Waldorf University The Rise of The Italian Renaissance Research Paper

1200 words, MLA format, NO PLAGIARISM!

Western Civilization I Requirements

the topic for this essay is related to Western Civilization to approx. the year 1500

A core writing assignment for this course is a Research Paper (1200 words minimum, not counting references). The essay should support a thesis statement with information gained from research or investigation. The paper will not be just a report presenting information but will be a paper that carefully examines and presents your own historical interpretation of the topic you have chosen and your interpretation of the information you have gathered. It may include consideration of problems and solutions. It may define key terms.

It will be important to choose a topic of interest to you and to an academic audience. Approach this assignment with an open and skeptical mind, a willingness to look at all sides of an issue and then form an opinion based on what you have discovered. You must suspend belief while you are investigating and let the discoveries shape your opinion. (This is a thesis-finding approach.) Once you have found your thesis, write the paper to support it.

You will use some of the following critical thinking skills in this process:

1. Choosing an appropriate topic, limiting the topic – a common mistake is to choose a topic that is too large for this length of paper. For example, if you wanted to choose “religion” as a topic, it would then be necessary to narrow that topic down by isolating a specific religion, period of time, an issue associated with it, or some key aspect that could serve as a focused topic for this length of paper.

2. Gathering information, summarizing sources

3. Analyzing and evaluating sources

4. Defining key terms

5. Synthesizing information

6. Amassing support for a position

7. Documenting sources

Because this may be a longer essay than you have written before and a complex process is involved, do this paper in the following steps:

1. Choose a topic related to Western Civilization to approx. 1500 that you would truly like to explore and that you are willing to spend some time on. This should be a focused topic. Pose a question that you really want to answer. You may want to begin with more than one topic in mind.

2. Do some preliminary reading on the topic(s). Explore the information available. Refine your topic. Summarize your topic, your interest in the topic, the questions you want to answer, and a hypothesis you want to test.

3. Gather information from both primary and secondary sources (personal testimonies, interviews, official documents, books, articles, film, websites).

Use a minimum of four sources for your paper, and at least one must be a primary source (a source contemporary to the topic—primary sources are embedded throughout our textbook). NOTE: do NOT use the textbook as one of your sources.

4. Outline the results of your research and the plan for your essay.

5. Write the final draft, with a Works Cited List, using correct MLA documentation style.

http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocMLA.html

The paper should be uploaded via the assignment link below.

The due date for this paper is by the end of Lesson 8. If it is not completed prior to the end of the term you will lose one grade level on the paper.

Be sure to read and understand the Scholastic Dishonesty policy, which may be accessed by the link in the course menu. Every paper that is submitted is run against a database of books, articles, internet information and other student papers from all over the US and other sources. The instructor will see a percent of matches to other work, so do not cut and paste your whole paper – it will show when graded. Give credit where an author is quoted.

Please do not write your paper by cut and paste. The SafeAssign database will show the percent that you have copied, and if it is high, it will be obvious that the paper contains the work of someone else who has published or submitted a paper that is in the system.