Research question about a current topic in the natural sciences
Research question about a current topic in the natural sciences
Eng112 University of Mount Olive (Composition II)
Review of Scholarly Literature in Natural Science
Craft a timely, narrow, focused research question about a current topic in the natural sciences. Choose four scholarly (academic, peer-reviewed) texts related to your topic. All sources should be less than ten years old. After reading and annotating all of your chosen texts, draft a review of the scholarly literature on your topic. Keep in mind that a literature review does not simply summarize the sources. You must synthesize the material, providing your reader with a sense of any recent major achievements or setbacks and the main areas of conflict or debate. You may also discuss any lingering questions surrounding the topic.
Use APA documentation and manuscript formatting.
Audience: peers/classmates Purpose: to summarize and synthesize sources, describing the relationship of each work to the others Scope: 800-1000 words [3-4 pages]
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
