Preparing Your Final Drafts

Please make sure that you take this week to put the finishing touches on your final paper.  The resource that we talked about in class last week is a great way to check your paper for errors in plagiarism, grammar, etc.

You can use this resource for free at paperrater.com.  Also, if you are still unclear about what constitutes plagiarism, try using Dr. CiteRight! 

MLA Header

Research Paper Questions

Many of you have had some excellent questions that you have asked in class and through e-mail.  In an effort to provide you with additional resources to support your writing process, I will be using the blog to post some of your questions here.  As you e-mail me, I will add your questions (anonymously, of course) so that both you and your peers can refer to my answers as needed.


Question:
I was trying to find some things for the note cards but I can't find a lot. When I read the sources I find some things but when I keep reading they talk about some different things.

Answer:

What you are finding is completely normal.  The majority (with rare exception) of the sources that you will find will not ALL be just on exactly what you are trying to prove in your paper.  That's what makes your paper worth reading; it's original.  You are gathering information from different sources and piecing together what is important to your thesis.  The other stuff, the parts that are not, just discard.  Keep the relevant information and use that.  (This is why the more sources you have, the better.  Keep looking for more sources if you need them.  You may only be able to use parts of a particular article.) 

A little something fun....

While you are slaving away on your research papers, this internet hoax might provide a little relief....

But don't spend get stuck wasting too much time! It can be addicting!

You can read about it here and actually play the game here.

Topic Questions

The following is a list from some of my students from last year.  These were not their thesis statements, but the questions that they used to form  their theses.  I have removed the names, but I thought that this might be helpful for you to see how some of them structured their questions.

Name	Topic	Question
Ms. M	The American Dream	How does Gatsby represent the impossibility of the American Dream?
	Analysis of Love	How does love affect/link all the characters in the Great Gatsby?
	Symbolism	How does F. Scott Fitzgerald portray symbolism in The Great Gatsby?
	Imagery	How does Fitzgerald use imagery to capture the essence of the 1920s?
	The American Dream	How Does F. Scott Fitzerald portray the "American Dream" in Gatsby's character ?
	Deception	How does Gatsby use deception to continue living his 87wealthy lifestlye?
	Human Nature	How does human nature affect the tragedy of The Great Gatsby?
	American Dream	How did Gatsby and his American Dream fail and show the flaws of the "Dream"
	Character Comparison	How does the author describe Tom and Gatsby throughout the novel?
	Power of Love	Hoe does Gatsby's undying love for Daisy set the course for his life?
	Role of Women	How are women portrayed in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?

Some help with MLA formatting

In response to some of your questions, here are some helpful tips for MLA formatting.  You can find more details using some of the resources I posted in previous prompts.

Also, please check out sample papers in the dropbox folder, to use as a model of a literary criticism paper in MLA format.

Quotes of Four Lines or More

When inserting a quote of four lines or more, you need to format it differently than a regular quote.  

• Introduce the quote with a colon (not quotation marks)
• Indent an inch from the left (total margin from the edge 2 inches)
• Single space the quote
• Cite as normal (author's last name page number)
• Remember that if you introduce the source in your sentence, you only need to put the page number.

It should look like this:

If you have other questions, please feel free to e-mail me or post them and I (or others) can respond!

The Monsters are Due on Maple Street

For those of you who could not be in class on Wednesday, we watched the Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street."  In order to respond to the blog post, you will need watch the episode.  To do this, you can access the episode in three parts on youtube.  The links have been provided below.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Rod Serling closes with the following quote.  For your blog post, consider:

What do you think Serling is saying?  Based on what we have studied so far do you agree with this statement?  Be sure to support your answer with evidence from literature, history, personal experience, etc.  Your answer should be a full paragraph (6-8 sentences).

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn.”