A woman went to the emergency room for severe abdominal cramping. She was diagnosed with diverticulitis; however, as a precaution, the doctor ordered a CAT scan. The CAT scan revealed a growth on the pancreas, which turned out to be pancreatic cancer—the real cause of the cramping.
Because of a high potential for misdiagnosis, determining the precise cause of abdominal pain can be time-consuming and challenging. By analyzing case studies of abnormal abdominal findings, nurses can prepare themselves to better diagnose conditions in the abdomen.
In this assignment, you will analyze a SOAP note case study that describes abnormal findings in patients seen in a clinical setting. You will consider what history should be collected from the patients, as well as which physical exams and diagnostic tests should be conducted. You will also formulate a differential diagnosis with several possible conditions.
Abdominal Assessment
SUBJECTIVE:
• CC: “My stomach hurts, I have diarrhea and nothing seems to help.”
• HPI: JR, 47 yo WM, complains of having generalized abdominal pain that started 3 days ago. He has not taken any medications because he did not know what to take. He states the pain is a 5/10 today but has been as much as 9/10 when it first started. He has been able to eat, with some nausea afterwards.
• PMH: HTN, Diabetes, hx of GI bleed 4 years ago
• Medications: Lisinopril 10mg, Amlodipine 5 mg, Metformin 1000mg, Lantus 10 units qhs
• Allergies: NKDA
• FH: No hx of colon cancer, Father hx DMT2, HTN, Mother hx HTN, Hyperlipidemia, GERD
• Social: Denies tobacco use; occasional etoh, married, 3 children (1 girl, 2 boys)
OBJECTIVE:
• VS: Temp 99.8; BP 160/86; RR 16; P 92; HT 5’10”; WT 248lbs
• Heart: RRR, no murmurs
• Lungs: CTA, chest wall symmetrical
• Skin: Intact without lesions, no urticaria
• Abd: soft, hyperctive bowel sounds, pos pain in the LLQ
• Diagnostics: None
ASSESSMENT:
• Left lower quadrant pain
• Gastroenteritis
• PLAN: This section is not required for the assignments in this course (NURS 6512) but will be required for future courses.
To prepare:
With regard to the SOAP note case study provided:
• Review this week’s Learning Resources, and consider the insights they provide about the case study.
• Consider what history would be necessary to collect from the patient in the case study.
• Consider what physical exams and diagnostic tests would be appropriate to gather more information about the patient’s condition. How would the results be used to make a diagnosis?
• Identify at least five possible conditions that may be considered in a differential diagnosis for the patient.
To complete: TO DO
1. Analyze the subjective portion of the note. List additional information that should be included in the documentation.
2. Analyze the objective portion of the note. List additional information that should be included in the documentation.
3. Is the assessment supported by the subjective and objective information? Why or Why not?
4. What diagnostic tests would be appropriate for this case and how would the results be used to make a diagnosis?
5. Would you reject/accept the current diagnosis? Why or why not? Identify three possible conditions that may be considered as a differential diagnosis for this patient. Explain your reasoning using at least 3 different references from current evidence based literature.

The following are the book we use for the class.
Ball, J. W., Dains, J. E., Flynn, J. A., Solomon, B. S., & Stewart, R. W. (2015). Seidel’s guide to physical examination (8th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.
• Chapter 4, “Vital Signs and Pain Assessment” (pp. 50-63)
Dains, J. E., Baumann, L. C., & Scheibel, P. (2016). Advanced health assessment and clinical diagnosis in primary care (5th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.

