Research Paper and Works Cited Page Draft
Instructions
This writing assignment involves writing the first draft of your Research Paper and Works
Cited Page. Once you draft your essay and revise, you may submit it for feedback. The feedback
will help you write the final draft; your final draft will be graded.
During Topics 10 and 11 of the course, you will need to revise and edit the final draft of
your research paper. Your will learn more about the revision and editing process in Topic 10.
Note: You will not submit the final draft of your research paper until Topic 12.
Additional helpful resources:
Research Paper Rubric | Research Paper Sample
For this assignment, you will need to submit:
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The first draft of your research paper, complete with properly-formatted parenthetical citations
from at least four credible sources within the text.
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The Works Cited page, which should be located at the end of your essay. The Works Cited
page should be clearly labeled and follow MLA formatting requirements.
You will need a good, comprehensive thesis statement that states your claim (what will you prove?
Keep in mind that the purpose of this assignment is to support a claim, which means you must do
more than merely inform the reader. You must take a stance on your topic and make/support
claims that go beyond mere facts) and at least three supporting details (how will you prove your
point?).
You might use this as a guideline in crafting your thesis:
(Reason 1), (reason 2), and (reason 3) prove that (add your claim).
Example:
(1. Children who play violent video games exert more aggression than their counterparts who are
not exposed to these games) because (2. children often imitate their experiences as a natural
learning process) and (3. the violence they see in video games desensitizes them to violence in the
real world); however, (your claim: increasing the ages allowed to play certain violent games may
prove to decrease childhood aggression).
The guidelines and requirements for this assignment are as follows:
Remember to apply the concepts you're learning in the course, including elements of grammar,
punctuation, thesis development, and other skills.
Length: This assignment should be a minimum of 800 words. However, you should aim for
a minimum of 1,250 words. All length guidelines are excluding the Works Cited page.
Header: Include a header in the upper left-hand corner of your writing assignment with the following
information:
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Your first and last name
•
Course Title (Composition I)
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Assignment name (Research Paper)
•
Current Date
Format:
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At least four credible sources used and documented in MLA style
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Double-spacing throughout
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Standard font (Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri)
•
Title, centered after heading
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1” margins on all sides
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Save the file using one of the following extensions: .docx, .doc, .rtf, or .txt
Underline your thesis statement in the introductory paragraph.
Research Paper Sample
First Name Last Name
Composition 1
Final Essay
26 October 2015
The Death of a Medical Oath
Assisted suicide is a highly controversial subject in an era where people expect to get
what they want when they want it. Unfortunately, when citizens of this society are confronted
with discomfort, they expect to find relief in a cure. Sadly, for some people there is no comfort,
and a cure may not be available. Assisted suicide is what many people consider a feasible
solution. Assisted suicide is the act of enabling a patient to end his or her life; usually, this
process is made possible with a lethal dose of pentobarbital or secobarbital. This medication is
taken orally, and the effects of this medication can occur anywhere from minutes to hours (Fess).
Assisted suicide should have never been legalized in the United States because it is unethical for
doctors to kill their patients, for government to permit suicide, and for doctors to predict the date
of death; however, proponents of mercy killings believe that death should be an individual
choice.
Doctors have always been held in high regards. Patients have come to trust their
physician’s suggestions and diagnosis. Patients understand and have faith in the oath doctors take
upon graduation. The Hippocratic Oath clearly states, “I will not play God.” A doctor who is
permitted to prescribe a drug that is intended to end a life can be considered as holding a Godly
role. This act breaks the very oath doctors have pledged to uphold. This level of hypocrisy leads
to a breach of trust. A patient seeks their doctor for help as well as hope. Physicians delivering
this death sentence on a slip of paper are nicely saying, “I don’t have a chance of helping you”
(Sandburn). A physician who a patient feels cannot help him or her in any way, besides death, is
not very comforting. Doctors should prevent families from coercing their burdensome loved ones
into reluctantly accepting this death sentence. Patients suffering from the debilitating effects of
depression can become easily influenced by family members whom have ulterior motives when
they suggest assisted suicide. A family member drowning in debt and mourning for the loved one
he or she once knew may come to see this option as viable. In Belgium, a study found that there
was a shocking thirty-two percent of mercy killings preformed without the consent of the
patients they were performed on (Kuo). Doctors without an oath create a scenario in which they
become the final deciding factor in life and death. Assisted suicide gives doctors the legal ground
necessary to play God. The only difference between doctors with this power and serial killers is
that one in prosecuted and the other is praised.
