This will help you find books at the Long Beach City College Libraries.
This book is available at both LBCC libraries in the reference areas and in the main stacks. You can also purchase one at the LBCC College Bookstore.
Research any current problem that's happening right now (anywhere in the world, including right here in Long Beach) that you are interested in learning more about and (optional) try to come up with a solution to that problem. Be creative! Imagine a change you would like to see in the world and consider how society can go about making that change. Please choose a topic that you're interested in learning more about. Like essay 2, essay 3 will need to be an argument, which requires some sort of problem, although I'm open to how you define what a "problem" is. (For example, I had a student who wanted to look into possible negative side effects of weight gaining supplements.)
Guidelines for a complete essay:
***3 attempts allowed for essay 3. If your essay scores an "incomplete," it may be revised twice for a chance to earn "complete".
Optional: Once your essay earns a "complete," (for example, a "low complete") it can only be revised once more, if you choose to do so, for a chance at a higher score.
How to Write a Research Paper—Step by Step
Step 1: Research Question: Come up with a question that you will pose as you begin conducting research in order to learn more about the issue you have chosen to research. Your research question should focus on cause and effect (how and why this problem occurs) since we can't fix a problem if we don't know what's causing it.
Post your research question that you would like to conduct research on for essay 3 in the Discussion: Research Question for Essay 3. See the discussion forum for more instructions and examples and criteria for research questions.
Step 2: Research: Conduct research using the internet (.govs and .edus) and scholarly sources from the library databasesLinks to an external site., and locate relevant, reliable sources that will help you attempt to answer your research question (how and why the problem your are researching is happening).
For a "complete" on essay 3, you must locate and include at least 4 relevant, reliable sources in your essay, (for a high complete, you must include at least 6 relevant, reliable sources, including at least 3 scholarly sources of hard, factual evidence such as statistics. (This means you have to find more than this initially and then narrow your sources down to the most relevant and reliable sources you find). Create MLA citations for your 4 sources and post them here.
Step 3: Prewriting/Drafting: Using at least 4 relevant, reliable sources of factual evidence such as statistics (more for high complete), compose a 6-8 page typed, MLA formatted essay that attempts to answer your research question regarding what is causing a problem in the world today and possibly how to solve it.
MAKE SURE TO CITE YOUR SOURCES AND PUT DIRECT QUOTATIONS FROM OTHER WRITERS IN QUOTATION MARKS.
You can use anything you have written in your previous essays in this class in this essay. You do not need to quote/cite yourself for this assignment.
Organization: I recommend you organize your argument by beginning with a problem in your introduction and then offering your solution (which will depend on which side you take and how you answer the questions posed in this essay prompt).
Step 4: Peer Review, Conference, Revise, revise, revise: Bring your essay to peer review and conference with me on the specified dates and revise your essay to achieve the criteria on the grading rubric below.
As you write and revise your essay, as always, remember to consider your purpose and audience:
Purpose: My purposes for having you write this essay are to help you build on the skills we have worked on so far (clear thesis, source-based evidence, connecting ideas, etc.) by locating and evaluating relevant, reliable sources and synthesizing them into a cohesive, connected research paper that supports a strong, clear thesis. So essentially, it's like essay 2, but you have to find and cite your own sources of information (cite both in-text as you did in essay 2 and also in a Works Cited page at the end of your essay).
Your central purpose is to investigate the causes and/or effects of some problem in the world and convince your readers, a general audience, that your ideas regarding the causes and/or effects of a problem are accurate and that your solution, if you decide to present one, which you need to do if you intend to earn a score of "high complete" on this essay in order to earn an A for the class, as mentioned in the grading contract, will solve the problem.
However, I want you to think about your own purposes for writing. As you gather your research and plan your essay, before you begin writing, consider why would someone write an essay like this, other than to satisfy the requirements for an assignment?
As you write your introduction and the rest of your essay, consider your purpose, what you are trying to accomplish in the essay. So for example, if you find in your research that first person shooter games are not responsible for inspiring some young people to commit real life violence, for example, consider why someone would write a research paper arguing that. One reason someone might write an essay like that is because some people think that video games do inspire violence. Therefore, your purpose might be to prove people who think that way wrong. So you might begin your essay with this misconception that some people have that you are going to try to prove incorrect: "Recently so-and-so has argued this...." See the Intro+Conclusion+Powerpoint.ppt
for more help with writing introductions.
