What IS a research paper?

• A research paper is actually a WORK IN YOUR OWN WORDS that fully discusses a topic that you have spent time learning about. It is to be in depth and intelligent, with support from credible sources. This paper will be YOUR work, but you have based your knowledge on the credible work of others. • Sounds difficult? It’s not really so bad, actually, it gets pretty easy.

First Step:

•

Find a Topic

: Your first order of business, obviously, is to choose a topic. Whatever the case, it is important to find something interesting to you. You must pick a topic that you can prove has an impact on America, Carroll County, or teens.

Possible Topics

Advertising Al Qaida Alcohol Animal rights Athletics in high schools Beauty contests Bullying laws Cell phones Censorship Worker Unions Climate change/Global Warming Coal Cyber crime Divorce Gas/Oil Wells/Fracking Fashion Nascar Hunting/Fishing Agriculture/Factory Farms Corporations Energy (solar, nuclear, coal powered) China Labor Laws

Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence.

• Do not add fluff. If you are not going to explain something in your paper do not put it in your thesis.

The thesis statement usually appears at the beginning of the first paragraph of a paper.

• The thesis should be easy for your reader to find. Do not try to hide the thesis statement.

Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

• There is nothing wrong with changing your thesis statement as you write. The thesis should reflect your paper’s topic. This may change or be altered as you write.

Your thesis statement:

• ___________ has an major impact on ___________ (American society, Carroll County, teens) • The paper that follows should:

– explain how your topic has an influence on America, Carroll County, or teens

First Step: Notes and Learning

•

Find Sources

: Now, what we must do is find CREDIBLE sources on the topic and begin learning all we can about what vampires are, where the derive from and why they are so perplexing and popular.

•

Credible

?

Credible means that the sources you are using actually have proof for their knowledge. They are certified on the topic you are researching and not just some fanatic or idiot who thinks they know what they are talking about .

• Credible sources are books, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias, interviews with credible people, and CERTAIN websites

So let’s say I want to know about Vampires; I’m going to need to check certain resources.

 1. Encyclopedia references are a good place to start. They give background info AND sometimes a list of further readings.

 2. Find Books on the topic. Then move on to magazines, newspapers or journal articles.

 3. Only use the internet as a last resort as it is one of the least credible sources out there, and often hard to find anything of worth. For this paper, you may use only ONE internet source…no matter what.

Know now that only a few select sites can be credible. Follow this checklist to ensure that you can actually use the source.

1. Know the name of the AUTHOR of the site, and their credentials (Dr., Researcher, Journalist, etc…) 2. Know what Company or Organization this site affiliated with.

3. Know WHERE this site exists. (Usually AngleFire, myspace or Tripod pages and their like ARE NOT credible).

4. Know what type of information is being conveyed.

5. There must be useful information you can gather for your study.

6. Know when the site was updated last.

Examples :

http://www.HoughtonMifflin.com/historical/vampire/html Borne From Gaves and Charnel Houses.

by: Dr. Julian Smithee PHD of Supernatural Lit, Cambridge College.

Following the strange trails of the vampire through history leads down any number of false dark alleys and real dark corridors. However they are regarded, seductive stalker or carrion rogue, the vampire seems to permeate every society in the world in one form or another. Yet where do these creatures originate from? Why do they differ in appearance and behavior from country to country? And above all, why are such murderous creatures so terrifying yet so attractive to us at the same time?

To explore the true birth place of the vampire, we must look at two of the greatest empires in the world and their sub-cultures. The Greeks and the Egyptians were simultaneously the most powerful and populace empires in the known world. Thus, it is only fitting that from such great societies come the world’s most renowned fiends. Somewhere around eighty years before the birth of Christ, we find the first written evidence of vampiric happenings in Greek grave yards and Egyptian tombs.

http://www.geocities.com/MorganLF/vampires.html

Vampires are undoubtedly the coolest creatures out there. In comparison to werewolves or ghosts, neither is more real or more powerful than the vampire.

I myself am a vampire, and so it is with pride I tell you about myself to scare you a little more…people taste better when they’re scared.

I, like all vampires, originate from Los Angeles. Some people think vampires are from other places, but the true vampires are seen only in LA clubs. I’ve been to N.Y. clubs, and they’re just posers. Despite popular belief, vampires have been around as long as humans…longer, actually. We began as angels, fallen like the demons, but we made our way from Hell to earth where our lesser forms developed into humanity. Real vampires do not develop, we feed and continue.

pg. 1 pg. 1

From the good site you could clearly see

WHO

wrote the article,

WHY

they were a credible source, and

INFORMATION

that would actually help you with your research. Furthermore, look at the

WEB ADDRESS

, (Houghton Mifflin is a school textbook company, thus a trustworthy source).

