THE TASK: To write the rough draft of your first paper.
Assignment Summary:
You will finish the writing of your paper. If you wish, you can find a partner and do a peer review (10 points extra credit).
Assignment 9-Part 1
This week, you should finish your rough draft using your word processor. When the rough draft is finished, edit this paper carefully, and apply all the readings on Opening Paragraphs, Essay Structure, Documentation, and Transition to your paper. Revise as necessary. You will not submit this rough draft to your instructor -- your instructor is not your proof reader. However, if you have specific questions about your research, formatting, or structure, be sure to ask about these.
View - PowerPoint lecture.
Proofreading your paper (PowerPoint Lecture)
Read:
Questions and Answers for Assignment 9
Turnitin.com
Part of revising the rough draft of your paper should be checking it for plagiarism -- copying text from your sources without proper citations or summarization. Research writing demands giving credit to source material if it is quoted, paraphrased, a statistic, a case history, or an opinion. Students new to research writing sometimes want to take the easy way out -- just quote the material and cite everything -- but this is not good writing practice. Most of your paper's information should be summarized, and unless that information meets the requirements above for citing, the Works Cited page is adequate for telling the reader where you found the information. A research paper should not be over-quoted, and I will mark quotes that should have been put in your own words.
Because much of research information comes from the Internet today, it is very easy to copy and paste material to your paper. But this must not happen, and tools to help instructors catch this type of lazy plagiarism has been created. One of these tools is Turnitin.com. You need to become familiar with this tool, and use it to make sure that you have put your paper's information in your own words, and is not in the words of your source. You can submit your paper to Turnitin.com and have it checked against their data banks. If you find areas of your paper that are too close to the original source, you can then revise those sections until they are summarized in your own words.
To begin using this plagiarism tool, you need to go to the Turnitin.com web site and view two videos:
Turnitin.com training web address: http://www.turnitin.com/static/training.html
Student Training Video
Originality Report Video
To subscribe to Turnitin.com, go to this web address: http://www.turnitin.com/static/home.html
Select New User from the top right of the page and follow the directions to create an account. The enrollment information that you will need is as follows:
ID Number: 4263997
Password: noplagiarizeWhen you have finished setting up your account, you will go to where your class is set up.
How you use this program is up to you. It is a requirement of this course that you submit the FINAL copy of your paper to this site for evaluation. When you submit the paper, be sure to put the title of the paper in the title area, a dash, and Final so I know that this is the final copy that I can check for originality. Example of final submission title: Hopi Snake Dance - Final You do not have to e-mail me the final copy of the paper - I will get it from Turnitin.com; however, you do need to send me an e-mail message that your paper is finished and submitted to Turnitin for grading.
However, you can also use this tool to help you. You can submit the paper early, view the originality report, and then go back and revise your paper. You can do this as many times as you wish before the due date (it will not allow repeated copies after the due date and it tends to get cranky as the due date approaches). If you do place revision copies on Turnitin.com, be sure to indicate that this is not your final copy by putting NOT FINAL in the title box. I will know that this is a test copy. If you have trouble getting rid of a copy to submit your final, contact me to delete it.
Because you are required to have a short quote and a long quote in your paper, I have set Turnitin to ignore quotes. If your quoted material is formatted correctly, Turnitin should recognize it as a quote and exclude it from the percentage and the report. However, that is what they say at Turnitin, but many times I have seen it include the quote as plagiarized material. Because of this, you must look at your report carefully, and subtract your quotes from the final percentage if they are marked.
I have also turned off the "exclude bibliography" so it will not count your Works Consulted page as copied material. However, Turnitin only recognizes the words Works Cited. Since I asked that you do a Works Consulted page, not a Works Cited page, if you don't want Turnitin to include your bibliography info in the copied percentage, you need to make the title of that page Works Cited to fool it. I will know that you know the difference between the two because you used the correct "Works Consulted" on your Ass. 8 -- you did, didn't you?
Most students will have a small percentage of matched material. This is normal in that your summarized words can match someone else's summarized words. But if your percentage is over 5% with the quotes and WC turned off, you should be looking at the marked material to rewrite.
Assignment 9-Part 2
Write an essay (in your word processor) to the class explaining what you found in your research that answered your research question. This essay should be in two parts:
Tell how you narrowed your subject or changed it from the subject stated in the Assignment 7 bulletin board writing. Discuss any problems you had in writing this first paper -- and/or the successes you had i researching and writing this paper.
Log on and paste this essay to the BB5-1st Research Results board.
Post it with Topic: "Your name's" "Name of Topic" research. Feel free to reply to any research findings that you wish (Class Forum points). Minimum words for a "C" grade: 300 Points: 15
Checklist:
Research Results bulletin board writing completed and posted.
Total Points for Assignment #9: 15
If you would like, for an optional possible 10 points in this unit, you may do a peer review of another student's paper.
- Find another student with whom you would like to do a peer review. The best way to do this is to read the Research questions (Category 3) and choose one that interests you.
- Contact the student by e-mail (see class roster in MyMCC). Send and receive your rough drafts by e-mail.
- Read the PEER REVIEWING lecture.
- When you receive the rough draft through e-mail, pull the rough draft up on your word processor, and write comments directly on the student's rough draft.
- Return the rough draft with your name as reviewer at the top.
- Send a second copy to me by e-mail.
When I receive the second copy, I will give extra credit points to the reviewer.
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