The Outline
Assignment Explanation:
Before attempting to write a first draft, students should always create as detailed an outline as possible. This means you will have to think through your entire paper before you begin to write it. This is imperative given the required length of the Research Paper. Six to ten pages is not something you should try to intuitively write. If you try to “wing it” you will take much longer than you need to write the paper, and you will find it hard to keep on track. Your paper will feel disorganized and you will inevitably include irrelevant information.
Here is the easiest pattern I can suggest for your papers: 1. You will need an introduction that introduces your topic, provides relevant background on your topic, and then transitions to your thesis statement. Your thesis should be a two-fold thesis statement.

2. In APA style, it is common to divide a research paper into different sections. These sections can be the arguments you make to prove your thesis.

In English 101, you wrote five paragraph essays: an Introduction, three Body Paragraphs, and a Conclusion. The pattern was to have a thesis for which you made three arguments. Each argument was one of the three paragraphs. For English 102, simply take that pattern and expand it. What does that mean? If you have three main arguments to prove your thesis, each argument should be a section of the paper. The pattern is as follows:

I. Introduction II. Section I III. Section II IV. Section III V. Conclusion

3. For your outline then, you just need to indicate what the three main arguments are and what arguments you will make in each section. You should also think about what your topic sentences will be for each argument in each section. You should think about what transitions you will need between arguments, and what your closing sentences for