Need help with my Writing question – I’m studying for my class.

PART 1:

Scholarly Writing for Healthcare Professionals – Week 3 Assignment 1

Making the Outline and the Reference Page

Once you have your reference sources, it may be tempting to leap in and start writing! However, you are nowhere near ready for that. Consider what you have learned. You can create an APA formatted paper, locate credible library offerings and websites, review APA rules, understand the levels of headings, and make a cover and reference page. You have made great progress!

Let’s begin to combine some of these elements for your Week 4 short essay paper.

Can you see the advantage of this? Again, as noted before, say time is short and you wonder how much you can get done. This outline can be created in minutes. Add that to having the searching complete in 15 minutes, and you are ready to write.

Your turn.

Produce an outline similar to the GU Sample paper (resource provided in Week 1) for your Week 4 paper. For now, make a good guess about which Level 2 headings might be good topics to subdivide.

Include the following aspects in the assignment:

Decide on a topic for your short 2-3 page essay. Choose a healthcare topic that you find interesting but are not familiar with.

Conduct a search of the library databases and internet for three scholarly references less than five years-old. If you have collected them using the Cite function per the directions, double check to be certain that they are correct per APA rules. “Data used to cite electronic sources is not yet standardized; therefore, researchers should review citations carefully. Pay special attention to personal names, capitalization, and dates. Double check your library resources for the exact formatting and punctuation guidelines” (EBSCO, n.d., para.2)

Format your APA paper and prepare your outline based on the information your search has provided.

Ensure that your paper has a minimum of two Level 2 headings.

Follow the GU sample paper as a guide but only for the required elements discussed here.

Use the information from all your resources.

Create the actual outline for your Week 4 paper with the following properly formatted: title page, content pages with headings, reference page populated with the three chosen references.

Create the in-text citations and place them under an appropriate heading on the content pages.

Do not actually write any content, just place the correct outline headings.

Follow all APA guidelines for formatting and referencing/citing

PART 2:

Scholarly Writing for Healthcare Professionals – Week 3 Assignment 2

Creating a Paragraph

You might be thinking about now; “Can I finally begin writing?” Almost. Just as all steps leading to the actual writing are carefully planned out, so must the writing itself. Remember, once you do this a few times, the process will become automatic and serve you well for years of academic study.

While the paper as a whole serves to tell a story, so does each individual paragraph. There are several useful tools to help you organize your paragraphs, but I like MEAL a lot.

The MEAL plan, a title coined by Duke University, is a way to organize your paragraphs as you write; it helps writers create strong, thorough paragraphs. The letters, M-E-A-L, form an acronym that stands for the following:

M—Main idea: This is usually expressed in a strong topic sentence.

oSee tips on using a strong topic sentence. https://www.duq.edu/assets/Documents/writing-center/_pdf/Topic%20Sentences%20March_2017.pdf

E—Evidence: Once your readers are clear what the main topic of your paragraph is, you can use source material as evidence to discuss your topic and promote your academic argument. The word evidence is another way to say source citations.

oSee tips on how to best use evidence. https://www.lib.uoguelph.ca/get-assistance/writing/writing-disciplines/using-evidence-effectively

A—Analysis: After giving the evidence, you’ll want to explain, incorporate, and integrate that evidence by providing some analysis. Analysis is where you can compare, contrast, and provide explanations for the source material, why it is important, and how it relates to your main idea.

oSee tips on how to analyze the evidence: http://www.thinksrsd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MEAL-Mnenomic.pdf

L—Lead out: The lead-out sentence or sentences are where you will sum up what the paragraph discussed and then preview what is coming in the next paragraph so that the reader can smoothly move from one idea to the next.

oSee tips on how to lead out – or link: http://www.thinksrsd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MEAL-Mnenomic.pdf

Prepare one paragraph using the M.E.A.L. process.

Include the following aspects in the assignment:

oUse your outline from the Week 3 Assignment 1.

oChoose a Level 2 heading

oResearch sufficiently to provide content for one paragraph

oFormat your paragraph right under the chosen level heading using MEAL

oHighlight in color each of the four MEAL areas.

oInclude a title page, the content page with the MEAL paragraph with in-text citation[s] and a reference page

oFollow all APA guidelines for formatting and referencing/citing