Assignment Paper

Overview:
This ten (10) page draft is meant to allow students the opportunity to submit as much of their
senior thesis for instructor feedback before being required to submit the final thesis. This draft
must be a minimum of ten (10) fully-typed pages. This ten (10) page minimum does not include
the works cited page.
Students are welcome to submit more than the ten (10) page minimum if they wish. The more of
the paper you submit, the more feedback you will receive. Also, I know that this is a draft, but
please do take this serious, and by this, I mean; please make sure you are writing in a formal,
academic voice, your thoughts are clear, the assignment is proof-read for grammar and spelling,
and that you properly cite all sources throughout the entire draft, using both in-text citations and
including a Works Cited page at the end.
The ten (10) page draft can either be the first ten pages of your entire paper, or it can be the
entire paper condensed into ten pages. This is up to you. Whichever way you choose to write
your draft, you must include an Introduction paragraph with the thesis statement clearly stated.
**Special Note on Citing and Quotations:
• Citing: we worked extensively on properly citing sources using MLA 8th edition in
CDST 4110, and also on the Annotated Bibliography Assignment in this course. Please
take this seriously as you prepare this draft assignment. It is important that you are using
my feedback from previous assignments regarding proper citation techniques and style
arrangement. Also, please note that this assignment and the final paper assignment both
require the use of in-text citations and a Works Cited page. Here is some information
from the MLA Handbook, 8th edition that you will find useful:
o In-Text Citations: in-text citations are how you cite a source within the actual
paper, for instance (McGee 45). These follow a very specific formula and must be
used when you are directly quoting, paraphrasing a source, or simply using
information in general from a specific text. For more on In-Text Citations, see the
MLA Handbook, 8th edition, pp. 54-58. If you have the electronic version of the
text, this section is located in Part 1: “Principles of MLA Style,” under the
“Creating Your Documentation” section of the book.
§ **Please note that in MLA, you must also include the page number from
the source in the in-text citation. If the source does not have page
numbers, then there will be no page number, but when the source includes
pages, you must also include the page number in the in-text citation.
§ Students should strive to include at least 2-3 in-text source citations per
paragraph (more if necessary), with the Introduction and Conclusion
paragraphs being an exception.
o Works Cited: A Works Cited page comes at the end of your paper and includes
all of the sources you have cited within the paper. For more on citations, see the
MLA Handbook, 8th edition, pp. 20-53. If you have the electronic version of the
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text, this section is located in Part 1: “Principles of MLA Style,” under the
“Creating Your Documentation” section of the book.
• Quoting: you will be making extensive use of quotations from other sources it is
important that you are properly making use of these quotations, as well as properly citing
these quotes. **Please note that when you use someone else’s words verbatim, you must
place these words in quotation marks in order to denote that the words do not belong to
you, but to someone else. Here are the sections from the course text that you will find
useful.
o MLA Handbook, 8th edition, see pp. 75-91. If you have the electronic version the
section of the book related to quoting is located in Part 2: “Details of MLA Style,”
section 1: The Mechanics of Scholarly Prose, section 1.3 Quotations.
Assignment Requirements:
Following are the requirements for the ten (10) page draft.
• This assignment will be critiqued, so make sure that you do your best work, even though
it is a draft. The more work you do now, the less work you will have to do later.
• The assignment must be a minimum of ten (10) full typed pages. The Works Cited page
does not count towards the ten (10) page minimum count. The ten (10) pages is the actual
written portion of your paper.
• Create this assignment and upload this assignment using Microsoft Word, rather save and
upload as a Word Document. All ETSU students have access to the Microsoft Word for
free. See the News page for this course for the link to the software.
• Do not include a title page and an abstract at this stage of the paper.
• Your paper at this stage must include a concrete title.
• Students must begin this draft with an introduction paragraph where the thesis statement
is clearly written.
• 1-inch margins on top, bottom, and sides of the paper.
• Font: 12 point, Times New Roman or Calibri.
• Double space throughout the entire document.
• Proof-read for grammatical and spelling errors.
• Insert page numbers. This paper should not have a running header, just your last name
and page numbers.
• Include the “Works Cited” page at the end of the document, formatted in the proper MLA
8th edition style.
o For a ten (10) page assignment, strive to include a minimum of five different
scholarly sources.
• This assignment must include properly formatted in-text citations throughout the entire
paper.
o As stated in the course syllabus, and here in the instructions, you will fail this
assignment if you are not using secondary sources and citing them properly at this
stage in the writing process.
o In-Text Cite direct quotes, paraphrasing, and general summaries.
o See pp. 54-58 in the MLA Handbook, 8th edition for more information on in-text
citations. There is also additional information above in this document.
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• If students wish to submit more than ten (10) pages of their paper that is fine.
• Submit the assignment to the appropriate drop box by the due date.
Other Assessment Items:
• Take this ten (10) page draft seriously. I will count off points for grammar, spelling and
improper use of sources and source citations.
• At this stage in your paper, you should be writing more clearly and have a wellorganized and more thoughtfully structured paper.
• If you are not a strong writer, I recommend that you make an appointment with the
Writing Center on the ETSU campus. If you live too far to come to campus, they offer
online writing assistance. The flyer for the writing center is in the “Introduction to CDST
4210” module on D2L.
• The ten (10) page draft will be automatically ran through Turn-It-In for originality. This
is a plagiarism detection program. A paper of this length should be no more than 25%
unoriginal. This should usually be direct quotes and source citations. If you paper is more
than 25%, then I will evaluate your paper for plagiarism.
• If you are recycling a paper, which is not allowed in this course, it will show up on the
Turn-It-In report. You will not receive credit for this assignment, even if it is your own
paper. Remember, students are not allowed to recycle research papers from a previous
course.
• Make sure that you save your work on a flash drive and not your computer desktop.
Computers often crash, and that is not a viable excuse for missing this assignment.
• Read the draft to yourself out loud. Often this will help students catch any confusing
sentences or grammatical errors.