A rough opening and closing to your research paper, including a thesis statement, and an outline of the "guts" of the paper.
in your rough opening and closing, you should aim to direct and to contextualize your argument and to provide a provocative conclusion to it. Depending on whether your organizational strategy is deductive or inductive, you should state your thesis clearly in your opening or closing paragraphs.
Your outline of thes internal portions of your paper should indicate 1) your organizational strategy, and 2) where you intend to use source material.
Be aware of and remain open to the possibility (even the probability?), that your thesis as well as your organization and use of sources will continue to evolve as you write. (Afterall, writing is thinking, folks!) To be really useful, an outline like this, which attempts to relate and integrate some pretty complex material, should probably include at least three, and possibly four, levels of detail in most places:
I.
A.
1.
a.
b.
2.
a.
B.
1.
a.
b.
c.
2.
a.
b.
II.
...and so on
Tuesday, November 25, in class
€ Research paper draft is due in class on Tuesday, December 2.
€ Conferences will be scheduled to discuss drafts on Wednesday, Thursday, and Froday, December 3, 4, and 5. (Completed peer reviews are due at conference.)
€ Revision is due with complete portfolio on Wednesday, December 10 by 5 p.m. at my office.
THE GENERAL IDEA/THE SPECIFIC POINT:
The period of time and activity between the working bibliography and the formal outline is intense (to say the least) involving a great deal of the get-down-to-business sort of work that the research project calls for.
€ It involves an in-depth reading and evaluation of secondary sources (and primary ones, if you are using them).
€ If you are conducting interviews, you follow through on them now.
€ As you explore your sources in depth, you transcribe and take detailed notes, recording relevant quotations, paraphrasing other writers' ideas, and coming up with and setting down in your notes pivotal ideas of your own.
€ You make certain as you go that you have taken down completely and correctly all the particular information you will need for in-text citations (oarenthetical citations or footnotes) and for your works cited (aka your bibliography), including page references, specific and inclusive. As you read and evaluate your sources, developing a deeper, more specific and sophisticated understanding of your subject, your thesis begins to come into focus, and your statement of it reflects the evolution in your thinking. These are giant steps toward your finished product; they represent a lot of work.
If you do a good, thorough job at this stage, you may find that the actual writing of your research paper is, if not exactly "easy," at least somewhat more leisurely.