Chapter 3, “Abdominal Pain” (pp. 11-32)

You will submit an Economic Development Analysis and Proposal Plan, consisting of 15-20 pages, not including the title page, abstract, or reference page. In order to complete this assignment, you must choose a specific locale that you want to use for your case study. You may wish to select the community in which you currently live or a hometown as the focus of this report. A case must be a “bounded system” with definable parameters (Stake, 1995). Thus, you must choose a locale that you can define and limit. For example, you should not use New York City. Its size is far beyond what you will be able to accomplish in this course. Likewise, you would not want to choose Huston, Idaho, as it is far too small to have a need for a cohesive economic development plan. In this assignment, you will target the specific situations found in an American city, town, or county. This assignment will require that you address the following six specific areas:

Locale
When choosing your locale, make sure that you will be able to find demographic and economic information. You will want to choose an area with which you are familiar or an area where there is obvious need. Attempt to pick a city or a town that is not extremely large (i.e., New York City, however, Staten Island could be a viable project). Choosing wisely will make your research more focused so that you can complete the research by the time the course has finished.

Economic Situation
You must detail the specific economic situation facing this location. For example, if you were to choose Flint, MI, you would have to discuss the impact of the auto industry moving away from the city and the subsequent economic and social conditions of the city. How has the economic shift impacted the city and how has the city responded in the last 30 years? Additionally, what initiatives has the city implemented to revive the economic, social, and cultural aspects of the city? You will need to know the city and what is going on in the city to be able to create an action plan, but before you can make suggestions, you must intimately understand the pressures facing the constituents. Part of this section will need to detail what kinds industry the city emphasizes (industrial, educational, technology).

SWOT
If you are unfamiliar with a SWOT analysis, you will need to conduct a Google search to find examples. In short, a SWOT is an analysis of an entity’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It may be helpful when looking for your S, W, O, and T to call/email those living in the area you are researching. They can provide a firsthand perspective that your other research may not provide. This portion of the assignment will take preplanning. People usually are willing to share strengths or weaknesses, but they may not be able to share both based on their personal biases, experiences, and situation in life. Make sure your SWOT is balanced, and include all information that you have received.

Legal and Public Policy Issues
Based on the SWOT analysis and other research, what legal and/or public policy issues are facing the city? For example, Minneapolis, MN is facing challenges from the Minnesota Vikings. The team wants to build a new stadium, but there are not enough funds to build the kind of stadium the team wants. This is a public policy issue because the lawmakers do not want to increase taxes to pay for leisure, but the team is threatening to move to another state if the policymakers do not acquiesce. With that said, the addition of a new stadium could add economic benefits to the city by way of additional revenue for sporting events and concerts as well as incidental revenue from sponsorships. Explore your locale and find out if there are lawsuits facing leaders in the community or public policy hot-button issues that will impact future economic development. Please keep in mind that the situation your locale may be facing may be more practical than the example listed.

Governmental Atmosphere
How is the government structured in this locale? For instance, Lynchburg, VA appoints its mayor. Thus, the mayor is little more than a figure head of the “hired” government. What is unique or specific about the government in your locale? It may not need to be unique, but it characterizes the atmosphere of the community. Does the government lean left or right, or is it openly pursuing a left or right agenda? Evaluate whether the legislators govern based on their ideological bias or from the center, rather than focusing on the best interests of the city. Explain the structure of the government. Include an organizational chart of the government. Detail the function and role of each individual in the government and summarize how this atmosphere impacts the direction of economic development in the past and present. Also, discuss the role private business plays in governing. Does the local governing body (city council, mayor’s office, county commission, etc.) work closely with businesses and/or the Chamber of Commerce, or is the relationship strained? Are the economic policies driven by government, business, or both? Are there any public/private partnerships in your community? If so, fully evaluate the usefulness of such an arrangement.

Action Plan
This is the “meat” of your assignment. All that you have been writing up until this point has been leading you to this section of the assignment. The action plan is your recommendation for what the community can and should do to increase the economic development. You are required to think outside of the box. Your plans must be sustainable and pragmatic, and they must address the needs of the community where the community is deficient. Now that you know the weaknesses, address them, but make sure that in addressing the weaknesses you are not undermining the strengths. Seize the opportunities and remove the threats. You must think strategically and systematically. You will need to fully justify and substantiate your action plan and you will need to show how this action plan could and will work within the specific structure of this locale. This is why you have detailed the governmental atmosphere and public policy issues. As in our case with Minneapolis, having a professional football team leave the community will hurt the community economically. This is a threat, but unilaterally raising taxes cannot be your answer because the governmental atmosphere is fiscally conservative; however, the team wants a new stadium that will cost more than a billion dollars. What actions could you take to create new capital that will keep this team in your city, but also provide new money for the building of a stadium? In this section of the paper, you get to be the “decision maker,” but it must fit within the confines of your chosen community, and your proposal must be fully justified in all points. Ultimately, you are making your case as to why your proposal would be good for your community and lead to economic growth and development.

