1. Research Paper Revision Day Citing Images, Use of Sources, Effective Use of Statistics,

2. MLA Rules to Remember for Citing Images Give credit for the image to the person who created it, if you know who that was. Let your audience know where to find the image if they want to see it for themselves in context. Unlike other essays where I have allowed you to insert images without referring to them, you MUST mention each image you use in the text of your paper.

3. Tips for Choosing Images for Use in Your Research Paper (via the OWL) Choose images that are directly relevant to the argument you are making. Look for illustrations that enhance your audience’s understanding of your topic or illustrate a point you are trying to make in a powerful way. Use quality versions of the images. If your images are low quality or distorted, this distracts your reader from your argument.

4. How Do I Cite an Image? Each image will be assigned a number, in the order in which it is mentioned in the essay. In MLA format, photographs, charts, graphs, and other images are all called “figures.” This is abbreviated in the text of your paper to “fig.” When you mention the image, direct your audience to that image at the end of the sentence that mentions it by writing (see fig. #) at the end. (Note: replace # sign by the number assigned to the image.)

5. How Do I Cite an Image? Each image must have a caption below it that does three things: Tells the image’s figure number. Briefly describes the image and why it is relevant to your argument. Gives credit to the source of the image, either with an in-text citation (author’s name in parentheses) if the source is on your works cited page, or by simply telling the audience all information about the source of the image in the caption.

6. Example Image Use When You Know the Photographer/Creator The following example uses an image from an article called “'Required Reading': As Textbook Prices Soar, Students Try to Cope”'Required Reading': As Textbook Prices Soar, Students Try to Cope Here is how you might mention the image in the body of your essay. The high price of textbooks is especially tough for bright students who are pushing themselves academically. Students who double major in difficult fields find themselves paying even more for textbooks than their peers with a single major (see fig. 1).

7. Insert the image at the end of the paragraph where you mention it. Try to center the image. Fig. 1: A student who is majoring in pre-med, biology, and Spanish sits next to a few of her textbooks. Photograph by John Breecher for the article “'Required Reading': As Textbook Prices Soar, Students Try to Cope” by Martha C. White.

8. Example Use of Images in Textbook See example in Everyone’s an Author on p. 451. The author uses the in-text (fig. 1) in the middle of the second paragraph on p. 450, and Fig. 1 is located at the top of p. 451 with a brief description below it, including information about where the image came from. A second image with caption is located on p. 459. Notice that because the author has given credit to the site where the image came from in the caption, imdb.com does not appear on the works cited page.

9. General Guidelines: Give your audience enough information in the caption to find the image for themselves. If you can’t find the name of a photographer or creator, leave it out, but give your audience some other information to help them find the image. Use google image search to see if you can find a copy of the image accompanied by more information. (images.google.com) Simply drag and drop the image you want more information about into the search bar, and it will find similar images and give you any information google can find about it.

10. Do I HAVE TO have an image in my research paper? No, but images are incredibly powerful rhetorical tools. You will want to consider whether your argument would be strengthened by including at least an image or two that were relevant to your main points. I will not take away points if you do not have images, but excellent use of images can help you to earn more points in categories where I am grading you on use of rhetorical tools.

11. Workshop on Use of Sources Step 1: Mark quote or paraphrase in your essay (underline, highlight in yellow, whatever works for you). Step 2: Mark all of the places where you INTRODUCE your quotes or paraphrases, or give context for them, in a different way (different color, dotted underline, etc). Step 3: Highlight all of the places where you RESPOND to quotes by explaining, giving an additional example, or agreeing/disagreeing, in a THIRD way.

12. Look at your highlighting. Are there any places where you have a lot quote, but not a lot of introduction and explanation? Do you need to remove some of the quote? Remove any bits of the quote that aren’t relevant to your response. Do you need to add more to your introduction or response? Make sure that your response addresses any important issues the quote brings up.

