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The Research
Paper: William Shakespeare's Hamlet This page presents important information about the Research Paper assignment, so make sure to read this page carefully. (Some of the material below is based on information from the web handout Researching and Writing the Research Paper.) This assignment page is divided into several sections, outlined below:
1. The Research Paper Assignment The subject of your research paper will be William Shakespeare's Hamlet, but you must decide on your thesis: you might write about a character or characters, a theme or themes, recurring images or symbols, or any other topic that you think will help readers understand the play. The choice is yours, but make sure to focus your topic enough so that you can go into depth with your interpretation but not so much that you run out of things to say. You can assume that your audience has already read Hamlet. The minimum required length for the research paper is 2200 words, including the "Works Cited" page. You will need to include an additional "Works Cited" page listing bibliographic information for your primary source (the play) and your secondary sources (critical works that comment on the play), following proper MLA conventions. You must use at least five secondary sources to help you support and develop your thesis, and your sources must be documented according to MLA standards. Note than the play itself is your primary source and does not count as a secondary source. You can use online sources or print sources, but please send me photocopies of the pages you cite in your paper if you use print sources not included in the Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet. For more information, see the Unit 4: The Research Paper page. Notes
2. Due Dates (Assignments must be submitted by 10:00 p.m. on the due dates)
3. The Process of Writing a Research Paper The idea of writing a research paper can be intimidating at first, but try to take things one step at a time. Seeing the assignment as a series of smaller tasks can make things easier for you. Below are suggestions for the different stages of writing the research paper. A. Deciding on a Topic Keep in mind the required length for your paper as you are deciding on a topic. The topic should be broader than a topic you might choose for a two- to three-page essay, but your topic should still be focused enough so you can go into depth with your ideas in about a six-page paper. We will discuss Hamlet in WebBoard, and I'm sure our discussion will give you good ideas that you might explore in more depth in your paper. In addition, you can find a link to some ideas for topics on the Unit 4 page. You might also consider doing preliminary research on the play to help you come up with a possible topic to explore. Your thesis should be your own, but reading a few good articles on the play might open your mind to new possibilities in terms of what you could say about Hamlet in your paper. We will use a familiar play as an example, Sophocles' Antigone. After reading and studying Antigone, you might conclude that the conflict between divine laws and human laws is a topic you could develop in a research paper. You might even have read a few articles on Antigone while trying to come up with a topic, and you may have noticed that other scholars discuss this aspect of the play, suggesting that the topic is worth exploring. B. Decide on Major Ideas to Develop The best way to do this is by making a list of possible ideas relevant to your topic. For our Antigone example, these would be ideas that are related in some way to the topic of divine and human laws. Brainstorming should help here. Think of the possible topic for your paper, and then write down anything that comes to mind that might be relevant in a paper on the topic you have chosen. You might reread the play or parts of the play to help you come up with a list of ideas relevant to your topic. Reading a few articles on the aspects of Antigone that you might write about should also help you come up with a preliminary list of ideas relevant to the topic of human and divine laws. Don't worry if some ideas you write down don't seem very good. At this point, you should write down everything that you can think of that might be relevant to your thesis. You can always throw out ideas later, and an idea that might not seem so great now could end up being an important part of your paper. After you have a list of possible ideas, you should then start looking for those ideas in your list that are related enough to make sense in one paper. You might find a few ideas that are relevant to human and divine laws but that do not seem closely related to the majority of other items on your list. You will probably need to delete some of the original items in the list and will probably have to add a few new ideas, but logic should now help you create a more focused list of major ideas that could be developed in your paper. You may find that you cannot come up with enough ideas or that you come up with too many ideas. If either of these situations arises, re-evaluate your topic. You might need a different topic, or you might need to focus or broaden your topic. You haven't even started writing your paper and most likely have not done much research, so there is nothing wrong with changing your topic. It's much better to change your topic early than to get halfway through writing your research paper before you realize that you cannot write a good paper on your topic. C. Creating a Tentative Thesis and Writing Plan
