smartzena

Research Paper and Works Cited Page Draft Instructions

This writing assignment involves writing the first draft of your Research Paper and Works Cited

Page. Once you draft your essay and revise, you may submit it for feedback. The feedback will

help you write the final draft; your final draft will be graded.

Research Paper Project - Step 7: Revising and Editing

During Topics 10 and 11 of the course, you will need to revise and edit the final draft of your

research paper.

Note: You will not submit the final draft of your research paper until Topic 12.

For this assignment, you will need to submit:

• The first draft of your research paper, complete with properly-formatted

parenthetical citations from at least four credible sources within the text.

• The Works Cited page, which should be located at the end of your essay. The Works

Cited page should be clearly labeled and follow MLA formatting requirements.

You will need a good, comprehensive thesis statement that states your claim1 (what will

you prove?) and at least three supporting details (how will you prove your point?).

You might use this as a guideline in crafting your thesis:

(Reason 1), (reason 2), and (reason 3) prove that (add your claim).

(1. Children who play violent video games exert more aggression than their counterparts who are not

exposed to these games) because (2. children often imitate their experiences as a natural learning

process) and (3. the violence they see in video games desensitizes them to violence in the real world);

however, (your claim: increasing the ages allowed to play certain violent games may prove to

decrease childhood aggression).

The guidelines for this assignment are as follows:

Length: This assignment should be a minimum of 800 words. However, you should aim for a

minimum of 1,250 words. All length guidelines are excluding the Works Cited page.

Header: Include a header in the upper left-hand corner of your writing assignment with the

following information:

• Your first and last name

1 Keep in mind that the purpose of this assignment is to support a claim, which means you must do more than

merely inform the reader. You must take a stance on your topic and make/support claims that go beyond mere

facts.

• Course Title (Composition I)

• Assignment name (Research Paper)

• Current Date

Format:

• At least four credible sources used and documented in MLA style

• Double-spacing throughout

• Standard font (Arial, TimesNewRoman, Calibri)

• Title, centered after heading

• 1” margins on all sides

• Save the file using one of the following extensions: .docx, .doc, .rtf, or .txt

Underline your thesis statement in the introductory paragraph.