What IS a research paper? A research paper is actually a WORK IN YOUR OWN WORDS that fully discusses a topic that you have spent time learning about.

What IS a research paper?

• A research paper is actually a WORK IN YOUR OWN WORDS that fully discusses a topic that you have spent time learning about. It is to be in depth and intelligent, with support from credible sources. This paper will be YOUR work, but you have based your knowledge on the credible work of others.

• Sounds difficult? It’s not really so bad, actually, it gets pretty easy.

First Step: Notes and Learning• Find a Topic:

Your first order of business, obviously, is to choose a topic. As this is your first paper, most topics are open and acceptable. Whatever the case, it is important to find something interesting to you. For our purposes, this example topic will be “The

History of Vampires.”

• Find Sources:

Now, what we must do is find CREDIBLE sources on the topic and begin learning all we can about what vampires are, where the derive from and why they are so perplexing and popular.

• Credible?

Credible means that the sources you are using actually have proof for their knowledge. They are certified on the topic you are researching and not just some fanatic or idiot who thinks they know what they are talking about.

• Credible sources are books, magazines, newspapers, encyclopedias, interviews with credible people, and CERTAIN websites

So let’s say I want to know about Vampires; I’m going to need to check certain resources.

Encyclopedia references are a good place to start. They give background info AND sometimes a list of further readings.

Find Books on the topic. Then move on to magazines, newspapers or journal articles.

Use the internet carefully as it does contain non-credible sources. For this paper, you may use internet sources.

You must include five sources for your paper.

How to Tell if a Site is Credible: Know that only a few select sites can be credible. Follow

this checklist to ensure that you can actually use the source.

• Know the name of the AUTHOR of the site, and their credentials (Dr., Researcher, Journalist, etc…)

Know what Company or Organization this site affiliated with.

Know WHERE this site exists. (Usually AngleFire, myspace or Tripod pages and their like ARE NOT credible).

Know what type of information is being conveyed.

There must be useful information you can gather for your study.

Know when the site was updated last.

Examples:

http://www.HoughtonMifflin.com/historical/vampire/html

Borne From Gaves and Charnel Houses.by: Dr. Julian Smithee PHD of Supernatural

Lit, Cambridge College.

Following the strange trails of the vampire through history leads down any number of false dark alleys and real dark corridors. However they are regarded, seductive stalker or carrion rogue, the vampire seems to permeate every society in the world in one form or another. Yet where do these creatures originate from? Why do they differ in appearance and behavior from country to country? And above all, why are such murderous creatures so terrifying yet so attractive to us at the same time?

To explore the true birth place of the vampire, we must look at two of the greatest empires in the world and their sub-cultures. The Greeks and the Egyptians were simultaneously the most powerful and populace empires in the known world. Thus, it is only fitting that from such great societies come the world’s most renowned fiends. Somewhere around eighty years before the birth of Christ, we find the first written evidence of vampiric happenings in Greek grave yards and Egyptian tombs.

pg. 1

http://www.geocities.com/MorganLF/vampires.html

Vampires are undoubtedly the coolest creatures out there. In comparison to werewolves or ghosts, neither is more real or more powerful than the vampire.

I myself am a vampire, and so it is with pride I tell you about myself to scare you a little more…people taste better when they’re scared.

I, like all vampires, originate from Los Angeles. Some people think vampires are from other places, but the true vampires are seen only in LA clubs. I’ve been to N.Y. clubs, and they’re just posers.

Despite popular belief, vampires have been around as long as humans…longer, actually. We began as angels, fallen like the demons, but we made our way from Hell to earth where our lesser forms developed into humanity. Real vampires do not develop, we feed and continue.

pg. 1

From the good site you could clearly see WHO wrote the article, WHY they were a credible source, and INFORMATION that would actually help you with your research. Furthermore, look at the WEB ADDRESS, (Houghton Mifflin is a school textbook company, thus a trustworthy source).

The bad site is quite opposite. It is based on opinion, “I am a vampire….” Has irrelevant quotes as to helping you, and has no credible author or company to back them up. Furthermore, look at the address. Any time it is from Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod or any other company that allows any and all individuals to make personal web pages, it is NOT usually a credible or accepted

source.

Taking Notes

One of the most IMPORTANT aspects of the research process now is learning the topic thoroughly and making EFFECTIVE NOTES on it.