The bad site is quite opposite. It is based on

opinion,

“I am a vampire….” Has irrelevant quotes as to helping you, and has

no credible author or company

to back them up. Furthermore,

look at the address

. Any time it is from Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod or any other company that allows any and all individuals to make personal web pages, it is NOT usually a credible or accepted source.

Taking Notes

• One of the most IMPORTANT aspects of the research process now is

learning

the topic thoroughly and making EFFECTINE NOTES on it.

• Read through ALL your sources first and make notes on all of them. Use either numbered note cards, sticky notes or an organized notebook.

• In your notes, write EXACTLY what you need to remember; Quotes, dates, numbers, or any and all other relevant information. PLUS, always add the author of where you got those notes and the page numbers. This will help you TREMENDOUSLY!

• Like noting from the internet page, note taking from books, encyclopedias, etc is actually rather simple. • Read the source completely, THEN go back over it making note of the important or helpful information. Always include the author, the work and page number on your note cards or notebook to help you for citation purposes and in case you have to go back and look through the materials again.

Good note taking • Write the information exactly.

• Keep names, dates, numbers, etc…perfectly • Write quotes EXACTLY as they appear.

• Write author, page number and the source.

To understand what first prompted the belief in vampires, we must examine two major happenings. The first took place in the burial yards of Greece. In the centuries before and Bathroom writing started as Grecians were embalmed in any way. Rather, they were merely buried in the ground approximately four feet in the earth. The earth has a tendency to expel buried bodies, however,making for some very eerie sights as some bodies would inevitably rise from their graves, thus giving rise to the belief that there are those who can come back from the dead and their earthly tombs.

Dr

.

Lloyd Worley, PHD Humanities

How to organize notes

• If you are researching a person, historical event, mysterious place, etc… these notes should go in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER!!!!

• This must be done because it’s the only way things make sense. You can’t say “

Vampires are popular icons in today’s literature….the most notable in popular fiction are Dracula and the vampires from Anne Rice’s Chronicles…they come from Egypt and Greece….there is a single biblical account of a vampiric creature in the Talmud, that of Adam’s first wife, Lilith…people came from their graves in Greece…Dracula was a real person….”

• If your topic does not require chronological order, it still needs to follow a logical pattern. • If it is a scientific paper, it should still follow the pattern of progress. If it is analytical (dealing with perhaps a psychosis) start with the causes, then the symptoms, then the final effects and treatments .

• After getting ALL your notes written out, it’s time to organize. • Organization means EVERYTHING in a research paper. There are simple techniques to use for organization.

• If you have used cards, all you have to do is figure out the best order for progression, then line up and number your cards. If you used a notebook, you’ll have to number, cut out and paste them back together.

So now you have the knowledge you need, various sources to help support what you are saying and you’re ready to go. So how do you start writing it?

Basically, this follows similar ideas insofar as introductions and conclusions. You MUST capture our attention from the first paragraph. Use relevant stories, interesting or startling facts on the subject, a quote on the topic, etc.. Basically, introduce your topic as being something interesting, even exciting. This way you establish your voice and the purpose for your paper. Also, it helps you write a powerful, interesting paper, because let’s face facts; If you didn’t like writing it, teachers won’t like reading it and you’ll likely not do well.

So find a phenomenal way to introduce your paper and topic, and begin writing a rough draft.

• You will undoubtedly want to explain all about your topic so that we can actually see where and how the legends of Vampires started, how and why it evolved into what it is now, and why it has branched into so many various new forms.

• In addition to explaining the topic COMPLETELY AND IN DEPTH, you’ll want to help prove your points with areas of citation. Sometimes you’ll directly quote a source, though other times you should paraphrase, yet still give credit.

The Body of Your Paper

• Each body paragraph will have a topic sentence that connects the supporting detail to your thesis statement.

• The specific details will be used in these body paragraphs to prove your supporting details and thesis statement Give your paper a life in these paragraphs. Make it something you would be interested in reading yourself, and realize how much you are actually learning as you are teaching your readers.

Now you’re lost, aren’t you?

OK, so you have your paper going, you’ve explained much of your topic, but still, you need to PROVE you are right and this is not just an opinion paper. That’s where citation comes in handy. Remember, this needs to be YOUR work in YOUR words, fully explaining a topic you are now completely familiar with. BUT you should use credible sources to back you up. Look at the example on the next column.

