An important note about
writing your research paper
Writing teachers tell us that it is important to know
who your audience is, i.e., to have clearly in mind the people to whom you
are addressing your writing. For this research paper, your audience will be
your fellow students.
More importantly, as you write your paper for this
course, one thing that will be important to include
in it is any connections you see between what youre learning in your
researches and what weve been studying in class.
In other words, this is to be a paper addressed to
your fellow students here in this course. They are your audience, so it
will be important to relate (at least tangentially) the ideas in your researches
to any books or ideas weve been exploring in class and the discussions
weve been having in the classroom. (Without including
some of these connections your paper will be considered incomplete and will
probably not earn a passing grade.)
Thus, this is to be not just a generic term paper,
but a research paper specifically addressed to people you now know a little
bit, who have read the same books you've read this quarter. So in your writing
of the paper, assume the following:
i. that your readers
will probably be interested in your topic,
ii.
that they are intelligent readers (so you dont need to talk down
to them -- you can write a fairly scholarly paper), and
iii. that
their understanding will probably be enhanced by your showing connections
between
what youve researched and what theyve already read and discussed
in class.