last.updated 8.17.13

Project 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 IMRAD Research Essay 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 IMRAD Research Essay. Therefore, you need to start with a question or an issue that you have about writing in a specific context. This could be, but is not limited to...

• What is writing? Is it just words, or does it now include sound, images, and video?
• How might I write effectively if I am writing for international contexts?
• What are the conventions for writing in my major? How might expressive writing be used in certain majors?
• In what ways do women and men write differently, if they do?
• What challenges do certain disabilities create for writers and what are the best approaches for overcoming or limiting these challenges?
• How are computer/mobile technologies changing (or not changing) the expectations writers and their audiences have about texts?
• What effect does teaching to the writing test (in high school and/or college) have on what students learn about writing?
• What effect does a writers' access to places of literacy (e.g., libraries, book stores) have on their writing abilities?

Once you have chosen a focus for your project, you are committed to it for the remainder of the semester. If you need help selecting this topic, please consult the instructor.

For the IMRAD Research Essay, you will do textual and primary research to help you develop an informed argument. With the data you gather from this research you will draw conclusions and develop an argument. For some topics, to do textual research, you may need to choose a similar or related topic. As an example, you may choose to study how successful African-American college students are with writing portfolios as opposed to exit exams. There might not be a lot of research specifically about African-Americans and writing portfolios. But you can look at what the scholarship says about 1) the strategies and skills African-American students tend to exceed at and struggle with in writing, 2) the fundemental features of writing portfolios, and 3) the features of high stakes exam writing and how students usually respond to these writing situations. Then you would look for the connections between the research about African-American writers and the trends with portfolios and high stakes writing exam, respectively. Note how these are all pieces of what you are looking at, but none are directly talking about the topic you chose.

For the proposal you will be required to read and analyze at least five sources (3 popular sources and 2 academic sources) and conduct some primary research.

Instructions-Writing

For this document you will want to...

• identify the topic you will be studying and explain why it is an important topic to study–both for you and to benefit others
• pose research questions that you will answer over the course of the project
• list at least seven possible sources (with at least three popular sourses and two academic sources) you might read to fulfill the Research Blog Entries. Note that you do not have to do entries for all seven of them, just five
• Identify how you will conduct primary research, explain why this will help you answer your research questions, and provide instructions on how you will go about conducting this research (write these instructions in a way that another person can pick them up and do the research for you). This means that you should know exactly how what you are going to do and have commitments from relevant people (e.g., interviewees) at this time.

Criteria

Logistic:

• 1000 words
• single-spaced
• Complete rough draft brought to class on October 9, 2012
• On October 16, 2012 submit the final draft to the instructor as a hard copy within a manila folder with any other relevant documents.
• Your portfolio should contain...
  • Informal email and response about your research topic
  • Letting Your Research Take Shape (10/6)
  • Prep Blog Entry #3
• 100 points

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 assignment?
• a relatively clear and focused research agenda? do you demonstrate some understanding of the topic and does your research process help you to address the gaps in your knowledge?
• 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 detailed description of your future actions. Your audience should have a good sense of what you plan to do
• appropriate use of conventions, including MLA, APA, or an appropriate citation formatting