Case Study Project: Part 2 is due by 11:59 PM (ET) on Friday of Module/Week 8.

Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research (1st ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

This essay is in 2 parts with each Page has 300 words.
Remember, The originality of your work Monitored through Turnitin!!!

Page 1. Briefly describe the film, book, album, or video game that you will review. And then tell us whether or not you will be recommending this item to your audience in your review.

Page 2. In this discussion, we will display the skills of showing and telling in our writing. Tell us about one of the strengths or one of the weaknesses of the item that you are reviewing. For example, if an actor in a film does a great job, then describe his or her best moment (avoid spoilers)!. If a band or artist had a particularly great song on an album, then explain what is great about it in your opinion.

Remember that you are writing for an audience that knows less about this than you do, so act as a guide.

This essay is aiming to show the struggle of the applicant in an educational barrier and how he fought to overcome it.
Original detailed description is below:
Describe how you have taken advantage of a significant educational opportunity or worked to overcome an educational barrier you have faced.
Things to consider: An educational opportunity can be anything that has added value to your educational experience and better prepared you for college. For example, participation in an honors or academic enrichment program, or enrollment in an academy that’s geared toward an occupation or a major, or taking advanced courses that interest you — just to name a few.
If you choose to write about educational barriers you’ve faced, how did you overcome or strived to overcome them? What personal characteristics or skills did you call on to overcome this challenge? How did overcoming this barrier help shape who are you today?
—–
Please only consider the option of overcoming an educational barrier.
Here is the story I want you to write about:
The applicant has been the top student in school and his specialty is math. He is very proud of his math talent and started to grow arrogant (too proud of himself). He once gained a chance to participate in math competition which was said to be really difficult, his arrogant blinded him from preparing for the competition and costed him the chance to win the prize. (Like, he made many careless mistakes and got stuck at difficult questions, maybe add his thoughts at that time, anxious, nervous, started to realized not preparing was a bad idea, etc.). After the competition he learned there are a lot of great people at his age with outstanding math knowledge and started to be patient and gained strong will in overcoming the barrier that keeps him as the top math student in class but this time he is not just talented but also hardworking. So the educational barrier in this case is not about not learning stuff well but being too talented that ignored the importance of hardworking, patience etc. and he also gained strong will from this experience.
—–
The “barrier part” of the story may be very different from the traditional ones, so please think carefully in how to demonstrate it, so that we are showing this process instead of telling this process.
Please make the paper fluent and consistent, add logical linkages in between to ensure the logic flow of the essay.
Word limit: ~300
Enclosed is the applicant’s personal statement and his essay on diverse background, may be helpful to you.

The critical assignment in this course is a report on a health information technology (HIT) system. Limit your paper to no more than ten (10) typed pages, excluding any charts, graphs, and reference page.

Within the report of the system you selected and have researched throughout this course, you should clearly identify, compose, and integrate each of the following components:

You will give a summary of the informatics system, including its history and background, the founding organization, and how the system currently interacts with the U.S. health care system.

You will share the perspectives of health professionals, including reflections and recommendations for improving both documentation, documentation technology, and/or informatics skills.

You will describe some clinical decision support tools that benefit (if in existence) or would benefit clinicians, care teams, and patients utilizing your chosen system. Think about how the workflow can be improved for practitioners and health care safer for patients.

You will discuss the impact of wireless mobile devices in accessing health care information. Does your system have accessibility via the internet or portable devices? You will identify and describe some of the potential risks and proposed risk management strategies for accessing, storing, and transmitting EPHI.