13. Double check for in text citations. Look back at your quotes/paraphrases. Mark or highlight the place where you give credit to the author (or, if you don’t know the author, the article/source). Every quote should have SOME marking/highlighting that indicates a citation. You might give credit in an in-text citation (the author or article name in parentheses). You might give credit in a “signal phrase.” (The author’s name mentioned in the introduction of the quote.)

14. Digging Deeper… Each introduction of a quote should: Connect the quote to the point you are currently making. Prepare your readers to notice what you want them to take away from the quote. Give your readers any context that they need in order to understand the quote. Each response to a quote should: Deal specifically with the issues that are raised in the quote. It might also… Explain an idea from the quote further. (Not just repeating the ideas from the quote in new words.) Give a new example of an idea from the quote. Agree or disagree with an opinion displayed in the quote and explain your agreement/disagreement. Connect the quote to a point your have made somewhere else on the paper, or to another quote.

15. Effective, Honest Use of Statistics and Facts

16. Logos Review One of the ways you will be making your argument is through the use of logos. Logos appeals to logic, reason, and “common sense.” Arguments that use logos use facts and interpret those facts for the reader to show how those facts support the claim.

17. Using Facts Effectively “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” – U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan We have practiced agreeing and disagreeing with sources, and we have learned how to respond to a quote we disagree with. However, it is not possible to disagree with a fact.

18. Using Facts Effectively FACT: Children of divorce are more likely than other children to experience psychological problems. So, if you say, “Many studies say, ‘Children of divorce are more likely to experience psychological problems,’ but I disagree,” you hurt your own credibility because you have introduced research that proves the fact, and offer no reason that these many studies were wrong.

19. Disliking a Fact is not Disagreement Believing that a fact needs to change is not the same as disagreement. – Example: According to research done by the Chronicle of Higher Education, only 25.3% of all students at California community colleges who were seeking a two-year degree had completed their degree within three years. – I may not like this fact, and I can certainly argue that something needs to be done to change it, but this fact does not invite agreement or disagreement.

20. Then what CAN I do with facts? In your research, you will find facts presented in two different ways: Informative sources simply give you the facts and let you draw your own conclusions. There are no beliefs about the facts in informative sources, and it is up to you to interpret the facts and explain why they fit your claim. Persuasive sources will use facts in order to support a claim. These types of sources will have beliefs about what the facts mean and what should be done because of them. These are the sources you can agree or disagree with.

21. Informative/Persuasive: to Sum Up So, to sum up: if a fact is from an informative source, it is up to YOU to interpret it. If a fact is from a persuasive source, you have a choice. – Use the fact without responding to your source’s ideas about the fact. – Quote the fact and the ideas, and then agree/disagree with the ideas about the fact, not the fact itself.

22. Example Fact and Idea “Studies show that children of divorce are more likely to experience psychological problems, so states should make divorces harder to get.” THIS is a persuasive source that gives you room to argue. You can disagree with the USE of the fact to argue for making divorces more difficult, but you can’t say the fact isn’t true without proof.

23. Logos and Statistics Many appeals to logos are based on research that has statistical results. For example, if I am arguing for increased funding for academic counselors and student support services in community colleges, I might say… According to research done by the Chronicle of Higher Education, only 25.3% of all students at California community colleges who were seeking a two-year degree had completed their degree within three years. While many of the students who did not complete their degree did not finish because of family or employment issues, better access to counselors and student services would help many of the 75% who did not graduate in three years to navigate the community college system and achieve their educational goals more quickly.

24. Questions to Ask About Statistics/Research Who conducted the research? Are they credible? How recent is the research? How many individuals were included in the study? What methods were used to conduct the study? Were they fair and effective? If the statistics are interpreted/explained, who is doing the interpretation?

