English 305w: Writing in Disciplinary Communities

Department of English

Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, Arizona 86004

Final Paper

Objective: Here's where you'll write a "traditional" research paper. This means you'll select a topic in your field, hopefully of personal interest, and you'll do some research.

 

Specifications:

*15-20 page paper (it's not that long once you include images, work cited, appendices if requried)
*Title Page
*10-15 sources (not just www sites)
*APA or your discipline's citation style

 

Things to Consider:

This paper ought to be an example of what you've learned in the course. Many papers lose points because the student doesn't take the time to edit. Go to the Writing Workshop (make an appointment) and ask a writing coach to read over your work. You'd be surprised what you missed. Remember Cook's suggestions!

Make sure you choose relevant images. Images (in this class: photos, tables, charts, drawings) ought to provide example of your discussion. Don't just choose any image willy nilly. The image may be eye-catching, may be very cool, might even be incredible statistics, but if you're not specifically addressing the image, don't use it. The image becomes distracting.

Remember the articles you read, the text you found for the artcle paper. What did you like about it? What became annoying? Try what seems to work. Get an outside reader to make sure, and you'll probably do just fine.

If you have not written more than 12 pages, think of this paper as 2 large papers, or 3 medium papers. Here's your chance to research and think through an interesting topic or issue. What did you find out? What do you think others should know? What's important to remember?

Good luck...

 

Specific Objective: You should have your topic figured out based on the work you did for the proposal. Make sure your introduction states your purpose, your goals, and if applicable, your outcomes. If you're writing a scientific paper, please adhere to your disciplines' details. ALL papers need to have the following elements in Blue. The smaller pink elements are optional.

Title Page—Always make sure your title is specific to the purpose. Use keywords that will help other researchers find your paper. There should be no doubt what the paper's content is according to yoru title. Here's where you put your name, names of other group members, name of your affiliation (English 305w).

Abstract—An abstract is most common with scientific and technical papers, but in this class, all papers will have an abstract. The purpose of an abstract is much like a summary, except you purposefully keep it condensed. Abstracts are generally 100 to 200 words. Readers should have a good idea what your paper is about.

Use headings, outline heads, and table of contents as a guide when you write your abstract. Write an introduction (purpose), middle (results and conclusions), and conclusion (recommendations). Notice how this pattern keeps coming up. You know how to do this.

Executive Summary —An executive summary is very similar to an abstract except it's purpose is to provide essential points of the paper. The audience is usually the hurried reader (an executive) who either doesn't have time, or doesn't need to read the entire report. BUT, they need to know the details of your primary points. Executive summaries are often 10 percent of the entire report. So the page number varies.

Summarize the entire report—subject, purpose, scope, methods, conclusions, and recommendations. Always use the lowest common technical language possible because you won't have time for any discussion.

Table of Contents—List your subheadings from your paper along with their page numbers. List the Abstract first, the executive summary, any illustrations (images), then the body of the paper, appendices, then any bibliographic citations.

Introduction—I know you know what goes here. The subject, purpose, talk through the organization of your paper (forecast), and tell your reader the scope and limitations of your report. "While the need for X requires Y, this report focuses only on W because of funding and deadlines." If you need to provide background on your topic, here's where you do it. Introductions take about a page, BUT if you're providing background, then about 2 to 3 pages.

MethodsMethods are often used for scientific and technical papers. You do NOT need to provide methods unless you're writing a scientific or technical paper. If your report is on a lab experiment, then YES provide methods. The purpose here is to show your readers how you went about and did what you did. What test procedures, what sorts of calculations, how did you do it? That let's the senior chemist know right away what sort of techniques were used.

Results or Discussion or the Body —Seems familiar? It should. This part is basically your main points you want to discuss. Start thinking of the terms "results" or "discussion" rather than "body of the paper" although there all pretty much serving the same purpose.

Conclusion Never put new data, a new discussion in the conclusion. The conclusion is based on the discussion provided. Remember that many people jump right to the conclusion FIRST. So, the conclusion needs to stand on its own. It's okay to repeat, in general, what you already said for this class. You will need to work on conclusions in your given area. I suggest you start noticing report-conclusions. They often differ, but their purpose is recap the entire the report's purpose, findings, discussions.

RecommendationsRecommendations are only in reports that request or require some action. Most informational or analytical reports don't need recommendations. Use appropriately for this course paper.

Additional SectionsIf you're providing an appendices (handouts, samples of data, larger images, stuff that doesn't really fit in the discussion because it's too distracting, then make sure you have a single page entitled "Appendix" followed by the items you want to include. Also make sure to put "Appendix" with the page number on the Table of Contents.

Work Cited is the last item you should have in your paper. Everyone ought to use APA style, or use the appropriate one for your area. See for the Cline library page for citation references.

This should give you an idea of a general "standard" research paper expected from your upper division courses.

Good Luck!