Paper Assignment 2010
The paper should be about 5 type written pages.
It should have an introduction that tells the reader the main thesis or purpose of your paper and the points you will cover or the arguments you will make in discussing that thesis. It needn’t be catchy or engaging as you may have been taught in English classes. It needs to be a concise statement of what your paper will include. For example: Adolescents have often been portrayed as emotionally unstable and rebellious. This paper argues that the average teenager is actually emotionally healthy and has strong positive ties to parents and other authority figures. First, early psychological descriptions of teenagers will be presented. Second, more recent research on the mental health of teenagers will be discussed. Finally, the relationships between teenagers and authority figures will be examined.
It should have a conclusion that provides a short restatement of the argument or arguments that you have presented.
Your arguments and points should be backed up by making reference to the research findings and theories that you read in books and magazines. For example: However, in fact, most teenagers are not emotionally unstable. Recent studies show that less than 20% of adolescents experience psychological disorders (Momayer, 1996). Teenagers are more likely than adults to experienced depressed and elated mood states, but these emotional states tend to be fleeting and mild (Chicce, 1998). The source of the research finding is noted in the text by putting the author and date of publication of his book or article in parentheses in the text of the paper. This is the APA style of citation (citation=noting the source of your information in the text of your paper). Alternatively, you could use a footnote to indicate the source of the research findings.
An important difference between English and Psychology papers is that with English papers, you footnote exact quotations. With psychology papers you include a citation (either parentheses or footnote style) for every fact or theory you put in the paper –really everything in the paper that is not your own research or reasoning. (You can just put in one citation in a paragraph that focuses on information that comes from a single source to keep the paper from looking cluttered.) You would additionally include a citation for an exact quote, with page number noted. However, exact quotations are not used much in psychology papers. In English literature papers the exact words of the author often are important for the support of arguments. In psychology papers, it is the author’s research or ideas, not his or her exact words that usually matter.