Read through ALL your sources first and make notes on all of them. Use either numbered note cards or an organized notebook.

In your notes, write EXACTLY what you need to remember; Quotes, dates, numbers, or any and all other relevant information. PLUS, always add the author of where you got those notes and the page numbers. This will help you TREMENDOUSLY!

• Like noting from the internet page, note taking from books, encyclopedias, etc is actually rather simple.

• Read the source completely, THEN go back over it making note of the important or helpful information. Always include the author, the work and page number on your note cards or notebook to help you for citation purposes and in case you have to go back and look through the materials again.

Good note taking

Write the information exactly.

Keep names, dates, numbers, etc…perfectly

Write quotes EXACTLY as they appear.

Write author, page number and the source.

How to Document Your SourcesYou must use and include at least five sources in

your paper.You are required to have a “Works Cited” page at

the end of your research paper. Today, we are just going to learn how to document

the sources that you use so that when it comes time to write your “Works Cited” page, you already have all the information.

Use easybib.com to enter your source information. (There are other online citation generators, but this site is user friendly, so use it for this paper.)

Practice Source#1: Easybib.com

Web Site Author: Anne Harding

Title of online publication: CNN Health.

Title of Article: “Violent video games linked to child aggression”

Date of Article: November 3, 2008

URL: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-11-03/health/healthmag.violent.video.kids_1_violent-video-video-games-game-genres?_s=PM:HEALTH <

Practice Sources Go to easybib.com and try entering the

sources from the sheet I distribute.

• After getting ALL your notes written out, it’s time to organize.

• Organization means EVERYTHING in a research paper.

There are simple techniques to use for organization.

• If you have used cards, all you have to do is figure out the best order for progression, then line up and number your cards. If you used a notebook, you’ll have to number, cut out and paste them back together.

So now you have the knowledge you need, various sources to help support what you are saying and you’re ready to go. So how do you start writing it?

Basically, this follows similar ideas insofar as introductions and conclusions. You MUST capture our attention from the first paragraph. Use relevant stories, interesting or startling facts on the subject, a quote on the topic, etc.. Basically, introduce your topic as being something interesting, even exciting. This way you establish your voice and the purpose for your paper. Also, it helps you write a powerful, interesting paper, because let’s face facts; If you didn’t like writing it, teachers won’t like reading it and you’ll likely not do well.

So find a phenomenal way to introduce your paper and topic, and begin writing a rough draft.

Introduction Examples: The plague was rampant in this section of

the city. In the past year more than a third of the Greek population had died a miserable death, painfully twisting upon themselves as they were eaten alive from a virus. Mothers feared for the lives of their children, and everywhere was the stench of putrescence, everywhere, that is, except in certain grave yards where the grass shown green, and strangely, certain graves seemed…disturbed.

Something had caused the increase in death, and little could be associated with such a pestilence. And what of the graves? Who, or what, was disturbing them?

The vampire thus enters our history as a reason, more than an actual account. They were the inevitable child born of fear of the unknown and the lack of understanding mortality. It was there, in those graveyards, that the most popular and eternal creatures in human memory began to take form.

Vampire; the name itself summons images from the shadows of our minds. It is the icon of fear, the epitome of selfish mortality and the standing image of the human idea of being prey. It is because of this creature that we continuously pack theaters, buy millions of copies of the newest Vampire title, and why so many of us sometimes fear to sleep at night. As the vampire researcher Barron Lloyd Worley once said, “We do not believe in the vampire, but we still fear it.”

The Body of Your Paper

The majority of your paper needs to be well crafted. By this I mean you need to take time thinking and writing each paragraph. Make smooth transitions between paragraphs and sentences, get into detail and depth, but avoid worthless or useless information.

Give your paper a life in these paragraphs. Make it something you would be interested in reading yourself, and realize how much you are actually learning as you are teaching your readers.

Now you’re lost, aren’t you? OK, so you have your paper

going, you’ve explained much of your topic, but still, you need to PROVE you are right and this is not just an opinion paper. That’s where citation comes in handy.

Remember, this needs to be YOUR work in YOUR words, fully explaining a topic you are now completely familiar with. BUT you should use credible sources to back you up. Look at the example on the next column.

