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last.updated 8.7.08

 

Proposal

Purpose

Proposals are composed in many situations, from the development of projects (in academic and professional contexts) to requests for funding. Essentially the writer of a proposal is suggesting or describing a future action. The audience of this document will either be informed of this action or make a decision about whether the suggested plan should happen or happen in the proposed way. In this assignment, you will propose what you will do for the Final Text project so that the instructor can provide guidance on this process.

Instructions-Research

The Proposal is the first step in the process of working on your Final Text. Therefore, you need to start with a problem or issue that you feel invested in. This could be, but is not limited to...

  • an issue that you have noticed since arriving at Old Dominion University
  • something that you really support
  • a problem that you notice in your community, state, country
  • an issue related to your major

Once you have chosen a problem or an issue, you are committed to it for the remainder of the semester. If you need help selecting this topic, please consult the instructor.

To become more informed about this issue, you will want to do research on it. For some topics, you may need to choose a similar or related topic. As an example, you may want to start a co-ed cricket club for recreational sports at ODU. If there has never been a co-ed cricket club at ODU or no one has proposed one, then you will not find any direct research on this topic. However, some topic you could research are the campus's men's club, look for co-ed cricket at other campuses, issues about the benefits of co-ed sports. Note how they are related, but not directly talking about the topic you chose.

For the proposal you will be required to read and analyze at least five sources. The first three will be submitted with the Progressive Annotated Bibliography and will be 1) a popular opinion piece, 2) a popular report of research or event, and 3) an academic article. The other two or more sources will be your choice of these three types. As you make this decision, consider what you want to learn and what will be most persuasive to your audience.

Instructions-Writing

After you have read these texts, you will write a 750-1000 word proposal. In this proposal you will...

  • summarize what you have learned about this the topics related to your problem or issue. This part of the paper should acknowledge all of the sources you have read. A more sophisticated writer will put these sources into conversation with each other demonstrating which sources are taking similar stances on a topic and which ones disagree. But note that not all sources will be talking about your problem or issue in the same way
  • explain your position on the problem or issue and what actions you would want other people to take in response to it. In this section, you should demonstrate how your position compares to or is informed by at least some of the the sources you have read
  • describe how you are going to respond to your chosen problem or issue. You should address this with an eye to the Audience Research Memo and the Final Text. Therefore, you will have to think about...
    • the audience that needs to understand your position on this problem or issue; this could be someone you want to persuade to do something
    • what type of text you think you should compose to reach this audience and to engage this audience
    • why the choices you have made for the previous two points will result in your audience thinking the way you want them to or doing what you want them to do.


Criteria

Logistic:

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

  • an understanding of the problem or issue you have chosen
  • an understanding of your audience, the instructor. Do you write this using academic conventions? Do you write this so that the instructor can provide useful guidance on the upcoming assignments
  • an academic or professional persona; this means you should adopt a professional tone and publish a well-edited paper
  • an understanding of the composing decisions that you made. Can you explain the decisions that you made for the proposal?
  • a conversation among the sources you read and between you and the sources.
  • a reasonably detailed description of your future actions. Your audience should have a good sense of what you plan to do, but does not have to detail your plan down to every step.
  • appropriate use of conventions, including MLA, APA, or an appropriate citation formatting