Finally, you will identify the potential opportunities and limitations of your health information technology system. Taking the role of either a clinician or a patient, you will discuss changes you hope to see in the future to improve workflow or patient care.

It is highly encouraged for you to include materials you have already created in your Supportive Submissions, Homework, and Reflections if appropriate. These were all designed to assist in building your report. Make sure to incorporate any feedback I have given previously.

You must integrate information learned throughout the course to fully address all aspects and requirements of the critical assignment. As a reminder, this is the critical assignment for this course and must be passed at an acceptable rate (defined as 70%) in order to pass the course.

All written submissions should reflect professionalism in grammar, spelling, writing style/format (one-inch margins, double spaced, typed in 12-point Times New Roman font), include APA 6th citations when appropriate, an appropriate title page, and be uploaded as .doc or .docx documents. Refer to the scoring rubric for a detailed list of assignment expectations and scoring.

In this SLP assignment, you will prepare a PowerPoint slide presentation about Age Discrimination.
To begin, review the SLP materials related to Age Discrimination in the background material. To better inform yourself, also do some independent research to identify trends in the workforce related to age.
In your Power Point presentation, identify current issues in Age Discrimination in the workplace, social, economic, and political factors that will impact Age Discrimination in the future, and your recommendations for approaches that organizations should take to address age discrimination in the future.
Be sure to use in-text citations in your slides. Your PowerPoint presentation should be about 6-7 slides in addition to a title slide at the beginning and a reference slide at the end. Tip: Do not have too many or too few words on each slide – consider this is a slide presentation, not an essay. Also include your extra comments in the Speaker’s Comments section at the bottom of each slide, or use audio recording (voice over), or both.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Your submission will be assessed on the criteria found in the grading rubric for this assignment:
• Meets assignment requirements
• Critical thinking
• Writing and assignment organization
• Use of sources and mechanics
• Timeliness of assignment

Objective: To experience and observe your reactions to the “not-OK” feelings of disorientation in a strange cultural environment.

Rationale:

This activity is based on two widely recognized premises:
1. That culture shock is endemic; we cannot inoculate ourselves against it, but we can improve our recover mechanisms, and
2. that “not-OK” feelings, once recognized have a tendency to disappear.

Procedure: Within your present cultural environment select a particular location which seems especially “foreign” to you, and plan to visit it. The location must meet only three conditions:
1.
Your stay should be for at least two hours.
2. You should be able to be a participant- observer within the location you choose. Do not arrange a “guided tour”. Attempt to involve yourself directly in the activities of your chosen location.
3. You must keep a record (notebook) of your experiences, thoughts and feelings in your foreign environment.

Examples of activities: assisting nurses in a mental hospital, if you are heterosexual: visiting a gay nightclub, participating in an unfamiliar religious ceremony, spending an evening with an unfamiliar ethnic group. There are many possibilities. The critical element is to choose something very different from what you are used to and which causes — even as you think about it — some sensation of discomfort.

Format for submission:

Your report should be approximately four double spaced typed spaces. In the report you should demonstrate knowledge of course concepts and address the following topics:

1. Describe the event, its purpose, the cultural group originating from the even, when it occurred, where it occurred.
2. Are their similar events in your culture?
3. What did you see and experience at this event that you feel confident you understood accurately?
4. What did you notice that was culturally puzzling to you?
5. How did you feel or respond personally to being in a different cultural situation that was not as predictable as communication in your own culture.
6. Describe an important conclusion due to your participation in this event.
7. Demonstrate that you have a thorough understanding of culture shock and its dimensions.

In this assignment, identify a problem from this article (https://www.higheredtoday.org/2015/06/29/fighting-food-insecurity-on-campus/), explain why it is exigent for your audience and propose a new, unique plan to help solve the problem so that you can expand the conversation on the issue. Synthesize at least 3 credible sources that speak about your issue and support your ideas.

