First and foremost, a research essay is a piece of writing in which you offer your own assertion or claim about an issue. You support your assertion logically with your own ideas and then validate your ideas with information from researched sources. Just as the issue analysis/logical argument essay added the concepts of "issue" and "logic" to the basic thesis-support essay, a research paper adds the concept of "valid, logical sources" to an issue analysis/logical argument essay. And that's what you'll be doing in this module, adding relevant, valid, and logical research to your issue analysis/logical argument essay. You'll learn how to research and validate sources and how to incorporate them into an essay, to expand your issue analysis/logical argument essay into a full research paper.
Learning Objectives/Outcomes
- Explain research writing processes
- Apply research writing skills: finding, evaluating, summarizing, citing sources
- Revise an issue analysis/logical argument essay into a research paper, incorporating research that directly supports your thesis and topic sentence assertions
- Discuss/evaluate your own and others' writing