I have attached all the files provided by the instructor. Just need to follow the instruction and need to include all the items mentioned. Should be plagiarism-free.

Your primary goal for ENGL 1302 is to plan and execute a research project related to the course theme—Homelessness, Poverty, and Food Insecurity. Each remaining unit will be focused on a different aspect of research writing and the completion of a different part of the research project.

Parts of your Research Project:

• Introduction

• They Say (Unit 2)

• I Say (Unit 3)

• Naysayer (Unit 4)

• So What (Unit 5)

• Conclusion

While we will discuss how these individual parts work together to complete an effective research project, it’s important to remember that with each unit your mission never changes. The mission is to complete a research paper due at the end of the semester.

The successful completion of this mission and the entire research project requires that you start early and plan your research. There is a saying that seems appropriate for research projects like this one: If you fail to plan, you can plan to fail. Don’t be that student at the end of the semester who is scrambling to finish 8 weeks of work in a matter of a few days.

There are many things that researchers do that can help them get their work done successfully and on time.

• First, plan your work. Work a little bit each day and stay on schedule. That is why I have broken up the research paper into different parts and established a series of due dates throughout the semester.

• Second, take initiative. Get engaged and stay engaged: pick a topic that you care about and that you will be able to do a research paper on for the entire semester. And don’t wait for assignments from me. Assume that you should always be searching for new information, gathering sources, and reading/learning new information about your topic.

• Third, keep a research log. (See below.)

• Fourth, employ a range of reading skills. This one is important to be efficient with your time. Skim articles, books, and Internet articles, and then once you've discovered whether or not they will be helpful for your research paper, then read deeper. If you spend too much time reading articles and books that aren't helpful for your research paper, you will waste a lot of time. One thing that you can do with books is look at the table of contents or the index to see if it talks specifically about your topic or something that you think you need for your research paper. Another good thing to do is to read abstracts for articles. See if the abstract sounds like something that would be helpful for you and the argument that you're trying to make.

• Fifth, avoid premature closure on thinking and research. This means that you don't just use the first sources that you find when you do a database search. You're probably going to come up with hundreds of thousands of possible articles. If you pick the first six, you are probably overlooking many other articles that would be more helpful than those first six listed, so make sure you employ a range of reading skills to scan through them to look at the abstracts and to read a little bit of each one to see if it will be helpful for your research paper.

• Finally, ask for help. Let me say that again. Ask for help! Our library has many reference librarians who are expert researchers, and their job is to help students. I am not exaggerating; our reference librarians know how to help you find the information you need. You can do this online or in person. There is more information about this in the library guide.

I hope the Current Events Essay gave you a bit of an introduction to the course theme and allowed you to begin thinking about a possible topic for your research. Go beyond just a general, vague topic like “homelessness in Dallas” or “COVID-19’s influence on poverty.” Explore your topic more and write a research question. 

It's important that your question leads you to an argument since this is an argument research paper. Some questions that you can use to help you come up with a good research question are:

• What are the causes of X?

• What are the implications of X?

• What larger context does X belong to?

• What issues are people debating about X?

• What do most people think about X?

Consider this example (from a different course): If we were going to look at recent cases of police brutality and possibly requiring police officers to wear body cams, then we would ask: What are the causes of police brutality? What are the implications of using body cameras? What larger context does body cameras or police brutality belong to? What issues are people debating about body cameras? and What do most people think about police brutality?

I would then attempt to answer one of these questions with research. Hence the term “research question.” With enough research, I would be able to answer this question in the form of a clear thesis statement. My research paper would then be my attempt to argue and support that thesis statement.

You also want to look at your topic from different perspectives. Play the make-believe game: pretend that you're on the other side. What would somebody who is on the other side of the debate say in opposition to your topic? You can also use reporters’ questions. Ask the who, what, where, when, why, and how. Again, your question must lead to an argument though.

For example, your research question might be “How does princess culture affect young girls?” or “Should police officers wear body cameras?” Both of these questions lead to an argument. For the first one, you could argue that princess culture is good for young girls or that it is harmful for young girls. For the second one, you could argue that police officers should wear body cameras or that police officers should not wear body cameras.

While I do not require you to keep a research journal, I highly recommend keeping track of your research in a way that feel natural to you. You will be working on this project all semester. Without some kind of notetaking and record-keeping strategy, things could get messing and unorganized really quickly.

The first thing you want to put in your research log is your research question. You should also keep track of any other ideas or questions you think of while doing your preliminary reading and research.

The next thing you want to keep track of is the search terms that you've used when you start looking through the library's databases. You want to keep track of what terms you use today so that you don't use the same terms tomorrow because if you keep using the same search terms over and over again, you will come up with the same results over and over and you won't be getting any new articles that could be helpful for your research paper.

For instance, if we were going to do the issue of police brutality, you might start on day one by using the search terms "police" and "brutality." However, the next day you would want to change it up a little bit. Maybe you would want to use "police" and "race relations" since a lot of this topic deals with race. Another suggestion would be to change police to "law enforcement" so you could say "law enforcement and brutality." Or if you wanted to be specific about looking at body cameras, you could say "police and body cameras." You would probably want to search all these different terms to find to see if you could find many different types of articles that might be helpful.

Additionally, you want to keep notes about which databases you've searched. It's the same thing as using the same search terms over and over again. Our library has many different databases that can be helpful for you, so if you search on Academic Search Complete today, maybe tomorrow you want to do Opposing Viewpoints.

The final thing you should include is a working bibliography. This is where you include the MLA citations for each of your sources so that you aren't in danger of plagiarizing.

Here are a few more tips to help you as you're going through the research process.

• If you are going to copy or print any of your sources, make sure you don't cut off the page numbers. These page numbers will be helpful once you do your in-text citations for MLA format.

• Make sure that you print all your pages so you don't lose any necessary information for the works cited page.

• Be sure to staple printed copies and keep them in a folder so that you don't drop some of the pages.

• Whenever possible, choose PDF files. This is important for page numbers, which you will need for in-text citations in your research paper.

• Keep all electronic copies in a clearly labeled folder. I suggest that you email all of your sources to yourself and make a folder in your email for English 1302. Keep all of your sources there so that you can easily find them if you lose one of your sources. And you can also bookmark online sources to help you keep track of them as well.