The US Government will soon find that like so many other laws passed with honorable
intentions, assisted suicide is a gateway to many loopholes for the case of legalized murder.
Belgium allows terminally ill children the opportunity to choose assisted suicide. Physicians
should not be permitted to allow a child to choose death. Children aren’t even able to legally sign
their own consent forms. The government in the Netherlands intends to expand its assisted
suicide laws to enable citizens seventy years of age and older to choose death simply because
they have become tired of living (Kuo). In Switzerland, there has already been cases where
euthanasia has been used for purposes other than terminal illness. In one such case a woman
chose to end her life just because she did not feel she looked as pretty as she once was. This
woman paid a large sum of money to end her life without even consulting her loved ones. A
second case of assisted suicide preformed without family consent was a lady who was in deep
depression. In both cases, the families were shocked at the circumstances leading to the deaths of
their loved ones (Kuo ), and the decisions these patients can make, which some government
support, leave a lot of turmoil behind. The US Government should be aware of these losses as to
prevent laws from enabling the deaths of our loved ones.
Finally, many times the first question a patient asks after being diagnosed with a terminal
illness pertains to how much time he or she has left to live. Doctors may make extremely
educated deductions; unfortunately, physicians are not able to predict a person’s death with
certainty. For instance, David Kuo was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2003. Three different
times, in that same year, he was given six to twelve months to live. David lived ten years after
this diagnosis. David and his wife had two beautiful children during this time (Kuo). None of
these accomplishments would have been possible if David had listened to his doctor and ended
his life. One study that investigated the accuracy of a doctor’s ability to predict the date of a
patient’s death found that these predictions were less than accurate. Doctors giving an estimation
of how long a patient has left to live must take a lot of information into account. Some factors
include the person’s weight, age, personal habits and, genetic markers (Manoj). It is unethical to
allow a doctor to end a life, legally or otherwise, on the basis of an educated guess. Patients who
choose to end their lives with the aid of medication harm themselves, their future and, their loved
ones. Assisted suicide is unacceptable because doctors cannot guarantee a patient will not outlive
their diagnosis; unfortunately, their families will be left with the nagging question of what if.
Proponents of assisted suicide would have patients believe that the patient is the only one
with the right to decide when he or she will die so the practice should be acceptable. In reality,
patients must ask permission before being granted assistance in death. Patients must make two
separate requests to end their life. These requests must be made at least fifteen days apart. After
making these two separate requests, the patient must then submit a written request. Next, the
doctor accepts this written request and must then have it signed by two witnesses (Fess).
Appropriately, more than one person—the patient—must make this crucial decision.
Our society is one in which the laws we hold in high regards allow us the freedoms we
hold dear. We need to be careful when we petition the United States Government to legalize
assisted suicide. A society in which we are healed by the very doctors who may eventually kill us
is very worrisome. Physicians are incapable of accurately predicting the date of death of their
patients. Enacting a law that will allow a doctor to give a patient a death sentence without being
able to accurately judge the amount of time they have remaining is unethical. Death may not
always be painless or dignified; unfortunately, neither is life. Legalizing assisted suicide does not
give patients the freedom they desire. Assisted suicide will not allow patients the choice of when
they will die. Citizens are actually creating a legal stepping stone for the government to tell
patients when they will die. Allowing the government and doctors this power in our lives may
come to haunt us in the future.
Works Cited
Fess, Jennifer. “Physician-Assisted Suicide: Ongoing Challenges for Pharmacists.” Am J HealthSyst Pharm 68 (2011): Web 26 October 2015.
Kuo, Kim. “Giving Our Final Days to God.” Christianity Today (2015): Web 26 October 2015.
Manoj, Jain. “When Terminally Ill Patients Ask How Long They Have, Doctors Find it Hard to
Say.” The Washington Post. Health & Science, 19 December 2011: Web 26 October
2015.
Quill, Timothy. “Physician Assisted Death.” The Hasting Center, 10 October 2008: Web 20
November 2015.
Sanburn, Josh. ”The Last Choice.” Time. Time, 28 September 2015: Web 26 October 2015.