(Rough Outline) As the textbook suggests, you might also regard the tentative thesis statement as an answer to a question about the play. For example, if you were writing on the play Antigone, you might ask yourself, "What is the play supposed to tell us about the relationship between human laws and divine laws?" After reviewing your list of relevant ideas, and after thinking more about the play, you might conclude that Antigone, while suggesting that human laws are important, emphasizes that divine laws must be regarded as more important when human laws and divine laws conflict. Such a statement could serve as a tentative thesis statement for a paper on Antigone. Once you have a tentative thesis statement, you need to come up with a writing plan, which is another way of referring to a rough outline. Conversely, some people find it easier to develop a writing plan first and then to formulate a tentative thesis statement from this writing plan. For research papers, some instructors may require you to write a detailed and formal outline. You do not need such an outline for this assignment, but you do need at least a rough outline of the major ideas you will develop in your paper. You might not use outlines when you write short essays, but it’s essential to create a rough outline, or writing plan, early in the process of working on a research paper, especially before you begin taking notes. First, the subtopics in your plan will focus your research on the play. Second, the plan will give you, in a sense, a series of short but related papers to write, making the writing process easier. Third, you need the outline to help "pace" yourself as you develop several different but related ideas in your paper. It's one thing to write a two- or three-page essay with no outline, but it's much more difficult to write a longer paper with no outline. The writing plan will give you a good sense of where you are going. Your writing plan should of course be developed from your tentative thesis statement and your list of relevant ideas. At this point, you should start refining the ideas on your list. Your goal is to make a list of related items, with each item requiring about the same amount of space in your paper to develop and support. Each idea on your list does not necessarily have to serve as the basis of just one body paragraph once you write your paper, but each item should be roughly of the same level of importance. You should be thinking about major divisions of your paper, and you should come up with at least four or five. You might need to do a little "grouping," or joining together of some of the subtopics from your preliminary list that are closely related. You might find several good individual points, but they may be ideas that you cannot imagine discussing for more than a few sentences. Such ideas should be brought together into a larger group and given a new heading. You might find other ideas that seem much more general, the kinds of ideas that could take you three or four pages to develop. If this is the case, you should look for ways you can divide the broader subtopics into more specific ideas. Again, you should think of a list of subtopics that are roughly equal in importance (emphasis on "roughly"). Once you have refined your list of ideas, and once that list accurately conveys the main points conveyed in your tentative thesis statement, you are ready to put the items into a logical order in a writing plan. Below is a sample tentative thesis statement and writing plan for a short research paper on Sophocles' Antigone. Tentative Thesis Statement Writing Plan:
This plan is not perfect, and the writer most likely would revise and refine both the thesis statement and the plan while researching the topic and writing the paper, but the tentative thesis statement and writing plan at least give the writer a focus and a step-by-step strategy for developing and supporting the thesis. A writing plan alone should make it much easier for you to write your paper. With such a plan, you turn one long paper into a few much shorter papers, each with a related purpose: in this case, to help develop the thesis on Antigone concerning human and divine laws. If you can write a page on each of the major topics from the writing plan above, you would have a paper of about six pages. Note that the writing plan above might be even more effective if it presented a series of claims, as opposed to general statements. For example, the general statement "Antigone’s emphasis on divine laws" could become the claim "Antigone believes in violating a human law that conflicts with a divine law." A claim would be a better choice because is it often more specific than a general statement and also because the claim gives you something to prove. Still, even without the claims, you should be off to a good start if you come up with a writing plan and a tentative thesis statement that make sense. You could simplify the writing and research further by making a more detailed writing plan. In other words, you might list a few subtopics under 2 through 7 above. For example, under "Creon’s emphasis on human laws to maintain order," you might include the subtopic "Creon's good intentions." Of course, as you add subtopics, you would have to keep your tentative thesis in mind to ensure that you do not drift away from the purpose of your paper. Making such a writing plan will help with the research process. Just by glancing at the plan above, you should have a good idea of the kind of material you would look for as you do research on the play, which may not be the case if you were basing your research solely on a tentative thesis statement. The plan helps focus the research necessary to support the thesis. You will also need to use a system to organize the many notes you will take on the play as you are researching it, and the writing plan gives you a way to divide the notes into categories. As the information