Your Assignment - English 100 - Professor Leis - Spring 2020

College Level Research

What You Need to Know

Understanding Your Assignment

Before you begin looking for information you should make sure you understand your assignment. Some good questions are:

How many pages?
How many sources?
What kinds of sources?
- Books
- Articles
- Websites
What format?

Your professor is your best resource to answer these questions.

Your Assignment - Professor Leis

RESEARCH PAPER REQUIREMENTS

A Research-Based Essay

Choose a topic that interests you - an event, a concept or idea, a cultural phenomenon or potential solutions to a problem.
- Not argument-as-debate but argument as journey.
- The goal of answering a question or solving a problem - your destination.
- You will attempt to come to some kind of answer to your question.
What don't you know?
- Do some exploratory research about your topic.
- Learn about it.
- Develop an open ended question based on your background reading.
Incorporate material from at least 8 credible sources.
- Five should be found using the Library’s online databases.
- Gale EBooks and Gale Opposing Viewpoints are good starting points for providing background information. They will give give you ideas and useful keywords for finding other sources.
- The EBSCOhost and ProQuest databases will lead you to both popular and scholarly articles on which you base much of your research.

Now What?

Use the tabs above on this Research Guide or see if there's a Research Guide that's specific to your topic to find useful resources such as databases, books, ebooks, and articles.

What Do You Know?

You probably already know a little something about the topic you chose, but it's important to find out more in order to write an intelligent research paper and/or make a good argument.