Overview
Students are encouraged to find a topic relevant to the current interests. Here are 3 paper options. The paper should address:
- Choose a topic with contemporary relevance while addressing the historical significance and development
- Critically compare two psychological orientations
- Examine how a particular approach to therapy has changed over time
Scholarly Paper Tips
Hopefully, all of you are well versed in writing scholarly papers at this point of your academic career. If not, I would strongly recommend that you take the Effective Writing course offered at COSPP. Let me offer a few tips based off of common mistakes. Additionally, I recommend spending some time reviewing the writing resources on this web site.
- Be sure to have a point! While this seems obvious, it is one of the most common mistakes students make on scholarly papers. While this is not a position paper where you are articulating your position, you are still advocating for a position which you hold. However, the presentation is different. The paper should be more objective, focus more on content and scholarly resources, and focused on a particular topic. Journal articles provide a good example of what a scholarly paper should look like.
- Integrate your resources. It is not uncommon for a paper to take turns addressing a different sources one by one. This is not good, academic writing. This is just linking reviews of similar articles. Part of the art of academic writing is making the paper your own. When students struggle with this, I will at times recommend they write the paper and without any references and then go back to integrate the references into the paper. While I wouldn't normally recommend this approach as it often leads to a choppy paper after the sources are integrated back in, it does help illustrate the idea that you are to write the paper around your own organization.
- Use scholarly resources. If you are unsure what makes a resource scholarly, please read the section of the web site on determining if a resource is scholarly.
- If you are unsure about APA style, look it up! At the graduate level, it is expected that you can write at a professional level which includes using proper APA style. You will be marked down if you do not use correct APA style. Additionally, using poor style can lead to many other problems such as 'unintentional plagiarism' and creating a lack of clarity in your position. Learning APA style as you go helps make later projects, such as your dissertation or articles written for publication, much easier. This web site has a number of good resources which can help you with APA style issues.
- Do your own work! Again, this goes without saying. However, this seems to becoming more of an issue in academia all the time. Most students are surprised how easy it is for professors to recognize plagiarism. This can be a very quick way to end a career. If you find yourself tempted, just keep in mind the amount of time and money you've invested in this career choice. It's not worth the risk!!
Other Paper Requirements
1) The paper should be 6-8 pages of text (not including the title page or references). Please note this is slightly shorted than noted in the syllabus.
2) The paper should be written in APA style unless otherwise noted. No abstract is required.
3) The paper should include a minimum of 5 references from scholarly sources. These may be references from the required class readings or outside scholarly resources.
4) The paper must be turned in electronically to the professor unless the student receives permission ahead of time to turn in a hard copy. The paper must be received by time class begins on the due date to avoid the deduction of late points. It is strongly recommended that you send a copy (cc) of your paper to your own Email address to be able to verify your attempt to send the paper. If there is an error in transmission and the student is unable to demonstrate evidence they attempted to send the paper, late points may be deducted from the paper.