Requirements: For your Research Paper, you are carrying out independent research to identify a challenging situation for language acquisition; describing this situation and the way that it relates to so-called “typical” language development; and providing a critical evaluation of the Nature/Nurture debate as it relates to this learning situation.

By now, you should have picked a topic for your Research Paper, located some sources that are both relevant and appropriate, and started to think about both what the main point of your paper will be and how you will use information pulled from your sources to support/argue for/build up to that main idea. Now it’s time to start writing!

This draft should consist of 4–5 pages of prose. Please also include a list of at least five references that you are planning to incorporate in your final paper IN APA FORMAT. (You will need to include at least 10 references in your final paper.) You may prepare this draft in the format that best suits your writing style: it may be something that will easily be turned into the beginning of your paper (consider using the first paragraph from your preliminary outline in your Introductory paragraph), or it may be a literature review that consists of integrated summaries of the sources you’ve read so far and a few paragraphs about how you will use this information to build your argument. This draft cannot be a series of notes to yourself, stream-of-consciousness brainstorming, or an outline. It must be written in complete sentences.

Along with this text, you should turn in an updated version of your Outline. There is no page limit for this outline, and it can be in any format that you find useful (including notes to yourself or stream-of-consciousness brainstorming), but it should demonstrate that you have made progress since your preliminary outline in defining the main point of your paper (including how it relates to both language acquisition AND the Nature vs. Nurture debate) and in determining the shape and content of the entire paper.