Laying Out the Qualifications

It’s now almost time to begin writing your research argument. If your outline was really well writte - this should be cinch!  You should be able to pretty much turn your outline into sentences and...presto!

Just to remind you...this research paper will try to accomplish multiple tasks:

• Provide an overview a small portion of your person’s life(without sounding like an encyclopedia entry!), focused on one topic within their life or on one time period in their life
• Make an argument about why your person is influential in today’s world. Think to yourself how you might persuade an audience that a school or a park or center should be named after this person -- or think about presenting an argument that your person has shaped history more than many others.
• Provide evidence from your survey and your research of how your person changed our world today

Other requirements for the paper will include:

• 4-5 pages in length
• Includes parenthetical citations and an MLA Works Cited page
• Cites at least five sources total, with at least two of those sources being primary sources
• Uses student survey as an additional source
• Has an engaging introduction that identifies the research topic and invites further reading
• Has a clear organizational pattern
• Uses transitions effectively
• Includes a conclusion that entices the reader to consider further implications of the project
• Uses rhetorical devices (covered in more depth in session 5)
• Varying sentence structures for easy reading
• Few, if any, grammatical errors

The rubric attached below will help you further understand the purposes for your writing.