Audience: Your audience for this assignment is a general audience of people, some of whom might be sympathetic to your argument and some of whom may not be. Your purpose is to argue that some problem is being caused by one or more things and that some change should occur in society, not to convince your reader, or any one person, to do or not do anything in their own life. With this in mind, avoid the 2nd person pronoun "you," as in "you should not break laws," which assumes that your reader might break laws and can therefore sound insulting. Instead, compose your essay in the 3rd person point of view and say things like "one should not break laws that are intended to...." For this essay, unlike essay 2, you should also avoid the first person point of view, "I," "me," "my," since this can make you sound more biased than you are: "In WW2 Japan did X, and we did Y." Instead stick to the 3rd person point of view: "In WW2 Japan did X, and The United States did Y." Your evidence for this essay should be statistics and other facts from relevant, reliable sources, although it can contain anecdotal evidence (personal experience) if
First, log into the Viking Portal to ensure the links below work properly.
Learn more and peruse specific examples at the MLA Blog.
When citing a generative-AI chatbot, like ChatGPT, adhere to the criteria and format outlined by the MLA
Consider AI as Wikipedia v.2 - we should never copy/paste Wikipedia information straight into our paper and claim it as our own. Similarly, we can use generative AI to learn more about a topic, brainstorm, and refine our ideas, but we should never copy/paste AI content into our assignments and say they are our own words.
According to the Modern Language Association (MLA):we should cite a generative-AI chatbot when we...
ChatGPT in particular will invent (or hallucinate) plausible-looking sources. This is why you should always double-check and vet the secondary sources the chatbot cites.
Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. City of Publication, Publisher, Publication Date.
Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
Silva, Paul J. How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. E-book, American Psychological Association, 2007.
Hohle, Randolph. The American Housing Question: Racism, Urban Citizenship and the Privilege of Mobility. Lexington Books, 2021. Proquest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/lbcc/reader.action?docID=6786939.
Author. Title. Title of container (self contained if book), Other contributors (translators or editors), Version (edition), Number (vol. and/or no.), Publisher, Publisher Date, Location (pp.). 2nd container’s title, Other contributors, Version, Number, Publisher, Pub date, Location (pp.).
Dolby, Nadine. “Research in Youth Culture and Policy: Current Conditions and Future Directions.” Social Work and Society: The International Online-Only Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, 2008, www.socwork.net/sws/article/view/60/362. Accessed 20 May 2009.
Hallion, Madeleine, et al. "Exploring the Association Between Physical Activity Participation and Self-Compassion in Middle-Aged Adults." Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology, vol. 8, no. 3, 2019, pp 305-16. APA PsychNet, https://doi.org/10.1037/spy0000150.
Brubaker, Bill. "New Health Center Targets County's Uninsured Patients." Washington Post, 24 May 2007, p. LZ01.
Lundman, Susan. “How to Make Vegetarian Chili.” eHow, www.ehow.com/how_10727_make-vegetarian-chili.html. Accessed 6 July 2015.
McGonigal, Jane. “Gaming and Productivity.” YouTube, uploaded by Big Think, 3 July 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkdzy9bWW3E.
Speed Racer. Directed by Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski, performances by Emile Hirsch, Nicholas Elia, Susan Sarandon, Ariel Winter, and John Goodman, Warner Brothers, 2008.
"The One Where Chandler Can't Cry." Friends: The Complete Sixth Season, written by Andrew Reich and Ted Cohen, directed by Kevin Bright, Warner Brothers, 2004.
Music can be cited multiple ways. Reference the MLA OWL Guide for various detailed citations.
Stein, Bob. “Reading and Writing in the Digital Era.” Discovering Digital Dimensions, Computers and Writing Conference, 23 May 2003, Union Club Hotel, West Lafayette, IN. Keynote Address.
Smith, Jane. Personal interview. 19 May 2014.
Gaitskill, Mary. Interview with Charles Bock. Mississippi Review, vol. 27, no. 3, 1999, pp. 129-50.
Online access to the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook, released in print in spring 2021. The online platform offers the same numbering of sections as the print for easy navigation between MLA Handbook Plus and the print and e-book editions. Also included is an introductory online course on MLA style.
