Final Paper Guidelines

1. In the proposal, you identified research questions, key concepts and theories. The work now is to answer these research questions using these key concepts and theories. Overall, you will find that each of your research questions mobilize one or two key concepts, and that each of theory you are working with illuminates these concepts in a particular way.
2. As you work through your research questions, you will probably find that they are limited, or that the concepts or theories are not adapted. This is normal: reworking and refining research questions and their answers is part of the writing process. As well, you might find that you need to change sources.
3. You will probably find that the structure of your paper will follow your key research questions. You do not need to make these questions explicit in your final paper, but they nevertheless will organize the axes of your reflection. To prove your thesis statement, you will need to address a series of arguments that are thematically and conceptually linked.
4. A good exercise to verify the soundness of your overall structure is to summarize each argument into one sentence and see if the flow of sentences makes sense. If it does not, then it means that there is something flawed in your structure.
5. Generally, theoretical papers are organized in 2-3 sections, with 2-4 sub-arguments (paragraph) in each section.
6. A thesis statement is a conclusive statement: it is the general assertion