above suggests, you should try to "conceptualize" your paper before you begin writing it and before you begin doing much research. That is, try to visualize what your finished paper might look like. Imagine how the paper will begin, how one point will lead to another, and how each point will help support and develop your thesis. D. Taking Notes from the Primary Source While you can begin by taking notes from secondary sources, from articles and essays that comment on the meaning of Hamlet, probably the best place to start taking notes is from the play itself, referred to as the "primary source." You need to be assured that your tentative thesis and the subtopics can be supported and developed with evidence from the play itself, so starting your note taking with the play makes sense. Reread the play carefully with your writing plan in front of you, and when you find something in the play that you think you might be able to use in your paper, write down the information. This information will serve as evidence that you could eventually use when you write your paper. The information might be a quotation, a paraphrase, or a summary of something a character says or does. When you use a quotation, make sure to put quotation marks around the words you copy, even if you copy only a few words from the source, and make sure to copy the words exactly as they appear in the source. When you paraphrase, you convey the idea of a sentence or passage in a source, but you put the idea into your own words. You do basically the same thing when you summarize, but you take a large amount of material from a source and convey it in your own words much more briefly than it appears in the original. With both paraphrases and summaries, be careful not to change the meaning of the original as you use your own wording, and make sure that you really are using your own words. Do not copy a sentence from the play or another source, change around a few words or replace a few words with synonyms, and present the sentence as your own. This is a form of plagiarism. The wording and the sentence structure of your paraphrases and summaries must be your own. As you record your notes from the play, you need to write down a reminder of the context next to the note you record. Who is speaking the words? What is happening in the play at the time? You also need to record the page number where the words appear (if given) or the act and scene numbers if you are taking a note from the play, like this (1.2.74-76). In addition, you need to write down where that note might be useful in your paper, and you do this by giving the note a heading from your writing plan. If, for example, you find Creon saying something about the importance of human laws, you would write down his words, the act and scene numbers, a brief summary of the context, and the heading "Creon’s emphasis on human laws" from the writing plan. It might seem like a lot of work to write all of this information down for each note you take, but it's important that you do so: you will need this information when you write your paper. If you leave off the page number (or act and scene numbers) for a note, for instance, and you end up using the note in your paper, you will have to search through the source to find the correct information for your citation of the quotation. For a short research paper, you should expect to take at least 40 separate notes, from both the play and your secondary sources (a total of at least 40). If you leave the headings off of the notes, you will have a pile of 40 or more notes to search through to find supporting evidence as you write each part of your paper. If you use headings for all notes, though, you can divide the notes according to their headings when it is time for you to write your paper. When it's time to write about Antigone's devotion to divine laws, for example, you would just pick up the pile of notes on that aspect of the play. As you are taking notes, you should write down anything that you think you could use in your paper. You will not use all of the notes you recorded as you write your paper, but writing down a lot of notes will give you a large database that you can draw from. It's much easier to discard a note that ends up not being useful than having to go back through the play searching for something you remember a character saying or having to hunt down a comment that you remember reading in one of the secondary sources. In general, your notes should also be short, with the goal of putting your supporting evidence into a manageable form. It you find yourself writing down a long note, you might see if you can divide the information into two separate notes. Because your primary source of evidence to support and develop your thesis should be the play itself, at least half of your notes should come from Hamlet. Optional Note Cards I suppose any note taking system that allows you to organize all of your notes effectively would be fine. However, using note cards is a system that has been around for a long time, a system that works, and a system that you should consider trying. (Often, the students who complain that they used note cards in the past and that they did not help much usually are the same students who do not use the note cards properly, with no headings, for instance.) For examples of note cards, the kinds of notes you might take, the information you should record with each note, and suggestions for effective note taking, see Using Note Cards. The page includes information about taking notes both from the primary source and from secondary sources. E. Take Notes from the Secondary Sources Because this is a research paper, you will of course have to take plenty of notes not only from the play but also from secondary sources. A