Note. Development for Audience
The audience for this proposal will be a stakeholder(groups or people that have something to gain or lose) connected to the issue you choose. In order to best achieve your purpose with your audience, you’ll need to:
Develop your paper by fully explaining the problem, establishing why it is exigent, and plan to help solve the problem;
Carefully consider which stakeholder will need to hear your ideas and which stakeholder has the power to implement the plan you propose;
Appeal to that audience using your understanding of their needs, values, and knowledge about this issue.
Offer evidence from your sources to support your assertions about both the problem and explain how that evidence proves the point you’re trying to make;

Responsibility Centers and Financial Controls
Assignment Details:
Deliverable Length: Excel spreadsheet and 2-3 pages Microsoft Word

Globalization is a continuous process whereby managers become aware of the impact of international activities on their companies. This process takes place in stages that include exporting, licensing joint ventures, wholly owned subsidiaries, and global sourcing. Each stage has implications for the type of accounting information reported.
Striking Furs imports furs from Canada. In the space provided below, prepare journal entries to record the following events.
• Dec. 11, 2017: Purchased furs from Capable Trappers, Ltd., a Canadian corporation, at a price of 25,000 Canadian dollars, due in 60 days. The current exchange rate is $0.85 U.S. dollars per Canadian dollar. (Striking uses the perpetual inventory method; debit the Inventory account.)
• Dec. 31, 2017: Striking made a year-end adjusting entry relating to the account payable to Capable Trappers. The exchange rate at year-end is $0.89 U.S. dollars per Canadian dollar.
• Feb. 9, 2018: Issued a check for $21,750 (U.S. dollars) to National Bank in full settlement of the liability to Capable Trappers, Ltd. The exchange rate at this date is $0.87 U.S. dollars per Canadian dollar.

2. Explain ways in which Striking Furs can protect itself against the losses that would arise from a sudden increase in the foreign exchange rate.

Argument Paper on the Components of Myths

Introduction:

For this assignment, you will be writing an essay, in MLA format, of 1500-2000 words in which you will explore one or several related key components of myths and use the myths we have been reading to demonstrate it/them. In other words, you will want to take a broader approach in this paper and present an argument about how a particular myth or group of myths demonstrates other aspects of mythology. While Essay #1 was about applying a particular theory, Essay #2 involves you making a mythological argument on your own.

This assignment is due by 11:50PM ET, Sunday, at the end of Week 6. Extensions are available, but you must notify (you do not need to ask—just notify) the instructor in advance of the deadline. You may set your due date up through 11:50PM ET on Wednesday of Week 7.

Argument:

Key to this paper is understanding the difference between an argument essay and other sorts of essays. In many essays, the goal is simply to report information—to illustrate a given point. Essay #2 is not an illustration paper, in which one simply illustrates a point that is certain. Essay #2 is an argument paper; it must take up a position which must be demonstrated to be valid.

If we were to look at the myth, The Odyssey, we might see the difference between an illustration paper and an argument paper. An illustration paper thesis might be something like this—”The Odyssey teaches the reader a great deal about the ideal host/guest relationship.” No one who has read The Odyssey and understood it would dispute that point—there are many situations in which someone is a host and someone is a guest–some of these situations go well, and some of them go badly–so clearly the host/guest relationship is something one could learn about. Clearly, it is important to the story. One would just give examples—and that would be sufficient. This is an illustration paper.

An argument paper would have a thesis statement which must be demonstrated and supported. In the epic, some of the “hosts” are men or male creatures while some of the “hosts” are women or female creatures; some of the hosts are divine or semi-divine while others are mortal. One might be able to find a pattern in all of this—but it is unlikely that the pattern will be self-evident. For example, one might draw the conclusion that women or female beings are being negatively depicted in terms of the host/guest relationship (since the relationship always seems to relate to their sexuality). Another person, however, might conclude that the women or female beings are being positively depicted, since they do pretty consistently offer hospitality. A thesis which took a position on this topic would have to be supported and justified with explanation—it would not be a clear point that everyone would accept immediately. This would be an argument paper.

