Purpose and grading
The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to think about the course materials and topics.\u00a0 The assignment is designed to allow you to express your\u00a0informed\u00a0position on a criminal justice topic.\u00a0 It is not sufficient to simply respond \u201cyes or no\u201d to these questions or for you to provide vague, non-descript responses.\u00a0 Rather, you are expected to state your position and the reasons for it.\u00a0 The focus of grading for this assignment is the strength and quality of the essay.\u00a0 Spelling, grammar, and neatness count on this assignment for up to 20% of your response.
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Your position itself will be not be graded.\u00a0 That is, it does not matter whether you agree or disagree with the professor, other students, or the book authors.\u00a0 What does matter is how well you make your case.\u00a0 Experience indicates that a good essay will define important terms (don\u2019t assume your reader either knows what you are talking about, or shares your perceptions and definitions).\u00a0 It also indicates that a common pitfall is that of addressing tangential issues. \u00a0For example, if you are asked to write about criminal sentencing, spending a lot of time on the death penalty itself would hurt the overall essay. You may use the death penalty as an illustration of some point you wish to make, but the assignment is on sentencing, not specifically on the death penalty. The strength of the argument is assessed in terms of both the logic of your position and how well your points are supported by reference to data and the literature.
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Again, students are free to use any style or approach with which they are comfortable. \u00a0For students not knowing how to begin, the five paragraph essay format is often especially appropriate. \u00a0In this format, you develop an essay of – You\u2019ve got it! – five paragraphs. The first is an introduction that tells the reader what you will cover and defines key terms. The second through fourth provide support for the position announced in the first, and the last is a summary and restatement of the position.
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This reaction paper is\u00a0not\u00a0a library research assignment. You should be able to write a successful essay based solely on the course books. \u00a0No formal listing of works cited is required, and citations are relaxed (unless you cite references outside the course material, which I do not recommend \u2013 see below). \u00a0Direct quotes are not appropriate for this assignment.\u00a0 Paraphrased ideas, or citing general support can be noted by simply identifying the source (e.g., Worrall or Walker). \u00a0Specificity is valued, so if you rely on a work that appears in the book, try to cite the specific author(s), rather than the author of the book (for example, Sherman, or Sherman in Worrall).
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Formatting
1.\u00a0 Formatting\u00a0matters\u00a0and may be considered in the assignment grade.\u00a0 The papers are to be double-spaced with Times New Roman 12-point font and 1-inch margins. There should be no \u201cspaces after\u201d between paragraphs.\u00a0 See the example document posted to D2L.\u00a0
2.\u00a0 Each essay response should be no less than two pages and no more than three pages long.\u00a0 Any paper less than two full pages of text will be heavily penalized.\u00a0 Any paper with more than three full pages of text may be penalized and all information after the third full page will not be considered.
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Important policies
1.\u00a0 All assignments must be uploaded to D2L before the due date\/time.\u00a0 Late assignments will not be accepted.\u00a0 Therefore, it is recommended that students submit their assignment no later than 10 minutes before the time the assignment is due so to avoid missing the deadline.\u00a0
2. Your submission must be in a Microsoft Word file (.doc, .docx, or .rtf).\u00a0 Any other type of file uploaded will be subject to a loss of points.\u00a0
3.\u00a0 You are welcome to cite outside material, but it is not recommended.\u00a0 Outside materials must be peer-review research.\u00a0 If you do cite outside material, you must provide a properly formatted APA reference page. Any other type of resource will result in a loss of points.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Purpose and grading The purpose of this assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to think about the course materials and topics.\u00a0 The assignment is designed to allow you to express your\u00a0informed\u00a0position on a criminal justice topic.\u00a0 It is not sufficient to simply respond \u201cyes or no\u201d to these questions or for you to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-45237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}