Topics
Choose one of the three research topics below:
Population Growth and Natural Resources
Poverty and Access to Technology
Misinformation in Political Discourse
Procedure
You will need to specify your topic further to create your thesis statement and facilitate your research. The topics, as they appear, are too broad. For example, if an assigned topic is linguistic discrimination, I could further specify it (as you’ll see in the sample) to address the effects of linguistic discrimination of African American English.
Based on your topic, find two sources, one scholarly and one popular, that you will use to inform your outline and create your citations.
Create a tentative outline for a ‘would-be’ paper. NOTE: you are not writing the essay/paper. The outline requirements are:
No fewer than three body paragraphs, for a total of 5 paragraphs.
Fully grammatical sentences for the thesis statement and topic sentences
Supporting details may be phrases (see the sample)
In-text citations for at least two supporting details.
A Works Cited with two full citations for your two required sources
Your outline DOES NOT need to specify:
a hook in the introduction
connecting sentences in the introduction
minor details in the body paragraphs
any of the elements of a conclusion
Here is a sample outline that illustrates what I am expecting. Please note that I have labeled some of the elements of the outline (thesis statement, topic sentence, SD [for supporting detail]) for clarity. Don’t feel like you need to label those sections, but you can if you want to.
Regarding your research, I will be evaluating:
that you correctly identified a popular and scholarly source
the credibility of your source
sources that are clearly related to the topic
In the outline, I will be looking at:
how comprehensive, clear and grammatical your sentences are.
the main idea in the thesis statement (which you specified) has to be realistically covered in a five to seven page paper.
thoughtful thesis statement and topic sentences. Simple sentences will not earn you high points.
a clear and tiered organization of ideas. If you establish a clear numbering/lettering system (e.g. roman numerals for major parts of an essay, capital letters for the elements of a paragraph, etc.), this shouldn’t be an issue. You can also use indentation to indicate this organization.
logical and coherent supporting ideas
Regarding citations, I will be looking at:
correct in-text citations that clearly support a point in your outline
correct Works Cited page format