Before beginning this assignment, then, be sure that you understand the distinction between an argument essay and an illustration essay. The argument essay seeks to convince the reader that your point is valid; the illustration paper simply seeks to explain a new idea in a clear way.

The key will be the thesis statement. Be sure you write an argument thesis rather than an analytic or expository (illustration, for example) or narrative thesis. Be sure to review the distinction between these various types of thesis statements before you begin.

Overview:

The goal of this assignment is for you to start interpreting myth in greater complexity. The principal skills being introduced are independent development of an idea and evaluation of a text, as well as analysis and application—all of these are more complex skills than simple knowledge or comprehension (though both of these latter skills are needed for basic understanding of the myth and the concept being applied).

Within your paper, you will want to demonstrate how a particular component of mythology can be found in a given myth or myths (in any medium) and how that component works to bring meaning to the myth. For example, you could explore the significance of the various forms of myths; the relationship of myths to other disciplines, such as art or history; or the connection of myth to contemporary film. Any other connection between the concepts we have been discussing and reading about and myth—in any medium—could work well for this paper.

At the end of this document, you will find the grading rubric. Be sure to check your final draft against the grading rubric to make sure that you have included all necessary elements. Below, you will find a list of resources which you might find helpful, as well as step-by-step suggestions for how you might handle this assignment. Be sure to read the full assignment before beginning to write, and be sure to ask (well in advance of the deadline) any questions which you may have.
Resources:
Primary materials (the materials below are not mandatory—you may pick from these or other sources to find your ideas for your paper):
The Key Elements of Mythology—common elements and themes that one might find in myth: http://www.syracusecityschools.com/tfiles/folder716/The%20Key%20Elements%20of%20Myth ology.pdf
Common Elements in Creation Myths—these are the common elements and themes one might find specifically in creation myths: http://www.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths.html
Ways of Interpreting Myth—a basic summary of various approaches to studying myth: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/ways.htm
You may use any other resources or approaches that seem interesting to you as long as the focus is upon one or more of the various components of myth.
Secondary resources:
MLA document format—Purdue OWL’s explanation of how to format a document in MLA style: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/24/
Sample MLA Essay—Purdue OWL’s sample MLA-style paper, annotated with explanations:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/13/

