Research Paper Rough Draft Now that you have formed a topic, decided on a centra

Research Paper Rough Draft
Now that you have formed a topic, decided on a central research question, and collected primary and secondary sources, we’ll start actually constructing your paper. In this step, we’ll move from isolated notes to a cohesive essay.
What is a Rough Draft?
The purpose of this assignment is to help you clarify your argument and organize your evidence for your research paper, and to receive feedback you can use to improve before turning in your final draft. “Rough draft” can mean different things to different people. For us, the rough draft will need to advance the central question from your research paper proposal into an argument.
What Is an Argument?
An argument means something different in academic writing than it does in your day-to-day life. You might perceive that term as something negative, or envision people on two sides yelling at each other. But an academic argument doesn’t have that same negative connotation. An argument just means that you are staking a claim and providing evidence for that claim; you are coming to a conclusion about a topic rather than just describing or giving information.
Historical arguments might look like…
Explaining how and why an event or idea unfolded
Claiming cause and effect (“X caused Y, and here’s why I think so”)
Illuminating previously unseen connections (“X and Y may not seem connected, but they are”)
Challenging a previous assumption or narrative (“We’ve accepted for years that X, but my research suggests Y instead”)
Correcting a misunderstanding about historical events (“Many people think X, but research disproves that”)
Shifting focus or arguing for increased attention (“It’s easy to look at X, but we need to pay more attention to Y”)
There are many more possibilities. The key is that you have a particular view of this historical topic and you are providing evidence in an attempt to get others to share that view.
Logistics and Required Elements
Your rough draft should include the following elements:
A descriptive title;
An introduction that prepares your reader and includes a thesis statement;
At least 8 well-formed body paragraphs (or at least 5 full pages). These paragraphs must include evidence from your sources as well as your own analysis of the evidence, and should all support your central argument;
Footnotes that show where in the text you are using your sources;
A conclusion that brings your topic to a non-arbitrary end; and
A bibliography at the end of the draft that includes all sources used. You may end up adding more sources for your final draft.
Details:
Use Chicago for the overall page format
Use Times New Roman 12, double-spaced
Cite your sources with Chicago-style footnotes and a bibliography
Incorporate at least 3 primary sources
Incorporate at least 3 secondary sources
*Note – I have included a short video below on how to insert footnotes in Chicago style as well as the Auraria Library Citation Builder (Links to an external site.) that will both be helpful resources on how to incorporate footnotes in Chicago style