secondary source is an essay, chapter, book, or other source that comments on or interprets the primary source. A different edition of the play is not a secondary source (although an introduction, preface, or afterwards published with the play could be a good secondary source). An encyclopedia or dictionary or other resource that offers only general information about the play would not be a good secondary source for your paper. The "Doing Research" section below provides information about researching secondary sources on Hamlet. Again, though, in terms of taking notes, the same principles apply whether you are taking notes from the play or from secondary sources. If you do library research for your paper, you should locate those books or journals that discuss the play. When you find an essay or book on the play, scan through it to see if the author discusses an aspect of the play that ties in with your thesis in some way. If the book includes an index (in the back), it should list where in the book your topic is discussed, so you should use the index to be guided to specific passages. Do not waste time reading all you can about the play. When you do research, you try to locate information you can use in your paper; you do not try to learn all there is to learn about the play and its author, unless, of course, you plan to write a very long paper. You should instead look for information relevant to your specific approach to Hamlet. If you do online research, you should take the same approach. Locate what you feel is a credible source on the play, and then scan the source to see if the author discusses aspects of the play relevant to your thesis. (Again, see "Doing Research" below for more information.) As you read through the source, have your writing plan in front of you, and look for any information in your source that you think you might be able to use in your paper. You are looking for insightful comments from other authors that you can "borrow" and use to support and develop your thesis. Once you have found some information in a source that you think you might be able to use, you should record the information as a note, much the same way you did when you took notes from the play. Again, the information you record will be in the form of a quotation, a paraphrase, or a summary of material from the source. It's important that you put quotation marks around words you copy, and, once you enclose words in quotation marks, it's important that those words are copied exactly as they appear in the source. (And I check all quotations for accuracy!) Likewise, make sure that paraphrases and summaries really are in your own words and that they accurately present the meaning conveyed in the source. For notes from secondary sources, you should use the headings from your writing plan, the same headings you use for notes from the play, to help you identify where the notes might be used in your paper. With the note, you also need to include the last name of the author of your source and the page number (if given) where the note originates. If you use a note in your paper, but you forgot to write down the page number for that note, you will need to relocate that source and look for the passage, and that's a lot of work that would have been unnecessary had the page number been included with the note. Some online sources do not include the author's name. If no author's name is given, write down the title of the article or web page instead. For online sources, you need to write the page number only if the page number appears on the web page itself and not just on printouts of the pages. Sometimes, the paragraphs of an online source will be numbered. If this is the case, you should write down the paragraph number (para 3). If you can see a page or paragraph number on the computer screen, you should write it down; otherwise, you do not need to write down the page number of online sources. Except for the author's last name or title of the work (if no author is given), you do not need to record any additional bibliographic (or publication) information with the note; it's easier to record this information separately since you may have several notes from the same source. The bibliographic information for each secondary sources you use in your paper will have to appear on the "Works Cited" page, so you need to record this information after you take a note from a source. As with your note taking, any system that works for you should be fine, but the use of bibliography cards is one common way to record and organize this information. Bibliography cards are not a requirement for this assignment, but they can help you organize the bibliographic information for your notes. For more information concerning the bibliographic information you will need to record for your sources, see
F. Writing the Paper After you have done all (or at least most) of your research, you are finally ready to begin writing your paper. Take it one step at a time. Look at your writing plan and decide which subtopic you would like to write on first. Then take out all of your notes with the heading of that subtopic (both from your primary and secondary sources). If you have done a thorough and careful job of taking notes, all the support you will need for that subtopic will be in your notes. You might not have to consult any more secondary sources, and you might not even have to look at the play. Of course, if you find that you need more support, you will have to continue researching your topic as you write your paper. Keep in mind that a research paper is much like the essays you have already written, especially Essay 3. The main difference is that you are now drawing support from a variety of different sources, and, of course, the research paper