1. Think for a few moments about what you have learned about the research process so far in this course. Now ask yourself when is the best time within that process to formulate a thesis for a research paper. Go back and reread the first three paragraphs on page 353 in your textbook: does your answer fit with this discussion? Describe briefly when you think is the best point within the research process to develop a thesis, and why.
   
   
2. Find two research papers published on a university or college website. (To do this, try an advanced Google search. Search for "research paper" and limit the search to a particular university's domain, such as umich.edu, yale.edu, berkeley.edu, etc. This will exclude all commercial sites and allow you to find a genuine research paper.)
   
   Print out each paper and, using highlighters of three different colors, indicate wherever the author has directly quoted, summarized, or paraphrased an outside source. Evaluate each author's use of outside sources. Has the author relied too much or too little on outside sources? If it were your paper, would you quote less and summarize more? Has the author included lengthy quotations unnecessarily? Or do you think the author has used outside sources particularly well? Write a brief critique of each author's use of outside sources.