Seale, Clive. “Legalization of Euthanasia or Physician- Assisted Suicide: Survey of Doctors’
Attitudes.” Sage Publications (2009): Web 26 October 2015.
Good thesis that includes the three arguments and counter-argument/refute focus.
Please be cautious of pronoun agreements. Check to see if the pronoun's subject is singular or
plural, and then adjust this pronoun accordingly. Remember, the pronoun rule should also apply
across sentences, so if you use a pronoun in a sentence without noting the subject, be sure to
check your last sentence or two in order to determine if you last used a singular or plural form of
the noun. Then, if you change your pronoun, be sure any related verbs still agree.
Remember, words such as everybody, everyone, anybody, anyone, each, neither, nobody,
someone, a person, etc., take singular pronouns.
Good parenthetical citation the includes the first component of the related works cited entry.
Please review the Purdue Owl website listed below for MLA Works Cited format. Please remember
that each entry needs at least one parenthetical citation or signal phrase within the essay. Use the
left navigation menu on the page to locate the type of reference you need:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08/
You can also visit http://www.easybib.com or Straighterline's citation generator at
http://www.thesladvisor.com/citation-generator/ to have citations generated for you. Be sure to select
the correct source type first and then be sure the boxes contain the appropriate elements.
NOTE, some of the citation generators may not include placeholder elements for components that
are missing from your source. For example, according to the MLA Handbook 7th Edition, which is
considered the ruling document for MLA format, when a web source or other source requiring
publisher information does not list a publisher and/or publication date, you should use N.p. and n.d.
respectively in their typical positions within the entry. Many websites have publishers. Please use the
following source to check for the publishers of your web entries: http://whois.domaintools.com/. The
publisher will be listed under Registrant Org.
As you revise your work, try very hard to edit out most uses of the following phrases: there are,
there is, it is, it would be, there has been, etc.—especially when these phrases come at the
beginning of a sentence. These phrases usually add bulk to your writing without adding clarity or
meaning, and they can make your point more difficult to understand. Sometimes you can simply omit
the phrase, and in other cases you should try to begin the sentence with the sentence’s subject. See
below.
Weak: “There is controversy surrounding that prescription drug.”
Strong: “The prescription drug has caused a lot of controversy within the medical community
because it renders most users incomprehensible.”
Name the opposition.
A counter-argument section for this paper should explain what the opposition believes, which is the
opposite of the opinion you are arguing in your paper. Be sure to name your opposition person,
group, organization, etc., and explain how you know this person or group has this opinion. Did you
conduct an interview or research to learn of this group or person’s opposition to your idea?
Then, in the refute, try to prove that claim false, insignificant, or unimportant with information that is
new to the essay. Note that a refute should not be a solution. Include researched data for at least the
counter-argument side to create a strong counter-argument/refute section; however, a separate
source for each section works well. If you explain a counter-argument and refute from one source,
you are essentially summarizing the source, which is not the purpose of the section, so be sure to
vary the source/opinion for each component: the counter-argument and the refute.
Simplistically, the counter-argument/refute section is a fourth argument for your essay presented in a
new way: you state the opposition’s opinion first as a way to lead into your paper’s fourth argument.
Be sure all four arguments in the essay are distinctly different from one to the next, so do not
recycled data and ideas across arguments.
See http://www.shoreline.edu/doldham/101/html/what%20is%20a%20c-a.htm
Please avoid first person (“I,” “my,” “we,” “us,” etc.) and second person pronouns (“you”).
Instead, use third person pronouns: “he or she,” “him or her,” “they/them,” etc. Avoiding first
person pronouns prevents you from grouping the reader into a particular opinion ("we," "our,"
etc.), and avoiding second person pronouns prevents you from speaking to or referencing the
reader directly ("you"). You should even be cautious of speaking for a particular community or
group (“we,” “our”) in which you belong. Instead of using a term such as “our,” be sure to
pinpoint your target group. Are you referring to a particular society (American society)? What is
the age range (American adolescents)? Typically, a better word exists in place of first and second
person pronouns, such as “reader,” “audience,” etc.
Avoid personal experience in essays, especially research essays, unless otherwise noted in the
assignment instructions.
In other cases, you should start the sentence with the subject. For instance, instead of saying,
“We discover this in the scene where the mother enters,” use “The scene’s lighting increases
when the mother enters.” Note that the second example is more specific and direct.
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