is longer. However, if you think in terms of the major divisions of your paper, the major ideas as stated in the form of subtopics in your writing plan, you can approach the writing of your research paper as a series of shorter writing tasks. Of course, remember that all of your paper should help you develop your thesis, but you can approach the development of your thesis by tackling one major idea at a time, weaving the different parts of your paper together after you start finishing drafts of the different sections. Also, remember that your paper, even though it will incorporate material from several different sources, should convey your own interpretation. Be careful not to lose your own writing voice among the material from secondary sources. In general, no more than 20% of a research paper on a work of literature should be comprised of material from secondary sources. The rest of your paper should be comprised of your own ideas and words and supporting evidence from the primary source: your own interpretation supported and developed with evidence from the play itself. G. Using, Citing, and Documenting Sources The Unit 4: The Research Paper page offers additional links to web pages about using secondary sources effectively and correctly. However, the web handouts linked below provide the basic information you need to use sources effectively in your research paper. Make sure you are familiar with the information on the following pages:
Plagiarism You should of course work hard to avoid plagiarism as you bring material from secondary sources into your paper. A paper with any plagiarism, even if the plagiarism is unintentional, means a failing grade for the paper. Refer to the sources listed below for more information about paraphrasing from sources and avoiding plagiarism:
(See "Doing Research" below for more information about using secondary sources.) H. Revising the Paper 4. Doing Research Using Resources in the
Norton Critical Edition I generally do not like to see a research paper with sources limited to only those in the Norton Critical Edition, but this is fine with me this semester. If you find enough relevant secondary sources in the Critical Edition to write a good paper on your topic, then you can use only secondary sources from the Norton Critical Edition. I feel a little guilty about giving you this option because library research is one thing you are supposed to learn and practice in ENG 1002. At the same time, though, the Critical Edition provides excellent secondary sources, and I understand that regular trips to a library are not feasible for some members of the class. Some or all of the secondary sources you use for your paper can come from the Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet, but do at least some research elsewhere so that you do not overlook valuable and accessible resources that may strengthen your paper. If you have not yet purchased the Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet, you should purchase the book as soon as possible. Again, it is available at the college bookstore. Online Research The most common way to find information on the Web is by using a general search engine. However, even the best search engine can locate only a relatively small percentage of the total number of sources on a particular topic that are available on the Web. When searching the Web for credible sources on Hamlet, you should use a variety of search engines or a meta-search engine, which is a search tool that searches several different search engines at the same time. For more information about search engines and meta-search engines, see Search the Web. Also, remember how important it is to evaluate the credibility of the web sites that you locate. Just about anyone can post a web page, and just about anyone can post a web page with information on the play you are writing about. Just because a web page exists does not mean that the page presents insightful or valid information on your topic. As the researcher, you have to ensure that you use only credible and scholarly sources, so evaluate the credibility of your sources carefully. For more information, see Assessing the Credibility of Web Sites. Once you locate an online source that looks good, you can quickly search through the page for specific information by taking advantage of a feature of web browsers. Under the "Edit" menu of the web browser, you should see a "Find in Page" command. Just choose this command, and you will see a box in which you can type a word or words that the browser will search for in the particular page on your screen. ProQuest,
FirstSearch, and
Jacobs Library A recent search for the words "Shakespeare Hamlet" (no quotation marks) in ProQuest yielded 91 full-text articles, and a search with the same words in the WilsonSelectPlus database of FirstSearch yielded 58 full-text articles. Of course, many of these articles will be irrelevant to your specific topic, but some of the articles should provide good research material. Look carefully at the titles of the journals in which the articles appear: journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, Comparative Literature, and The Explicator are likely to offer insightful critical essays on the play. Of course, look carefully at the titles of the articles to get a sense of how relevant the articles might be. You can find the login IDs and passwords for ProQuest and FirstSearch in WebBoard. For instructions on how to get started with the two databases, see Using ProQuest and FirstSearch.
Note: An Abode Acrobat Reader is needed to view some documents in ProQuest and FirstSearch. If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, click on the link above to find out how to download and install the reader for free.
