The paper should be an “argumentative” paper, that is, you should expand on a topic, point, or thesis, and convey your best supportive arguments for it. An “argumentative” paper does not mean you are going to “argue”, and this should be self-explanatory, but some students ask me this question regularly. An argumentative paper is a paper in which you advance a thesis framed in form of a question; that distinguishes it from a purely “descriptive paper”. In other words, let’s say you are interested in Erickson’s stages of development. Rather than writing a paper describing the stages of development, I rather you ask for example “Were Erickson’s own struggles with identity part of his motivation for his theory”? Now we have a good paper in the making. You should also note the facts or factors that counter your argument. Finally, you should write a summary or conclusion that takes into account the argument’s pros and cons.
As with any other good paper, you should have an introduction, a main body of the paper (separated into sections as needed), and a conclusion. Since I want you to use APA style, your paper should also have a short Abstract and a Bibliography (Minimum 5 citations) and should be free of misspellings errors. The length of the paper should be at least 2500 words.
In summary, your paper should follow this outline:
The paper should be written using APA format ONLY, and it should be minimum -2,500 long not counting title page and bibliography. The paper has to have a title page, followed by an Abstract which summarizes the main idea of your paper. Then you should have an introduction followed by the main body (Text) of your paper. Finally, it should have a Conclusion and a Bibliography. Therefore your paper outline should be as follows:
Title Page
Abstract
Introduction
Main body of your paper
Conclusion
Bibliography