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The purpose of this guideline is to make clear what constitutes a good term paper for this course. If these criteria look familiar, then you probably have taken a course with Dr. Kuznar. After having problems in getting students to hand in satisfactory papers, I have decided to adopt Dr. Kuznar's object standards for paper grading. Your term paper will be graded according to the following criteria.
Content 50%
The most important aspect of your term paper is its content. The subject should be appropriate for the class; your paper proposals should have guaranteed that the subject is appropriate. The paper MUST be the student's original work! Plagiarism is the unauthorized use (stealing) of others' written work and ideas. Your best guard against plagiarism is good referencing (see below), and NEVER copy another student's work. Anyone caught plagiarizing will automatically fail the course!
Organization 20%
If the paper is to be a good effort, it MUST be well organized. The best topic and most brilliant scholarship is destroyed by poor organization of material. Make sure that your paper contains the following:
- a clearly stated, narrowly defined topic
- an introduction that gives adequate background for your topic
- a clear presentation of only RELEVANT information. Do not fill pages with information that has nothing to do with your paper topic.
- a discussion of our current knowledge on your topic and a clearly stated conclusion.
- DO NOT simply stop writing when you reach the size limit of the term paper! If the paper has not throughly dealt with the problems you set out to discuss then it is incomplete.
References 10%
Acceptable references
No scholar is so brilliant that the scholar cannot rely on others' work and perspectives. Your paper must be appropriately referenced with scholarly journal titles and books that are relevant to the topic. Scholarly sources include books and journals written by scholars for scholars and students. Popular magazines such as "Time" and popular books are not reviewed with the same rigor as scholarly sources and they do not constitute appropriate references. The same can be said of information found on the web - web sites simply do not qualify as appropriate references. If you have any doubts about the appropriateness of your references, please ask me (click here to e-mail me).
Number of references
So often students ask, "How many references do we need"? So often, professors answer, "As many as are necessary". There is no better answer. A paper based on only one book is simply a book report and is not appropriate for a term paper. Although the exact number of scholarly references that you use will be based on your topic, I require that you use at least five (5) scholarly references. Once again, one purpose of the paper proposals is to limit your topic so that you need not do a dissertation's worth of literature review for your paper.
When to reference
When should you reference your statements? Whenever you make some statement upon which you are not an expert, you must reference some one who is a recognized expert in the field. For instance, stating that "Warfare has been a regular part of the human experience for millennia" may be your opinion, but unless you have spent years researching the topic, you must find a reference that supports this statement. Furthermore, if you make some very specific statement, such as "Maize constituted 80% of the Chavin diet", you must specify the page in your reference where you found this information. Please consult the style guide for additional information.
Use of quotes
I would also recommend that you avoid relying too heavily on quotes. While an occasional quote here or there may be necessary, an over-reliance on quotes is simply being lazy. How many quotes are too many? A rule of thumb for my classes would be at most one (1) quote every other page (no more than a total of ~4 for your entire paper).
How to appropriately reference your paper
How do you reference your statements? Please consult the style guide for the course.
Grammar and Spelling 10%
USE A SPELL CHECKER! While many Spanish and Quechua terms will not be found in your word processing program's spell checker, I expect all other common English terms to be spelled correctly.
The most brilliant work is worthless if no one can understand it. You will not be graded on subtleties in grammar, but if your grammar is so bad as to make the meaning of your paper ambiguous (or annoying to read), you will be down-graded. Make sure that your writing says what you want it to say! Ask someone else to read your paper, and use the writing center! Writing Center personnel will review your work. The Writing Center is located in KT G19, and you can avail yourself of this facility by signing up for an appointment (located on the door of KT G19) to see a tutor.
Referencing Style 10%
In this course, you will use Society for American Archaeology style of referencing material in the text and in your bibliography. This is very important since, if the reader cannot trace the origins of your data, or of your theoretical statements, they are not admissible in the paper. I have provided you with a summary of this style guide (click here).
Miscellaneous (deduction of points for non-compliance)
This site is was created and is maintained by Richard Sutter.
Date Last Modified 25 January, 2008.