Group Paper

Your paper should be approximately 10-12 pages long (Approx. 5000 words), with individual sections of approximately 2 pages each and a short Introduction (to the whole paper) at the beginning and a short Conclusion (to the whole paper) at the end. Although the individual sections should be the work of individual students, the overall editing of the paper, as well as the Introduction, Conclusion and References, should be a group effort. You should count on spending as much time, energy and effort on the overall editing of the whole paper as you spend on your own individual section. Even though the paper will contain individual sections it is nonetheless one unit and should read as a unified paper and not five separate sections stuck randomly together!

Your paper should contain:

Cover page

Contents page

Essay

References page

Cover page

The cover page should include the following information:

The title centred in the middle of the page

Your names

Your teacher’s name

The name of the course and academic year.

Formatting

Work should be properly formatted according to APA style (sometimes called 'Harvard Style').

All fonts and sizes should be consistent throughout. Use font size 12 or 14 for your text and interlinear 1½.

Pages should be numbered. (except for the cover page and the Contents page).

Titles and section headings

Title and section headings should be centred and in a slightly larger size than the rest of the essay.

Subtitles should be flush with the left-hand margin.

Quotations

Long quotations should be indented and do not need quotation marks. Short references, including page number for where the quotation comes from, should be given immediately following the quotation or the reference to an idea or concept from another writer, between brackets.

References

References should be printed on a separate page with the word ‘References’ centred at the top.

Ensure the list is in alphabetical order (by surname of author, or first author).

References should be indented after the first line of an entry.

Any in-text citation in the paper should correspond to a source in the references and vice versa.

Use the ‘riferimenti’ option on your computer to format references and in-text citations and simplify retrieval of the information. 

Style

You should write in paragraphs using formal, academic discourse.

A paragraph is a sequence of 3-7 (approx.) sentences which deal with the same topic.

It is marked graphically by either indenting the first (only the first!) word, or leaving a blank line between it and the previous paragraph.

'Indentation' is the small white space between the left margin of the page and the first word of a paragraph and it is one of the two graphic signs used to indicate the division between paragraphs.

      This is what indentation of the first word looks like. Some computer key-boards have a key at the top left with arrows pointing left and right. This is the key which indents the following word automatically. If yours doesn't have it, you can set this with your formatting option. When writing by hand, you have to leave this space yourself!

'Indentation' is the small white space between the left margin of the page and the first word of a paragraph. It is one of the two graphic signs used to indicate the division between paragraphs. The other is leaving a blank line between paragraphs.

This is what leaving a blank line between paragraphs looks like. It is the preferred form for printed texts. Some writing programmes do this automatically, in others you have to make a choice.

Formal academic discourse

Full forms of verbs

No slang or colloquial language

Use of impersonal and passives

Use of hedging (tentativeness): it seems, it could be that, X suggests that, possibly, perhaps, etc.,

Use of non-sexist language

Referencing

In your cooperative work group paper you are expected to refer to published work done by other people on the subject you are dealing with. Each individual section should refer to at least two articles.

Within your text, i.e. what you write, you should refer to these studies by name of the author:

As Jane Smith states in her article 'How to Write a Group Paper', referencing is an essential feature of effective writing (Smith, 2014: 45).

Your References section at the end of the (complete) paper will contain an alphabetical list of all the authors you (all) refer to in alphabetical order by surname, in the form you have used within the text, but with the complete bibliographical details:

Smith, Jane (2014) 'How to Write a Group Paper' English in Education 5, 44-55

Further information about APA style:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

As many of your references (I imagine) will be to material you have found on the web, I have a book on Referencing which includes examples and instructions for referencing all manner of web material which your are welcome to consult.

In order to check that your papers are all your own work, please upload the completed paper to the Compilatio link which is in our section of the Moodle page. Hand in a printed copy of your paper to me too. 

Presentations

References are required for Presentations too. Provide a list of references as your last slide and also as a printed hand-out.

Individual sections of the Presentation should last approx. 4 minutes.

You should use one of the group members as a 'Linker' who first introduces the general topic of the Presentation and then introduces each individual speaker (group member) to provide their section and signs off the whole Presentation at the end. NB The linker will have their own section as well!

Make sure your Presentation is not an oral form of Wikipedia (or other internet sources) and that you have created an individual and personal ordering of ideas and information in a logical and interesting manner. As with Papers, take time, energy and effort to craft the overall Presentation so that it appears as a unit, with no contradictions or repetitions between sections. For your slides, remember the points you learnt in last year's Listening and Speaking course (not too much or too little on one slide, spacing, size, colour, time needed for audience to read slide, but not slides containing every word the speaker says!). Make sure each speaker refers to their slides, both by mentioning them and by pointing to parts of them. A Presentation is both oral and visual and the two modalities should be used interdependently. Make sure your slides are not simply wallpaper!

Take time to practise the whole Presentation together as a group and make constructive criticism of one another. Make sure you speak slowly, loudly and distinctly enough for your audience to be able to understand and follow what you are saying clearly.

The dates for the Presentations will be indicated here later and one member of the Group should sign up for one of these dates (after consulting with the other members!) via the Choice option which I shall activate on our section of the Moodle page.