25. Give Your Facts/Statistics Context The fact “74.7% of CA students don’t finish their community college degrees in three years” needs context. Which students were included in the study? – “First time, full-time degree seeking students.” – This means that students who took a break and then graduated in a reasonable amount of time aren’t counted. – Part time students who later became full time aren’t counted. 25.3% graduate in 3 years in California, but how does this compare to other states? – The national average is 20.4%, so California is performing BETTER than the national average in Community college degree completion. – California has the 16 th highest completion rate (the highest is South Dakota, with 52.9% graduating in 3 years).

26. Questioning Facts: The Exception Remember how I said “you can’t argue with facts”? There is one exception. If you find out that the research that provided a statistic was not well done, you can question the research. Point out a flaw in the study’s methods that you discovered. Point out an unethical or unfair practice by the study’s authors. Remember, though, you can only do these things if you are ready to prove that the study is flawed.

27. A Problems to Watch out For Correlation is not causation (the verb is “correlate”) – Just because two things are happening at the same time, or changing at the same rate, does not mean that they one is the cause of the other. If you believe that two things are changing at the same time or at the same rate because they are related, you need to do much more to argue for the connection than present statistics that say they are both changing. There are several amusing graphs about trends that prove this point here, as well as a video that explains the issue in more depth.here

28. So what does all of this mean for my research paper? Use facts and statistics wisely. When you are interpreting and explaining facts and statistics, make sure you are doing so in a way that is logical and fair. – Let your audience know where the fact/statistic came from, and argue for its credibility. – Remember that correlation is not causation. When you are responding to your sources’ interpretations of facts, be sure that you are arguing for or against the interpretation of the facts, and not the facts themselves, unless you have proof that the study is flawed.

29. Specific Details, Sentence Variety, and Conclusions

30. Writing Strong Conclusions Remember, a strong conclusion does much more than restate your thesis and main points. Your conclusion might… Remind your reader of the big picture – how all the points you have made are connected to one big claim (your thesis). Say something that you couldn’t have said at the beginning of your essay because your reader didn’t have the context/information to understand it yet. End with a call to action since this is a persuasive research paper. Look ahead to the future of your topic. Examine your conclusion. Is it only a restatement/rewording of points you’ve already made? If so, you need to improve your conclusion by using one of the techniques above. If you are struggling with your conclusion, feel free to raise your hand and speak with me about it.

31. Checking for Specific Details Go through your research paper and highlight places where more specific description or detail is necessary. Watch for vague words/phrases “In a certain way” (or other uses of the word “certain”) The words “some,” “someone,” “something,” or “several” unless you go on to say who/what you mean. The words “impact,” “influence,” and “affect,” unless you describe how the impact/influence is working immediately. The words “things,” “stuff” Most phrases that contain the word “society,” such as “in society today” Phrases about the past “Back then” or “Back in the day” that do not say when in the past you are talking about.

32. Checking for Specific Details Improve the places you have highlighted by changing vague words to specific ones. Say what you mean by phrases like “In a certain way” Say who you mean by “some people.” Say when you mean by “back in the day.” These are not the only weak, vague phrases. If you need help identifying phrases that need improvement, raise your hand and I will go through one paragraph with, pointing out vague sections that need improvement.

33. Checking for Sentence Variety Refer back to the discussion of sentence types on p. 553-557 of Everyone’s an Author. Also, you may wish to open the notes from that day. Can you find at least one of each sentence type? Do all of your paragraphs have a good variety of sentence types? For instance, if a paragraph has all simple sentences, or all complex sentences, or all compound sentences, it will get boring. Experiment with changing the sentence type for at least THREE sentences in your essay. Highlight your changes. (If you hate the changes, you can change them back later.)

34. Checking for Sentence Variety Refer back to the discussion of cumulative and periodic sentences on p. 553-557 of Everyone’s an Author. Also, you may wish to open the notes from that day. Do you already have at least one or two cumulative and periodic sentences in your paper? If not, find a place where these sentence types would be effective and make one of your sentences into a cumulative sentence, and one of your sentences into a periodic sentence. Highlight your changes.