The Assignment
Most research starts with a question. For your third project, you’ll ask–and investigate–a question thats personally relevant to your life, a question you’re genuinely curious about. Youll formulate a question based on the prompts listed below, and youll explore that question by reflecting on your own experiences / observations and by researching sources related to your question. Ultimately, you might provide an answer (even if just a tentative or speculative answer), or perhaps you’ll explore multiple answers, or perhaps you’ll focus more on the question than on an answer (see “Genre” below).
Research Questions
For the best results on Project 3, the question you choose to research should be of interest to you right now, should be focused (but not too narrowly–there shouldn’t be one definitive answer to the question), should have some personal connection to your life, and should be answer-able with the help of outside sources. Also, the question should be something you haven’t already answered or made up your mind about–you should have a genuine interest in inquiry and exploration!
Here are some general question areas to help you think about your own:
A question related to your work in our course or in other courses: Maybe you wrote a personal piece earlier this semester about difficult situations you experienced in elementary school. Perhaps, as a result, you’ve been wondering whether you should homeschool your own children. That’s a research question you could explore for Writing Project 3.
A question related to current events: You could choose to research something related to current news events, as long as the question is personally relevant to you. There’s certainly lots to choose from here: Black Lives Matter, living in the age of Coronavirus, the upcoming election, and so on!
A question related to a problem or issue youre experiencing in your personal life: You could choose to research a problem or issue in your life, as long as its something that could be answered with the help of outside sources. See the box above for an example of this kind of question.
A question related to your own general interests or hobbies. Again, you could choose to research something related to your own general interests or hobbies, as long as your question could be answered with the help of outside sources. Maybe youre interested in the sport of slacklining. Your question could be something like: How did slacklining begin as a sport?
Sources
For this assignment, you’ll use three to five sources.
The types of sources you’ll use will depend in part on what your question is. In other words, you’ll need to ask yourself: what kinds of information will help me explore my particular research question? Maybe you’ll need scientific data; maybe you’ll need articles written by scholars or by lay people; maybe you’ll need to interview someone or create a survey. The Norton Field Guide chapter on “Doing Research” can help you in finding and using various types of sources.
Ideally, though, you should use at least TWO periodical sources–articles from newspapers, magazines, or scholarly journals. The remaining sources may be field sources, like interviews or questionnaires, web sources (but check for reliability–see the “Evaluating Sources” chapter of the Field Guide for help!), or other sources.
Audience
Think of your primary audience for this paper as your instructor and classmates within the academic context of our course. Remember that your classmates and instructor will not be as familiar as you will be with your overall topic and with your sources.
Genre
You’ll decide on an appropriate genre for your piece, based on your purpose. Some possible genres include reports, arguments, proposals, reflections, and a mixture of genres. You can consult chapters 12, 13, 20, 21, and 23 in our textbook for help.
Format and Design
For this assignment, youll use standard MLA format. Please see the instructions in the learning modules for the project.
Evidence / Documentation
For this assignment, youll need to include evidence from a.) your personal experiences and observations; and b.) three to five sources (see above). Your paper should include a Works Cited page and in-text citations, using MLA format. Please see the relevant instructions in the learning modules for this project.
Process
Youll work through the following stages for creating your researched document:
Reading example writings in your textbooks
Conducting research
Completing prewriting and planning activities for your own draft
Creating a first draft of your project
Getting and giving feedback on drafts
Revising your project
Designing your paper in MLA format and citing sources appropriately
Editing your project for clarity in terms of grammar, mechanics, etc.
Reflecting on and assessing your work
Evaluation
Your work will be evaluated based on the criteria established in the ENGL 1100 grading rubric. Specifically, you’ll be evaluated on how well you achieve the following:
RHETORICAL KNOWLEDGE: Demonstrate an awareness of audience, purpose, genre, stance, and media/design; hold readers’ interest and help them gain insights into your question and answer; exhibit credibility as a writer through accurate and ethical use of source material; adopt an appropriate voice, tone, style, and level of formality
CRITICAL THINKING AND DEVELOPMENT: Pose an interesting question; connect the research question to your own life; develop and support an answer to your question using research, personal experiences, observations, and reflections; meet word-count requirements
ORGANIZATION: Present an identifiable and logical structure (both overall and within individual paragraphs); use transitional devices to guide your reader through your text
CONVENTIONS OF STYLE AND USAGE: Use sentence structure, mechanics, punctuation, spelling, and format appropriate to the rhetorical situation
USE OF SOURCES: integrate and document sources according to MLA guidelines
