Assignment Sheet: Research Paper
Intercultural Communications
- Decide on a Topic and Develop a Tentative Thesis for the Paper
After doing some preliminary research, you should be able to come up with a topic. The topic is just a general idea or aspect of the paper; it is not your thesis. After deciding on a topic, you need to focus the topic into a tentative thesis statement. For this paper, the topic should be on some aspect of Intercultural Communication that we covered this semester.
- Create a Writing Plan: The Outline
After deciding on a thesis for your paper, your next step is to create outline. The outline will divide your thesis into several related subtopics/headings. See sample outline.
- Take Notes from the Secondary Sources
In the library, locate books and/or journals that discuss your topic. When you find an essay or book, scan through it to see if the author(s) discusses an aspect of your topic that ties in with your thesis in some way. When you do research, you try to locate information you can use in your paper. Carefully evaluate the credibility of your sources. When you find a secondary source that you think you can use in your paper, you need to make note of the source using MLA documentation, which we will review in class.
As you read through the source, have your writing plan in front of you, and look for any information in your source that you think you might be able to use in your paper. You are looking basically for insightful comments from other authors that you can “borrow” and use to support and develop your thesis. Once you have found some information that you think you might be able to use, get out an index card and make a note of it. The information you record might be a direct quote, a paraphrase, or a summary of material from the source.
Use the subtopics/headings from your writing plan to help you identify where the notes might be used in your paper, and include near the top of the note card the last name of the author of your source and the page number where you note originates.
- Write the Paper
After you have done all (or at least most) of your research, you are finally ready to begin writing your paper. Take it one step at a time. Look at your writing plan and decide which subtopic you would like to write on first. Then take out all of the note cards you have with that heading of your subtopic (both from your primary and secondary sources). If you have done a thorough and careful job of taking notes, all the support you will need for that subtopic will be on the note cards.
Assignment Details:
Length: 3 to 4 pages, not including the Work Cited page
Format: Double-spaced, page numbers top left
Four scholarly sources required.
