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The Term Paper



The Term Paper

  • Passing this assignment secures a course grade of "C".
  • You must PASS the Term Paper BEFORE being able to submit the pitch deck or to take the final exam in class.
  • See a Writing Consultant for further help.
  • Be careful of Plagiarism; there is NOT ever an excuse for plagiarizing.

MLA Format Criteria:

  • Font-type: Times New Roman
  • Font-Size: only 12 point
  • Indents: first line of each paragraph of the body indents 1/2" (not five space bar clicks)
  • Spacing: Double space every line in the paper (no more, no less)
  • Margins: 1" from all sides (page number header will be within that inch, and that is ok.) From the top, your masthead must be 1"
  • No Bold
  • No Underlines
  • No exclamation marks--EVER!!!!!!!!
  • A paragraph should be no less than 1/3 the size of a page and no larger than 1/2 the size of a page.
    • Word sets extra spacing after paragraphs; highlight all, right click, choose paragraphs, and set spacing after paragraphs to zero

Format Title

  • Revisit the formatting assignment to determine where the tile is placed in the paper.
  • See this page to learn how to craft a title for your term paper

Pus Words

  • List of Pus Words
    • You only can have 20 of these pus words in your term paper.
    • Be mindful of contractions that hide pus words, such as it's or he's.
    • Do NOT use becomes or remains as a pus replacement; they do NOT mean the same as the pus words
    • All of them must be highlighted in yellow
    • Any Pus word not highlighted (or that exceeds 20 total) is subject to a rewrite.

Structure of the Term Paper

  • Introduction (one paragraph)
    • Summarize the entire paper
    • Usually this paragraph is half a page
    • Begin with a thesis, which will be pretty general: This paper/my research/this research studies/analyzes the film Blahty-Blah through/with five theories
    • The rest of the introduction summarizes each small paper; one or two sentences per small paper.
    • Example: By using the concept of tropes, we can see how Blahity-Blah uses the tropes of Nameoftrope and Nameofanothertrope to give more meaning to scenes.
    • Lather, rinse, repeat for all of the small papers
    • Discuss these small papers in the same order they occur in the paper

    Film Summary (one paragraph):

      Summarize your film by covering the following:
    • Year released
    • Famous actors
    • Awards
    • Critical Reception
    • Popular Reception.
    • Master Plots: (Download and look through the 20 Master Plots)
    • Brief brief summary of the plot

    Method (one paragraph)

    • This tends to be a small paragraph as you will simply explain what you are doing in this paper
    • Start with a general overview of how we can use multiple theoretical lenses to examine any subject
    • Mention how there are hundreds of theories that could be used but that you are only using a few in this paper
    • Discuss those lenses without explaining or defining them in the order they occur in the paper.
    • Use people's names where possible; Ecocriticism was not made by one person;however, Performativity is from Butler

    Theory/Analysis (many paragraphs)

    • Lift these paragraphs directly from the five small papers.
    • Paragraphs should continually stack from one small paper to the next small paper
    • Do not cut, truncate, or diminish the small papers. All of what was stamped as good goes into this term paper.
    • Use the Full sentence: "blah blah" quote style, such as done in the small theory papers
    • Do not use dictionaries or encyclopaedias of any kind.
    • Do not use any of the linked sources on the Theory List page.

    Conclusion (one paragraph)

    • A conclusion in MLA does not "conclude" nor give results
    • A conclusion suggests other ways to continue on the research of the paper.
    • For this paper, you have four theories that you chose to not use in the paper that you can use in the conclusion
    • You do not need to analyze your film with these theories; simply mention how they could be used by someone else to continue the research of your film.

    Works Cited

    • You can use Purdue's Online Writing Lab (Owl) or my color-coded abridged version on Inverseintuition.org:
    • If you use a citation maker, or any other source than the two listed above, and the citation does not match one of the two sources above, the citation is incorrect.
    • If I mark something wrong on your Works Cited, but you think it is correct, your only defense is to show me how you followed a page on OWL or on InverseIntuition.org
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