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last.updated 1.15.06

Week 3 Exercise: Mini-Proposal

Purpose

A proposal gives you an opportunity to articulate to yourself and an administrating peer (e.g., professor, supervisor) a plan and strategy for accomplishing the work that you will do. It also gives you an opportunity to request feedback and direction for this work. In this class, you will compose a proposal for the individual work you will be doing. By reviewing the class's proposals, the instructor will also get a sense of the groups that students will work best in for the final project.

Writing

After reading through the assignment descriptions for the individual projects (Context Analysis, Genre Analysis, Article Review), compose a 250-500 word proposal in which you describe how you plan to approach these assignments. As you describe your plan, you do not have to be specific about what you will study, but you will need to describe the type of places or texts that you are thinking about studying. However, the more specific you are, the more convincing your argument will be (and the more confident your instructor will be about your ability to do these projects). In this proposal you should...

• describe what you will study for each of the three assignments
• justify why studying these contexts and texts will benefit you
• anticipate what obstacles you may encounter and explain how you will deal with them
• ask the instructor for guidance on accomplishing certain tasks (this should not be a request for the instructor to do your work for you)

Essentially you are making an argument that this is a viable plan. While this proposal does not commit you to this plan, you will be required to consult with the instructor (orally or in writing) about revisions to this strategy.

Submit your work prior to class (7 pm) in the body of an email through Blackboard messages. Your work will receive a process evaluation.