Although the Greeks were the first to truly represent a living-dead creature that resembles a modern vampire, it was the Egyptians that first made it something of a seducer. Often, vampires are seen as attractive, semi-sexual beings, but the flesh gorging zombies from Greece cannot account for this persona.

In Radu Florescu’s work, The silken Curtain, he accounts for the seductive side of vampires as stemming from the very pyramids of Egypt where “…legends of the Incubus and Succubus were born. These vampires were beautiful, human-like creatures that would lure and seduce people before drinking from them” (Florescu, 146).

Simple, right? You are telling the concepts, and periodically you use information you found to help prove what you are talking about. The last slide showed that a credible researcher recognizes actual history of vampiric folklore. Not only did you tell the reader about the Egyptian connection, but you also gave credible support to your claim by using the further research of an expert.

So what’s with the numbers and words in parenthesis after sentences you’ve quoted? That is called CITATION. This means you give credit to the person from whom you gained this quote, statistic or information. It works rather simply. After you use their information, you end quotation marks WITHOUT a period in the sentence! Then in parenthesis you use the author’s last name, comma, and the page number this information can be found on. Close parenthesis and THEN put in the period.

For example:

.

Although the legends of the Incubus and Succubus have survived multiple centuries, it was not until the crossing of true history with Romantic Horror that the vampire became widely accepted as an attractive, quasi-sexual creature. This stereotypical belief stems from the novel Dracula, written by Bram Stoker. Here, Stoker used the real, historical Prince Vlad Tepes, (Known as Dracula in his home of Romania), combined with the attractive personage of the poet Lord Byron to create a beautiful, and wicked vampire.

The Vampire itself did not actually gain popularity as an attractive being until the Irish born novelist, Abraham (Bram) Stoker took creative liberties with the historical Dracula, truly named Vlad Tepes or “Vlad the Impaler”, and crossed him with the attractive appearance of the poet Lord Byron (Nally, 192).

Other ways to back yourself up.Quoting other sources is a good thing to do, though there are

other ways to use support without weighing down your paper with quotes and you will DEFINITELY want to know how to do this.

Paraphrasing means you take the credible facts, etc…and re-write them in YOUR OWN WORDS. Para means “similar to” and Phrase is pretty obvious, so what you are doing is trying to get the same idea across in your own words.

NOTE THAT THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU SIMPLY CHANGE A WORD OR TWO!!!!! You basically change the whole sentence.

Check out the differences in the next slide.

Book: “The historical Dracula was actually a Prince, known to be the most powerful and respected, in Romanian history. Vlad Tepes, or Vlad Dracula as he was named after his father, was the true Dracula. Though not likely a real vampire, he was a blood-thirsty, murderous, cruel man who was known to have at times imbibed in the consumption of human blood.”

• Good:

The true Dracula, though most likely not a vampire in any real sense, was the basis of what is now considered to be the basic vampire. The real man was a twisted though powerful Romanian Prince who lead his country through the ravages of war against the Turks in the late 1400’s. It was from his frightening battlefield actions, the tortures he implemented on his prisoners and his harshly enforced laws that earned him the infamy of a human monster. But it was his thirst for blood, literally, that made Stoker think to turn him into the modern stereotypical vampire.

Bad:

The historical Dracula was actually a Prince, known to be powerful and respected, in Romanian history. Vlad Tepes, or Vlad Dracula, was the true Dracula.

The best thing you can do in writing a research paper is to mix it up a bit. Remember that YOU are telling the reader about your topic. Keep your voice and style, expand into depth, but use proof and never opinion.

Use quotes and statistics to back you up and paraphrase certain parts so that you are still using documented proof without being in trouble for plagiarism!

Also, always keep your paper alive, but PROFESSIONAL! That means no slang, no abbreviated words like ‘cause, and you keep “I”, “you”, etc… OUT of the paper.

• One of the most important parts of your paper, as always, is your conclusion.

• The conclusions ABSOLUTELY MUST be phenomenal. You should leave your reader still thinking about your topic and your paper once they finish reading it.

• It’s ok to leave your reader with a powerful question that leaves them thinking. Or use an image at the last to keep in the reader’s mind.

• NEVER merely say “the end”. Likewise, avoid just throwing some cruddy conclusion just to get it out of the way. If you don’t like the conclusion, I surely won’t like reading it, and thus, you guessed it, the grade suffers.