Thesis Generator—Ashford University has put up a thesis generator that may help you to come up with a thesis for your paper. I used it to create a thesis for a paper on Star Wars: A New Hope and got this as a rough draft for my thesis:
While audiences found the film engaging, Lucas’s reliance on Campbell’s overly simplistic concept of the monomyth made the film one-dimensional because there is too little motivation for the action, the characters remain underdeveloped, and only the robots seem to have any real internal life.
The thesis generator is not a bad little tool if you’d like to try it: https://awc.ashford.edu/writing-tools-thesis-generator.html
Step-by-Step Suggestions:
Step 1: The first thing to do with any assignment is to read it carefully, long before you are going to give it a try, and promptly ask any questions you have.
Step 2: Select the reading(s) which you are most interested in or select the topic which you are most interested in. You might choose to look at the role of women in Greek myth; you might choose to analyze the concept of fate in Oedipus Rex; you might choose to compare creation myths of various cultures to one another. The main thing to remember is that you won’t be writing an objective report— you will be taking a position (expressing your unique insight), supporting it with information from the readings, and explaining why your insight is a valid one. So, don’t pick a topic that will only work as a report topic (that is, do not just share your knowledge—take a position which someone could oppose and show why your position is a worthwhile one to consider).
Step 3: Read or view your sources, making notes as you are reading. If your source appears also in an online summary, remember that such summaries are helpful, but don’t cite/quote from an online summary and be sure to read the actual text. Cite from the actual text. If you cannot find a full text version of the myth you are interested in, please promptly ask the instructor for assistance.
Step 4: Remember that you also have to cite any sources, including your primary sources (the versions of the myth or myths that you are discussing). If you look up secondary sources–journal articles, for example–be sure that you take good notes so that you don’t accidentally include someone else’s ideas as if they were your own. Don’t use sources (other than primary sources—like our readings) unless they are written by people with proper credentials. Just in general, unless you know how to evaluate sources to make sure that they are credible, don’t use sources except those from our library and from proper academic journals (you are free to get all the help you wish from the librarians—who will help you locate good sources, cite, and document them).
Step 5: Be sure to keep good notes when you select your examples from the texts (whether they are print, video, or other medium). If you want to see how to do an MLA-style, in-text citation for a quote or paraphrase from a book, then please look here: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/
Step 6: You will need to choose a thesis—the thesis will be what you will be supporting. Remember that it needs to be an argument thesis (not an expository thesis or an analytical thesis). Be sure that you choose an arguable stance which can be proven with evidence from the readings. There are many online sources (particularly on YouTube) which explain the difference between argument and expository thesis statements. You can find one here—but there are many more.
Important Note: If you look in our classroom, you will see that many of the prompts (and many of the questions asked by your fellow classmates) are argument prompts. That is, they do not have a specific, concrete answer that is inarguable. They ask you to take a position and then support it with evidence from the readings. If you found one you liked, you might borrow it and then apply it to a new reading (a question about heroes or about human/divine relations or about transformations). Just be sure that the thesis is an argument (requiring you to take a position and support it) rather than an illustration (requiring you just to explain).
Step 7: Start drafting your paper. It should be in MLA format. It should have a Works Cited page. Any source that you refer to or borrow language from must have a parenthetical reference in the text whenever you are using it. An entry for it must be listed on the Works Cited page. If you have any questions at all about how to cite and document correctly, just ask in the classroom. I really enjoy helping with these things before any problems emerge.
Important Note: Don’t use the feature in Word or any other program (even a citation generator) which creates entries. Don’t use the template for MLA in Microsoft Word. The 8th edition of the MLA handbook recently came out, and any program you have is probably going to be abiding by the older edition. In any case, Word (and other programs) almost always do MLA style incorrectly—practically everything will be wrong if you use the auto-cite features in your word processor. The right format is here. The librarians will be happy to help, and I am also happy to answer questions.
Step 8: If you are not that comfortable with writing a literary analysis essay, using an outline isn’t a bad idea. Just remember that your essay will be about 1500-2000 words long. It should have an introduction, a very brief summary of the given work/works, body paragraphs which support your thesis and prove it to be valid, and a conclusion. (Please do not use the phrase, “In conclusion,” when you start your conclusion—that works well in an oral presentation, but not in a written piece.)
Step 9: You will need to structure the essay clearly—it could be a standard five-paragraph essay (as the outline, above, suggests). Or, you might do something a bit more complex, or a traditional argument essay. But, in any case, the piece should have a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion— there should be a unifying idea as well as signposts throughout the essay which guide the reader.
Step 10: Try not to have choppy little paragraphs—group things which make sense together. Be sure to use transitions and signal phrases, and provide signposts throughout your paper–such as an introduction, a thesis statement, topic sentences, concluding sentences, and a conclusion.
Step 11: Don’t forget to edit. One good trick is to set your program up so that it will read the text out loud to you—listening to the text might help you catch errors. You can also try reading your paper aloud, yourself, and particularly reading it from the last sentence back to the first one. Doing these things will disrupt your reading and make you really listen to what you have said. Feel free to get help from a beta reader, especially for proofreading. Remember, also, that you can get help from the Effective Writing Center—you can either submit your paper for comments or you can interact live online with an EWC advisor.
If your paper contains more than 20% “unoriginal” material (that is, quotes from your source or sources, even if they are cited), then it will probably include too much quoting; if it is over 30%, it is definitely too much quoting. If there is any source included (a long passage—not just a few words) which isn’t properly cited with a parenthetical citation AND an entry on the Works Cited page, the paper may be returned to you without a grade and may require revision before a grade can be given. In severe cases, where fraud is clearly intended, the paper may be forwarded to the Academic Misconduct Committee for action.