Directions: For this essay, you have already established your own individual topic that examines an issue somehow related to our literary readings this semester and our ongoing discussion of gender. In completing the annotated bibliography assignment, you have presumably also completed your research and have assessed and summarized the sources that you intend to cite in this paper. Now all that remains is to write the essay itself.
Remember that you should present an objective, academic discussion of your topic, which means that it should contain no first-person references (“I,” “in my opinion,” etc.), should include liberal documented quotation and reference to sources and should exclude bias as much as possible. (For sample essay excerpts and more information on integrating sources and formatting citations, see The Little Seagull Handbook pages 119-169.) For your convenience, I have also provided you here with a sample of a well-executed research paper submitted by a former student.
Not counting the works cited page, the essay itself should be a minimum of six double-spaced pages in length using the 12-point font and standard MS Word margins, and you must include a minimum of four outside sources in this piece.
A good acronym to remember as a guiding principle for your body paragraphs in this essay is PIE, which stands for:
Point – the point is yours, the main message that you want to convey in that given paragraph; it should be communicated in a topic sentence somewhere very close to the beginning of the paragraph – most often, in the first sentence.
Information – this is relevant source material that you introduce to help develop, support and/or prove your point; it must be cited properly regardless of whether it is quoted, paraphrased or summarized.
Explanation – at the end of essentially everybody paragraph, you should be connecting the information that you supplied back to the point, the main idea, of that paragraph – and even back to the thesis as well. This is what is meant by explanation; you are explaining how the information ties in and help prove your case.
Though it happens throughout the entire paper, for an especially outstanding example of PIE in action, please see the paragraph that begins at the top of page four of the posted sample essay. Another nice thing to note here is that, when executed properly, not only does PIE earn you a good grade, but it also makes this assignment much easier. Some students lament the six-page minimum length requirement – but they often do so because they don’t realize that, in the research paper, a student isn’t really supposed to do all of the writing or take up all of the space. Again, the paragraph referenced here includes a rather lengthy block quote, which results in this paragraph being an entire page long all on its own.
Though some students seem to misguidedly believe this is somehow “cheating,” it couldn’t be further from the truth. Your instructors expect you to include a great deal of source material in just about any research paper – hence the “research” right in the name of it. The only two factors that separate the A-level work from the failing work when doing so are: (a) ensuring that the inclusion of all such source material is always properly documented and (b) establishing and maintaining the relevance of these sources to the main points raised in your paper.
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