Although the Greeks were the first to truly represent a living-dead creature that resembles a modern vampire, it was the Egyptians that first made it something of a seducer. Often, vampires are seen as attractive, semi sexual beings, but the flesh gorging zombies from Greece cannot account for this persona. In Radu Florescu’s work,

The silken Curtain

, he accounts for the seductive side of vampires as stemming from the very pyramids of Egypt where “…legends of the Incubus and Succubus were born. These vampires were beautiful, human-like creatures that would lure and seduce people before drinking from them” (Florescu, 146).

Simple, right? You are telling the concepts, and

periodically

you use information you found to help prove what you are talking about. The last slide showed that a credible researcher recognizes actual history of vampiric folklore. Not only did you tell the reader about the Egyptian connection, but you also gave credible support to your claim by using the further research of an expert.

So what’s with the numbers and words in parenthesis after sentences you’ve quoted? That is called CITATION. This means you give credit to the person from whom you gained this quote, statistic or information. It works rather simply. After you use their information, you end quotation marks WITHOUT a period in the sentence! Then in parenthesis you use the author’s last name, comma, and the page number this information can be found on. Close parenthesis and THEN put in the period.

For example :

Although the legends of the Incubus and Succubus centuries, it was not until the crossing of true history with Romantic Horror that the vampire became widely accepted as an attractive, quasi sexual creature. This stereotypical belief stems from the novel Dracula, written by Bram Stoker. Here, Stoker used the real, historical Prince Vlad Tepes, (Known as Dracula in his home of Romania), combined with the attractive personage of the poet Lord Byron to create a beautiful, and wicked vampire.

The Vampire itself did not actually gain popularity as an attractive being until the Irish born novelist, Abraham (Bram) Stoker took creative liberties with the historical Dracula, truly named Vlad Tepes or “Vlad the Impaler”, and crossed him with the attractive appearance of the poet Lord Byron (Nally, 192).

Other ways to back yourself up.

Quoting other sources is a good thing to do, though there are other ways to use support without weighing down your paper with quotes and you will DEFINITELY want to know how to do this.

Paraphrasing (which was just shown) means you take the credible facts, etc…and re-write them in YOUR OWN WORDS. Para means “similar to” and Phrase is pretty obvious, so what you are doing is trying to get the same idea across in your own words.

NOTE THAT THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU SIMPLY CHANGE A WORD OR TWO!!!!! You basically change the whole sentence. Check out the differences in the next slide.

Book

: “The historical Dracula was actually a Prince, known to be the most powerful and respected, in Romanian history. Vlad Tepes, or Vlad Dracula as he was named after his father, was the true Dracula. Though not likely a real vampire, he was a blood-thirsty, murderous, cruel man who was known to have at times imbibed in the consumption of human blood.” •

Good:

The true Dracula, though most likely not a vampire in any real sense, was the basis of what is now considered to be the basic vampire. The real man was a twisted though powerful Romanian Prince who lead his country through the ravages of war against the Turks in the late 1400’s. It was from his frightening battlefield actions, the tortures he implemented on his prisoners and his harshly enforced laws that earned him the infamy of a human monster. But it was his thirst for blood, literally, that made Stoker think to turn him into the modern stereotypical vampire.

Bad

: The historical Dracula was actually a Prince, known to be powerful and respected, in Romanian history. Vlad Tepes, or Vlad Dracula, was the true Dracula.

The best thing you can do in writing a research paper is to mix it up a bit. Remember that YOU are telling the reader about your topic. Keep your voice and style, expand into depth, but use proof and never opinion. Use quotes and statistics to back you up and paraphrase certain parts so that you are still using documented proof without being in trouble for

plagiarism!

Also, always keep your paper alive, but PROFESSIONAL! That means no slang, no abbreviated words like ‘cause, and you keep “I”, “you”, etc… OUT of the paper.

• One of the most important parts of your paper, as always, is your conclusion. • The conclusions ABSOLUTELY MUST be phenomenal. You should leave your reader still thinking about your topic and your paper once they finish reading it. • It’s ok to leave your reader with a powerful question that leaves them thinking. Or use an image at the last to keep in the reader’s mind. • NEVER merely say “the end”. Likewise, avoid just throwing some cruddy conclusion just to get it out of the way. If you don’t like the conclusion, I surely won’t like reading it, and thus, you guessed it, the grade suffers.

• Basically, LEAVE ME THINKING OF YOUR TOPICS!!!!

Nearing the end!!!

• Once written, you’ll want to review the entire paper, see what areas you could or SHOULD expand on, rewrite, paraphrase, add or adjust quotes or other note where sources might help prove certain points of your paper, and put in proper citation. Also, edit your paper for grammar, spelling, etc…

THE LAST STEPS!!!!

• At the end of your paper, you must have a sheet that lists ALL the sources you used for your research. Whether you quoted them, paraphrased from them, or merely used them for your research, you MUST cite them.

