't forget to ask your personal librarian for advice about a topic and for help with locating sources.
When you begin writing, assume that you are writing this essay for publication in an academic journal. Remember that an effective explanation has a point and has a clear thesis and an interesting angle or slant. Be sure to support your thesis with a clear explanation that utilizes specific support such as facts, data, examples, illustrations, statistics, comparisons, analogies, and images. Remember that your thesis is a general assertion about the relationships of the specific parts and the support you use to prove that thesis should help your reader identify those parts and see those various relationships. All examples that you use should be relevant, interesting, convincing, representative, accurate, and specific.
This assignment is designed for you to learn to explore complex issues and difficult, abstract, or unusual ideas and in the process discover and learn something about yourself and the world. As a writer you have a responsibility to your readers to make these difficult concepts concrete and understandable. While writing, try to avoid vague generalizations. Where do you get the examples to develop your essay? Which examples support your thesis? Which do not? Which are the most convincing? Which are the most likely to interest readers and clarify meaning?
You will need to conduct outside research on your topic. You must use dependable, reliable sources. These include book chapters, articles taken from books, magazine articles, journal articles, and newspaper articles.
YOU MAY NOT USE WORLD WIDE WEB SOURCES . To get credit, your essay must include at least five to seven written outside sources of research information pertaining to your subject.
This assignment is journalistic in nature. You are not to directly include your own opinion. You are to merely report the opinion of others. It is very important to remember that you goal is merely to inform, not argue or convince. At all times, your tone should be fair and balanced and you should avoid argumentative language. To do this, you will need to use both qualifers and author tags (see class notes). This is a formal academic essay. Do not use contractions, informal language or slang, or the first person (“I”).
. The most important techniques are:
•Getting the reader’s attention and stating a thesis
•Illustrating relationships between ideas by offering your "interpretation" of what you see as the importance of the source and its ideas
•Supporting explanations of these relationships with specific evidence
•Choosing relevant examples (and reporting both causes and effects)
A Neutral, Unbiased Voice
Format
Your essay should have a title. It should also be typed, double spaced, with one-inch margins all around, Times New Roman Font, & 12 pt. Your paper should be 8-10 pages and have a works cited page. Refer to OWL at Purdue for questions about MLA format and citations.
NOTE: REMEMBER, NO PROCESS, NO GRADE.
Final Draft, evaluated on the following criteria:
Total Possible Points: 80/
Focus (22 points): Does essay have a clear purpose? Focus on a main idea and clearly identifiable thesis? Are reader’s expectations set and then met? Ideas, examples, and reasons developed in the body of the paper are clearly related to the main focus?
Development (22 points): Are supporting examples, showing details, and data rich and relevant to the main idea? Are the writer’s assertions immediately followed by supporting evidence? Appropriate research supports the writer’s main idea or thesis? The writer shows how or why evidence is relevant to main idea or claim?
Organization (22 points): Do ideas and paragraphs proceed in logical and apparent sequence or pattern? Does writer use sufficient audience cues to let the reader know what has been discussed, what is being discussed, or what will be discussed? Does writer use attention-getting title and lead-in, essay map, summary and forecasting statements, paragraph hooks, transitional words and phrases? Do effective conclusions guide the reader from beginning to end?
Style (7 points): Is language clear direct and readable? Are sentences clear, concise, and easily read by intended audience? Is word choice appropriate for audience? Do sentences reveal and sustain appropriate voice and tone?
Mechanics (7 points): Are there obvious errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar? Are there patterns of error?
NO 1ST DRAFT ON DUE DATE (-7 POINTS)
NO PEER CRITIQUE (-7 POINTS)
NO REFLECTION (-7 POINTS)
NO PROCESS OR PROPER CITATION OF SOURCES=NO GRADE
Grading scale:
A 72-80
B 64-71
C 56-63
D 48-55
F 0-47