Library Research The card catalogs are quickly disappearing from libraries, replaced with electronic databases of bibliographic information. In fact, some of the resources referred to above, including ProQuest and FirstSearch, will supply you with the information you need to locate some print sources in a library. When you head for the library, then, you should try to have with you the titles of books and articles that might be good sources, along with the names of the authors. For articles, you will also need the title of the journal, magazine, or newspaper in which the articles appears, the volume and issue number (if given), the month (if given) and year of publication, and the page numbers. With this information in hand, you should have no problems finding the resources if they are part of the library's holdings. We do not have any large libraries in the area, so there is a good chance that whatever library you visit will not have some, most, or even any of the books and articles for which you have located bibliographic information. Make sure to ask the librarians for help. IVCC's library is part of an organization comprised of many college libraries in Illinois that allow interlibrary loans, which means that you can order a library book from a different college library in Illinois. Even if an article or book is not part of the holdings of IVCC's Jacobs Library, then, you most likely can still get access to the article or book. It usually takes a while, at least a week or two, for material from other libraries to arrive at IVCC, so, if you order any articles or books through interlibrary loan, make sure to do so as early as possible. On reserve at IVCC's Jacobs Library, you will find approximately ten books that include critical commentary on Shakespeare's Hamlet. The books are on overnight reserve, meaning that they may be checked out but must be returned to the library the next day. This may be somewhat inconvenient, but it's the best way to ensure that everyone in the class (and in other classes) has access to those resources. One option is to check out some of the books, locate passages that might help you develop and support your thesis, and then photocopy those passages. (And if you check out a book on a Friday, it will not be due until Monday.) For more information about IVCC's library, see the Jacobs Library home page. The General Research page is especially important, offering a lot of information about locating resources at Jacobs Library. The Literature page also offers some valuable information and links to online resources on literature. Be aware that you may have to spend considerable time locating and evaluating sources for your research paper. That's just the nature of this type of assignment. One of the first major steps of working on a research paper is locating and evaluating resources and taking notes from your primary source and your secondary sources. 5. Links to Additional Information The textbook offers a lot of good information that should help you with your research paper, along with sample research papers on David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly (799-808) and on Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (809-813). You should review carefully the information about writing research papers in chapter 17. In addition, I have posted a Sample "A" Research Paper recently written by a student in an ENG 1002 class. The following links may also be helpful. The pages linked below do not offer examples of research papers on literary works, but most of the principles explained on the pages would apply to the type of paper that you will write.
6. Evaluation Criteria and Some Additional Suggestions for The Research Paper Below is a list of evaluation criteria for the research paper. The criteria should look familiar. Good writing is good writing, and an effective research paper on a work of literature shares the basic characteristics of an effective shorter analysis of a literary work. When I evaluate the research papers, I will be paying special attention to the aspects of the papers explained below. You should think about the criteria as you are writing your paper, and you should check the criteria after you have written a draft to see how well your paper meets each of the evaluation criteria. ThesisYour research paper must include a clearly stated and well-focused thesis, or main idea. Remember, your thesis should be stated in your introduction as only one complete sentence that
Even though your research paper will be longer than the other papers you have written in the course, the research paper still should include a one-sentence statement of the paper's thesis. Typically, thesis statements do not increase in length as the length of a paper increases. Even long books can have a one-sentence thesis statement. Of course, the language of the thesis statement for a long work might have to be a little more general than it would be for a shorter paper, but you should still try to state your thesis as specifically and as accurately as possible in just one sentence. Organization As with all persuasive and interpretive papers, your research paper should present well-developed body paragraphs that are focused on proving one main claim each. Again, the most effective way to organize such a paper is by beginning each body paragraph with a claim, an interpretation of some aspect of the play that you think you can prove with specific evidence. Of course, all of the different claims you present in your body paragraphs should be logically related and should help you develop and support your thesis. Make sure you have a distinct introduction and conclusion in your paper, with a clear thesis statement in the introduction and a clear restatement of that thesis in the conclusion. Support and Development of IdeasEach aspect of your thesis should be well supported and well developed. For this paper, you will be drawing support not only from the play but from several other sources as well. One thing you will need to decide is what kind of "balance" you want to establish in your paper between support from the play and support from your secondary sources. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, the main source of support for your interpretation should be the play itself, not what other people have said about it. Because essays vary so greatly, it's difficult for me to be specific with advice, but you might try to include at least two or three pieces of support from the play for every piece of support you use from a secondary source. Second, realize that something is not true just because someone says it is. Interpretations of the play from other writers should be regarded as just that--interpretations. And I have read plenty of published interpretations, and many more interpretations posted to the web, that I don't think are very insightful or even valid. Most often, you should use material from secondary sources to help you further develop an interpretation that you are able to support convincingly with material from the primary source alone. Support from the play is in the form of facts; support from secondary sources most often is in the form of interpretations. Third, as I have said, make sure to assess the credibility of your secondary sources carefully. In general, secondary sources in print form are credible, but, when you are doing online research, you usually have to dig through plenty of bad sources to find a few good ones. For the research paper, you will be not only a writer but also a researcher, and the kinds of secondary sources you use can either strengthen or weaken your essay. Insight into SubjectAs you know, the insightfulness of a paper often is directly related to the organization and development of the ideas in the paper. If you have well-developed body paragraphs focused on one specific point each, then it is likely that you are going into depth with the ideas you present. The research paper should also reflect your familiarity with what other people have said about the aspect or aspects of the play that you are analyzing, not just about the play as a whole. You should avoid putting material from secondary sources into your essay if that material is not clearly relevant to your thesis. Instead, material from sources should relate clearly and directly to the specific interpretation that you develop. On a related note, you cannot become an expert on Hamlet in just a few weeks. However, you can develop some expertise on a specific aspect of Hamlet during that time. As you do research, focus on finding information relevant to your specific approach to the play. Use of Secondary SourcesThere are several important thing you should consider about your use of sources in the research paper, including the following:
You should ask yourself all of these questions before submitting the final draft of the paper. It's also important to realize that your ability to do effective research on your topic will play a role in the evaluation of your research paper. Again, your paper should demonstrate your familiarity with what others have said about the specific aspects of the play that you are analyzing, and the information from secondary sources that you bring into your paper must be clearly relevant to the specific points about the play that you are examining and explaining. In short, the evaluation criteria within this category include what kinds of material from secondary sources you have found and use, how well you present material from sources in the paper, how correctly you cite the sources, and how correctly you document them on the "Works Cited" page. Clarity Problems in the research paper could arise if the meaning, relevance, and significance of words quoted from secondary sources is not completely clear. Make sure that the words and ideas you use from secondary sources flow naturally with your own train of thought throughout the paper, and offer explanations of the meaning of material from secondary sources if that meaning might be unclear to readers. StyleWriters almost always use a formal voice for research papers, and you should adopt a formal writing voice for your paper. This means that you should avoid use of the first person ("I," "me," "we," etc.), the use of contractions ("can't," "won't," etc.), and the use of slang or other information language. Also, be careful not to lose your own voice in your paper. Avoid allowing your paper to become a collection of ideas and words from other writers. Instead, stay focused on developing your own interpretation, using material from sources only to help you further develop and support your ideas that are supported with material from the play itself. Another important aspect of style is how well the material from secondary sources flows with your own words and ideas. MechanicsPay special attention to the "correctness" of your research paper if you had problems with errors in your other essays. The Identifying and Correcting Errors web handout and "A Handbook for Correcting Errors" in the textbook (1101-1135) should help, but please ask if you have any questions. Again, the elimination of errors from your writing is important. In fact, according to IVCC's Grading Standards for Student Essays, "A," "B," and "C" essays contain "almost no errors." Significant or numerous errors are a characteristic of a "D" or "F" essay. In WebBoard, you will find a conference area titled "Questions." Please send any questions that you have about this assignment, and I will be happy to respond. |