1. Facebook
How did it start? How does it affect human interaction? The rise of Facebook?
2. AIDS
The history of AIDS? What is HIV? Where did AIDS come from?
Call Of The Assignment
Write an interesting, informative paper about a person, an event, a political, technical, or medical development, or a social movement based on research. This paper does not require you to take sides, nor to draw conclusions: report on something affected by time, or which develops through time. Try to be accurate in your writing, and interesting in your presentation. Tell a chronological story.
One way to find a subject is to read in sources about the year and month of your birth to get an idea of what was going on, and what has had some lasting influence. Another way is to research anything from the past you are interested in. If you pursue an interest, research is easier and the resulting paper is usually better. This paper needs to be 1500 words, and will have parenthetical citations, and a works cited page of between 5 and 8 sources. However, In order to find enough material to write on, it may be necessary to find more.
Suggestions:
To get started, look to Facts on File, or Wikipedia, which will give you a rough idea of when something in the past has happened. But
remember these are not sources that you can cite in a college essay (Edit: You can use Facts on File).
When you have settled on a story you wish to tell, go to the databases. LexisNexis is a good place to start because it will give you access to articles written at the time you are researching. But you may also wish to look at Academic Search Premier, and SIRS.
When you have a source, review it to see if is worth printing off. But remember that you may need to take notes, because it is easier to write a paper from notes than it is from separate articles with marginal comments and highlighted passages.
Don’t print off articles that repeat information you already have—you are showing some kind of chronological development, not collecting all the available information on a subject. You will begin to know when you are done researching when your sources begin to repeat themselves.
Remember that writing the paper is important. At some time you have to get to it.
Look closely at the MLA conventions in your handbook or online. Remember that you will need to know, if your article is signed, the author’s name, its title, where and when it was published, and the page number the information you used came from.
To the teacher:
This assignment is in the syllabus at the request of program directors whose students need to have written a referenced paper and whose course of study does not include Composition 2.
It is not a paper with claim and support—it is a narrative.
This is not a paper designed to flunk students who do not, even on their final draft, know every jot and tittle of the Modern Language Association format conventions. Students learn by successive approximation, and it is more important to begin to introduce conceptually when and where a citation is needed, and the relationship between textual citations and the references on the works cited page than more minor points.
Five areas of evaluation:
Essay retells a chronological event of historical importance
Essay is correctly cited using in-text citations and contains a works cited page
Essay is correctly paraphrased and summarized (retold in your own words). Quote cautiously, and only when necessary.
Correct verb tense (past tense) and 3rd person is maintained
Essay is proofread and edited