• Basically, LEAVE ME THINKING OF YOUR TOPICS!!!!

Nearing the end!!!

• Once written, you’ll want to review the entire paper, see what areas you could or SHOULD expand on, rewrite, paraphrase, add or adjust quotes or other note where sources might help prove certain points of your paper, and put in proper citation. Also, edit your paper for grammar, spelling, etc…

THE LAST STEPS!!!!

• At the end of your paper, you must have a sheet that lists ALL the sources you used for your research. Whether you quoted them, paraphrased from them, or merely used them for your research, you MUST cite them.

• THIS is a difficult part, so you

MUST DO IT CORRECTLY!

Author’s last name, first name. Title of the book. Published where: by whom, date published.

Shin, Seung. Lives of the Darker Saints . New York: Penguin Press, December 1992.

If there is more than one author:

Baker, Lee and Kenny Nasco. A Vampire Encyclopedia.

London: Signet Books, 2004.

Encyclopedia:

Author’s last name, First. “Word or topic”. Reference book.

Edition.

Mills, Mindy. “Vampire”. World Book Encyclopedia. 2003 Edition,

Vol 14.

In case where there is no author:

“Vampire”. World Book Encyclopedia. 2003 Edition, Vol 14.

Dictionary:

“Word Defined”. Name of Dictionary. Edition.

“Succubus”. Webster’s High School Dictionary. 2002.

DUDE! I GOT IT!

Author’s last, first. “Article Title”. Magazine, Volume (date), pages.

Moran, Mandy. “Fangs for the Memories”. Time, 114 (December 14, 2003), 82-91.

If credible but unsigned:

“Real Life Suckers”. Life, 987 (July 21, 1991), 56-61.

Author’s last, First. “Article”. Newspaper, (Date), Section, page.

Dale, Britney. “Unwilling Blood Donors”. Los Angeles Times, (February 20, 2004), Section C, pg C12-C13.

Author’s last, first. “Title of Page”. Association or Company: Last date updated. Full web site.

Anderson, Jamie. “Food for the Gods”. National Council of Paranormal Studies: November 12, 2003. www.NCPS.com/vampiricfolklore/main/documentedcases.html

• Recordings (CD, tape, radio, messages from interstellar beings…)

Artist. “Song or track”. Album. Company, date of release.

Guns n’ Roses. “Sympathy for the Devil”. Interview with the Vampire Soundtrack. TimeLife Records,

1994.

• Personal Interview.

Person interviewed last name, first. Personal

Interview. Date.

Itrades, Radu. Personal Interview. December 1, 2001.

The Unusual Citation.

FINALLY! THE WORKS CITED PAGE

• Once you have your paper written, have it correctly cited and edited, it’s time to make the works cited page. This is the final page that follows your paper. It has all your sources cited correctly.

• Make sure you follow the example on the next slide down.

Works CitedTriple Space

Bolton, Ariel. “When Nightmares are Real”. Time, 114 (December 14, 2003), 82-91.

Grivy, Missy. “Misguided Souls”. Los Angeles Times, (February 20, 2004), Section C, pg C12-C13.

King, Tonya. “Vampires in legend and Literature”. Association of Biblical and Paranormal study: November 12, 2003. www.ABP.com/legendsh/main/Taltos.html

Rosen, Lacy and Tim Kingly. The Unusual Suspects.

London: Signet Books, 2004.

• Now, you need to create a cover page, print out your paper, cover page and works cited page. Staple it ONCE in the upper left corner, and turn it in. If you would rather use a plastic paper cover, that is acceptable also.

Bloodlust: A history of Vampires and the Cultures that

Create Them.

By:

Kyra Lexis

Freshman English February 18, 2005

• When writing your paper, add life to it. Convey your message, but add your voice to it. The simple rule is “If you don’t like your topic, or don’t like writing about it, NO ONE will like reading it. Period. Case closed.

• Interest yourself in the topic, make your paper interesting and informative, or basically you may as well take the zero out of the one thousand points this paper is worth.

Create something you like knowing. Write something you would be interested in reading. And above all, make something you are proud of altogether.

There you go! Not so bad, though it still takes a lot of hard work, thought and dedication. Do your best in ALL aspects of this paper!

Remember, YOU write this paper, don’t let quotes over run your paper! And most of all, DO NOT PLAGIAIRIZE!!!