• THIS is a difficult part, so you MUST DO IT CORRECTLY!

Author’s last name, first name. Title of the book. Published where: by whom, date published.

Shin, Seung. Lives of the Darker Saints . New York: Penguin Press, December 1992.

If there is more than one author:

Baker, Lee and Kenny Nasco. A Vampire Encyclopedia.

London: Signet Books, 2004.

Encyclopedia

: Author’s last name, First. “Word or topic”. Reference book.

Edition.

Mills, Mindy. “Vampire”. World Book Encyclopedia. 2003 Edition, Vol 14.

In case where there is no author:

“Vampire”. World Book Encyclopedia. 2003 Edition, Vol 14.

Dictionary:

“Word Defined”. Name of Dictionary. Edition.

“Succubus”. Webster’s High School Dictionary. 2002.

DUDE! I GOT IT!

Author’s last, first. “Article Title”. Magazine, Volume (date), pages. Moran, Mandy. “Fangs for the Memories”. Time, 114 (December 14, 2003), 82-91.

If credible but unsigned

: “Real Life Suckers”. Life, 987 (July 21, 1991), 56-61.

Author’s last, First. “Article”. Newspaper, (Date), Section, page.

Dale, Britney. “Unwilling Blood Donors”. Los Angeles Times, (February 20, 2004), Section C, pg C12-C13.

Author’s last, first. “Title of Page”. Association or Company: Last date updated. Full web site.

Anderson, Jamie. “Food for the Gods”. National Council of Paranormal Studies: November 12, 2003 .

www.NCPS.com/vampiricfolklore/main/documentedcases.

html

The Unusual Citation .

•Recordings (CD, tape, radio, messages from interstellar beings…) •Personal Interview.

Artist. “Song or track”. Album. Company, date of release.

Person interviewed last name, first. Personal Interview. Date.

Guns n’ Roses. “Sympathy for the Devil”. Interview with the Vampire Soundtrack. TimeLife Records, 1994.

Itrades, Radu. Personal Interview. December 1, 2001.

FINALLY! THE WORKS CITED PAGE

• Once you have your paper written, have it correctly cited and edited, it’s time to make the works cited page. This is the final page that follows your paper. It has all your sources cited correctly. • Make sure you follow the example on the next slide down.

Works Cited Triple Space Bolton, Ariel. “When Nightmares are Real”. Time, 114 (December 14, 2003), 82-91.

Grivy, Missy. “Misguided Souls”. Los Angeles Times, (February 20, 2004), Section C, pg C12-C13.

King, Tonya. “Vampires in legend and Literature”. Association of Biblical and Paranormal study: November 12, 2003. www.ABP.com/legendsh/main/Taltos.html

Rosen, Lacy and Tim Kingly. The Unusual Suspects.

London: Signet Books, 2004.

Bloodlust: A history of Vampires and the Cultures that Create Them.

By: • Now, you need to create a cover page, print out your paper, cover page and works cited page. Staple it ONCE in the upper left corner, and turn it in. If you would rather use a plastic paper cover, that is acceptable also.

Kyra Lexis Freshman English February 18, 2005

• When writing your paper, add life to it. Convey your message, but add your voice to it. The simple rule is “If you don’t like your topic, or don’t like writing about it, NO ONE will like reading it. Period. Case closed. Yo mama will not persuade me otherwise.” • Interest yourself in the topic, make your paper interesting and informative, or basically you may as well take the zero out of the one thousand points this paper is worth.

Create something you like knowing. Write something you would be interested in reading. And above all, make something you are proud of altogether.

• Just so we are COMPLETELY clear on this issue, allow me to explain plagiarism.

• Plagiarism is when you take someone else’s works, ideas or words and use them as your own. Whether it is a sentence, a part of a sentence or an entire paper, it will ruin your grade and it is illegal.

• Think I’m kidding? If you plagiarize in ANY college class, you are usually expelled from the college, cannot reapply EVER and it goes on your permanent record.

• Why is it illegal? Because you are stealing another person’s ideas. It is illegal and immoral. • • If you are thinking about it, don’t chance it. I WILL find out as we have various resources. If you want to check your own paper for possible plagiarism, submit your paper to www.turnitin.com

(you may have to pay a user fee), or try one of our other sources. I use both Turnitin.com and the program Eve 6.2. Also, I know your writing styles, strengths and weak areas.

Don’t be stupid. Do your work.

.

There you go! Not so bad, though it still takes a lot of hard work, thought and dedication. Do your best in ALL aspects of this paper!

Remember, YOU write this paper, don’t let quotes over run your paper! And most of all, DO NOT PLAGIAIRIZE !!!