For your final research paper you will create an annotated bibliography You will find 2 scholarly journal articles about your topic as well as one book (yes an actual book that you can hold in your hand) – not an online book. This will require a trip to the library!!! For your 4th source you are to find a website, but it must again be a scholarly website – no Wikipedia or anything like that. It will need to have .edu at the end of the url – and be assured that I will be checking your web addresses. You will then select a 5th source for this paper – this can be a source of your choice – but it must be scholarly. We will discuss scholarly sources in class – what is acceptable and what is not for your essays.
YOU WILL HAVE A MINIMUM OF 5 SOURCES FOR YOUR ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY – you certainly may use more sources, but this is the minimum.
For this assignment you will follow the typical MLA format and then center the words Annotated Bibliography on your paper and begin with your annotations.
You will first create an MLA citation and then you will summarize your sources – each citation on this document will be a minimum of 8 sentences per citation. You will provide information that you may use in your paper and how you plan on incorporating it into your paper. You may come across a source that you feel will not work in your research, which is OK, it happens. However, you will have to explain why it won’t work which is extra work that you don’t need at this point of time in the semester. My recommendation would be to discard that source and look for another source because the purpose for an annotated bibliography is to find information that you need and want to use in your paper, not what you don’t want to use. There will be 5 sources required for both the annotated bibliography and the final essay – so why waste your time on a source that will not work. If you spend an appropriate amount of time on this research, the drafting of this paper will be easy.
The final attachment on this page that has community college in the file name, is the format that you will be using – but I wanted to provide you with some other examples and explanations. These are the same attachments that I placed under the annotate bibliography assignment.
Four paper, you will be creating a cause and effect paper but your paper must have a thesis that can be argued – thus making this an argumentative paper. I feel the easiest way for this paper to be successful for you is to select a historical event and research it to determine what the causes and the effects were of this event. You can go back as far as ancient times to current day. However, I must approve your topic before you begin any work on this assignment, so I suggest that you begin thinking about this assignment. Since the annotated bibliography is due on November 20 – the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I would like to have your event selected ASAP. I will bring a list to class on Tuesday for you to begin signing up for your historical event – however, if you need a bit more time to select a topic you may have until Thursday November 10, but you must email me your topic before the end of the day or there will be a 10 point deduction from your paper.
This paper will be 5-7 pages in length and will follow ALL MLA guidelines – this formatting will be graded more harshly as you have been working on this all semester long and you should be pros at this by now. The 5-7 page limit does not include your Works Cited pages, that is in addition to your research paper. Make sure that if you cite a source in your paper it is on your Works Cited page and also, if you don’t cite a source in your paper, it cannot be on your Works Cited page. You must use at least 5 sources in your paper, however you may use more,, if needed.
A recommendation on how to set up this paper would be an introduction explaining your historical event, then individual paragraphs that provide evidence to show “because of this” “this occurred.” Then you want to end with a strong conclusion that will tie back into your thesis statement that will be in your first paragraph. Remember your thesis is the main point of your paper and you are trying to prove a point – so it is your job to prove it. Depending on your topic, you may want to look into conspiracy theories as well – they may provide an interesting twist for your paper. – This is not required – only a suggestion.
