MINITUARE ENGLISH RESEARCH PAPER
: Keyboa UPDATED ASSIGNMENT SHEET FOR FINAL RESEARCH PAPER Every human activity and pursuit has its own vocabulary, from the slang of video-games to the secret code of high finance, from the jargon of cooking to the double-speak of politics. For your final paper, you should take all of the close-reading techniques that we developed this term and apply them to an interest, passion, or obsession of your own. This will provide us all with proof that these methods that we′ve worked on have applications in the so-called “real world” outside of the English classroom. Title your paper with something like ″The Rhetoric of Public Relations,″ ″The Language of Neurobiology,″ ″The Jargon of Screenwriting,″ ″The Slang of Catering,″ ″The Foreign Tongue of Business Management,″ etc. Use your essay (supported with a few research sources, which we’ll work on soon) to analyze the language of that particular activity. As an example, if someone were to write an essay titled ″The Rhetoric of Baseball,″ it could look something like this… [unique_solution]The sport of baseball contains its own special language, a vocabulary that this essay will explore and analyze. In this sport, one alternates between wearing a ″cap″ (a more boyish-sounding word than the more adult-sounding ″hat″) and wearing a ″helmet″ (a piece of wardrobe we associate with warriors). One wields a ″bat,″ which is a word that Warner Brothers cartoons play with by picturing not a ″bat″ as a club made out of wood but a ″bat″ as a flying rodent that can turn into a vampire. On the issue of ″clubs,″ sometimes an entire baseball team is referred to collectively as a baseball ″club,″ and so a bat-using team is a club-using club. The game is watched over by an ″umpire,″ a word that sounds a lot like ″empire,″ and indeed the umpire is the royal, king-like emperor who has the power of the final say-so regarding the goings-on of the game. Baseball is played on a ″field″ instead of a ″court″ or a ″rink,″ which gives it a more natural and outdoorsy tone. A batter ties to hit a ″pitch″ (which is a word we also use for certain verbal performances, like a ″sales pitch″). If a pitch isn′t a ″strike″ (which it is, ironically, if the batter doesn′t manage to ″strike″ the ball when he swings), then it is a ″ball,″ even though (physically) all pitches are physically made up of balls whether or not they are in the strike zone. The target of baseball is to make a ″run,″ although a run can be scored whether or not you are actually running, walking, or crawling. A run is scored not by reaching an ″end zone″ (as in American ″foot″-ball, a game played mostly with your hands) but by reaching ″home,″ a place we often associate with safety and relaxation and security. To qualify as a research paper, your essay should cite at least one outside source per page. When looking for research sources, avoid controversial sites like SparkNotes and Wikipedia. Instead, search out books in the campus catalog (or any public library) and look at academically trusted sites available via BMCC’s online services like JSTOR, Literature Criticism Online, Oxford Reference, ScienceDirect, etc. List of Tips for Literary Research 1. Once you have decided on your topic (looking at the vocabulary of a human activity or a present-day, “real world” issue) take a look at the JSTOR search engine available at the BMCC college library’s home page for professional scholarship and criticism on the text you have chosen. 2. Avoid controversial, amateur sites like Wikipedia since their content tends to be fairly questionable (at the present moment at least). 3. Divide your topic (women’s rights, racial rebellion, etc.) into sub-topics to make your research less broad and sweeping. 4. Use quotes from the articles you find to support your own analysis, but analyze these quotes as well (don’t just “drop” them unexamined into your text). 5. Quotes do not need to be used only for support or agreement; feel free to disagree with them. 6. Quotations from secondary sources can also be “close read” for content, with the same techniques we’ve used in previous papers. 7. Refer back to the “50 Things to Look for When Close Reading” document on our Home page—your research paper should still be attentive to close-reading detail. 8. The Internet is, needless to say, awash and overflowing in a mind-boggling surplus of information—be critical and skeptical about your sources if they seem too simplistic. 9. Avoid even the faintest danger of plagiarism by citing and giving credit to all secondary sources. 10. The proper format for citing book, online, and magazine sources is provided in the Bibliography at the bottom of the sample research paper in this document. 11. Don’t hesitate to use a good dictionary as one of your research sources, to provide a definition for one of your essay’s crucial keywords. 12. Be sure you have a firm and clear grasp of what the assignment sheet is asking you to do—if not, please contact me for clarification. 13. Crack open the clichés—do not merely repeat the popular wisdom or “common sense” on the topic, but try to tunnel deeply into the subject at hand. 14. While many mainstream, no-fee search engines are of questionable content, a site like Google Scholar seems to be (currently) a step ahead of most. 15. Feel free to consult with me if you in any sort of doubt about a research source’s credibility of trustworthiness. Insert subsсrіpt or supersсrіpt text Supersсrіpt and subsсrіpt refer to numbers that are positioned slightly higher or slightly lower than the text on the line. For example, a footnote or endnote number reference is an example of supersсrіpt (footnote1), and a scientific formula might use subsсrіpt text (H2O). Make text subsсrіpt or supersсrіpt 1. Select the text that you want to format as subsсrіpt or supersсrіpt. 2. Do one of the following: o On the Home tab, in the Font group, click Subsсrіpt. Or press CTRL+＝. o On the Home tab, in the Font group, click Supersсrіpt. Or press CTRL+SHIFT+＝. 3. NOTErd shortcuts do not work if you are using Word Online. 4. To undo the formatting, click the Subsсrіpt or Supersсrіpt button again, or repeat the keyboard shortcut.