Suggestions for Writing the Term Paper:
Review APA style!!! This is a “free” 20% of your term paper grade.
Make sure that I know what question you are looking to answer by the end of your Introduction. This is important so I am not confused.
On that point, use APA-style headers and sub-headers to split your paper into manageable chunks that will help point my mind to what is being discussed. Paragraphs are your friend.
Whenever you make a bold claim, make sure that you cite it. In fact, cite liberally within the document! Your paper will go through TurnItIn which detects plagiarism. In order to not be misidentified as having plagiarized, cite your content excessively. Anyone who plagiarizes this paper is subject to receiving a 0% on the paper and a FF in the course in addition to administration action (i.e., suspension or expulsion from the university). Several students last semester received a 0% due to plagiarism. Do not make this mistake. When in doubt, cite.
Please refrain from using “medical websites.” This information can be easily found in an academic “review” of your topic within the journal articles. The only “website” that is permissible is a governmental website, but this will not count toward your reference requirements.
Do not use quotations. Almost never put quotes in your paper. Instead, use paraphrasing and cite the content in-text. Students last semester lost significant amounts of points because their entire paper was filled with quotes. I am testing your ability to write and synthesize, not copy and paste other authors’ work.
You can go over reference count. Just please meet the minimum guidelines.
Please try to stay within the page count. Brevity is difficult but appreciated in academic writing.
Remember to analyze the studies that you cite. Simply giving me information about a topic is not sufficient. I need to see that you can critically analyze the information by comparing/contrasting results, identifying limitations or future directions of the literature, finding commonalities or themes among the papers, etc.
When you are citing content from a review article, make sure that it is from the review article and not something that was cited by them. For example, I read a review by Jester et al. (2019). If this is something that I am citing, “… and those with prior stroke history had an increased risk of hospitalization (Mills et al., 2014).” then I would not be citing (Jester et al., 2019) in my paper, I would read Mills and colleagues (2014) and then proceed to cite (Mills et al., 2014) in my paper. This is very important. The review article is exactly what it sounds like. It reviews the current literature. That said, it cites the authors appropriately for scientific statements that they made, and you should too.
Please utilize the writing center on campus. It is free for you and will drastically help your term paper grade.
Remember to look at my rubric.
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