Term Paper on "American Citizens Should Have the Right"

Quoted Instructions for "American Citizens Should Have the Right" Assignment:

write your formal final research paper statement for submission to your instructor.

Your submission should be in a MS Word document and follow this specific format:

the topic is on: Should we have the right to bear arms or should this right be taken away from us citizen?

I AM FOR PRO GUN

STEP 1: Present Your Thesis Statement:

Your thesis statement of one complete sentence. The statement should be focused on a specific content area and indicate the question, debate, or conflict that arises when people (yourself included) talk about this subject. For example, "child abuse" is insufficient, but "Increasing funding to child protective service organizations will drastically reduce child abuse" gives the topic and indicates the claim you will seek to prove, making it an effective thesis statement.



STEP 2: Describe Three (3) Specific Claims:

A description of three (3) specific claims of this thesis statement that you plan to pursue in your final project, and an explanation of how you will develop these. For example, with a thesis like "Increasing funding to child protective service organizations will drastically reduce child abuse," the author could say:

Three claims must be developed to show that increasing funding to child protective service organizations will drastically reduce child abuse: child abuse is a large problem that must be addressed, the current funding is insufficient to combat the problem, and third, increased funding would decrease child abuse.

Statistics will show that child abuse is a large problem. A 2003 study by the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect in the Department of Health and Human Services substantiated 897,000 cases of abused children nationwide.

To show that current funding is insufficient, the case load of child welfare agents will be discussed. The Child Welfare League of America recommends no more than twelve active cases per agent, yet in many states, the totals are much higher because the budgets cannot afford to hire more caseworkers (Child Welfare Workers, 1998) It is also important to show how high caseloads allow child abuse to continue, and a recent case from New Jersey of a child dying because the caseworker did not track the situation closely will be discussed (Lerner, 2004).

According to the Child Welfare League of America (1996), caseworkers leave because the pay is poor, and they are not properly trained or supervised which means they cannot do their job well. Increasing the funding will increase hiring, improve training, better morale, and reduce turnover. These caseworkers, well paid and motivated, will be able to reach out to the children that need them and decrease the child abuse epidemic.



STEP 3: Describe Your Challenges:

Describe some challenges you anticipate in pursuing this thesis statement. Which areas that interest you might be hard to research? What aspects of your thesis statement and topic need further definition? Are there areas you have yet to think about that you believe may be important to the project? As an example, our author above might say:

While everyone knows child abuse exists, finding accurate assessments of its scope has been a challenge. Part of the issue is that a great deal of child abuse goes unreported. Groups trying to gain an accurate number will often estimate to account for under-reporting, but the estimates may be biased based on the group's goals. For example, a group that is fighting to increase penalties for child abuse may overestimate the numbers because the more children that are abused, the stronger their argument becomes. On the other hand, a group might underestimate the numbers if they want funding to go elsewhere.

In researching caseworker turnover, the reasons for it appear to be more complex than just low morale due to too much work and low pay. Other issues such as poor management, hiring of unskilled workers, and out-of-date computer systems also factor in. I need to determine if funding alone will fix these issues, or if I will need to expand my proposed solution.



STEP 4: Create an Annotated Bibliography:

Include an annotated bibliography (sample below) of all the sources you have found (minimum of three at this point) in APA format. If you are using sources found for your Unit 4 project, you may be able to use some of what you wrote there here. Each of the sources should appear as follows:

1. Citation in APA format (for example, Brown, M. (1999). Ten steps back.

2. A description of the source's main point.

3. A description of how the source relates to your other sources in addressing the topic

4. Ideas for pursuing further sources that relate to or complement this source's content and approach.

Doe, J. 2005. How to Write a Great Paper: the *****'s Way of

Writing. New York: Makebelieve Publishers.

The main point of this book is to help people become better

*****s by using a number of techniques that the author has

used in his classrooms and in his own writing. In his experience,

many students think that writing a great paper begins with

research, but he points out that using a prewriting technique

is actually better. This directly supports the idea in my thesis

statement that pre-writing is key.

This source relates to my other sources (so far) in that it

focuses on the process of writing, and how that process can

vary from person to person. I would like to find more books or

articles that describe other types of pre-writing strategies because

the techniques included in Doe's book, although good, are somewhat

limited.