i uploaded a file for you but there are 2 topics on the file you have to choose one of the topics

For you final paper of the course, you will explore argument in your own professional field. Within any profession there are issues that are actively debated and discussed and having the ability to take part in that professional debate, in an intelligent and knowledgeable way, is important to your professional success. For this essay you will take an issue on which people in your profession actively disagree and take a clear position on that issue. You will support your position with reasons, and you will support your reasons with evidence, the elements of argument that you have been studying all semester. Your audience for this paper will be others in your professional field as well as the general public. Terms commonly used inside the profession that may be new to a general audience will need to be explained. You are the author of this paper, so the arguments you present will be your own (without using “I” or referring to yourself), and sources will be used only to provide th I had been asked to write out what I put on the board on Tuesday, because some students said it was new information they hadn't heard before. In looking over the handout on Blackboard for Paper Four: Argument in Your Profession, almost all of the information I put up on the screen is there. Page length, number of sources, how many sources need to be from books or articles in magazines, journals or newspapers, and using MLA 8 format for Works Cited and in-text citations are all there. The only information that I mentioned Tuesday that isn't in the handout were more common sense things about all research papers. You can't use "I" or refer to yourself in any way in your final research paper. Understand that your reader understands that all cited information comes from sources. Any ideas expressed outside of cited material is that of the author of the paper (you). Your thesis doesn't need to use "I" because we know that when you say "Vaccinations are safe and should be required for all children attending public schools" that this is your opinion. You don't need to say "I think", "I feel" or "I will prove" because we understand that you wrote that sentence and it is your opinion. Research papers are serious papers that use proof from credible sources only, so personal stories about your life experience cannot be proven independently, so you can't use that as evidence. Some people think of research papers something you "fill up" with research, however, and that's not true. I have gotten many papers where the presence of the author (you) is entirely gone. While you can't refer to yourself, you are the writer of the paper, and you need to be an active presence throughout. You will mostly write your own introduction, your own statements of what the arguments are proving your thesis, and you will comment on how the statistics, expert testimony, examples, etc. help prove the arguments you are making. You are the guide to your aduience on what the source material means and you have to explain how it supports and proves your position ont he issue. This is why I said earlier in the semester that paragraphs that simply have a (Jones 23) stuck at the end are likely wrong. You should follow the source material with explanation and analysis. Your paper should not back to back source material for pages on end. This leads to why I said Tuesday that you need to use "Introductory phrases" or "tags" at the start of source material to show where it begins "According to William J. Smith in "Why Engineers are Facing New Legal Trouble"," and showing where the source ends with a parenthetical citation (185). This tells the reader that the source goes from one point to another and ends clearly when they see the page number in parenthesis. Then, if you explain why that information helps prove your point, it is clear that you are not talking, not a source. This is also why your paper should not have paragraph after paragraph that ends with (Jones 23), since you will almost always comment after your source is done. The only other thing I warned about was "borrowing" other people's work as whole arguments for your paper. I have seen this happen a lot, so that's why I mentioned it. Normal research papers use several sources in each argument. It lends credibility to the argument because evidence came to back it up from a variety of sources. One problem I have seen is when someone conveniently finds an author who has written about your topic previously. Instead of using a few facts from the source, they take everything. They argument is taken from the article, the evidence is taken from the article, and the commentary is taken from the article. The warning sign I look for is if your paper has a whole argument where you cite the same author over and over again. Then I know that you basically took someone else's work on the topic before you and put it into your paper without looking for other sources or writing your own argument and analysis. Just look out for that. The reason this information isn't in the handout, is these are issues I have seen come up for my entire twenty years of teaching at ISU. I'm just trying to warn you away from making the mistakes of past students. I hope this is helpful.