The little black boy by William Blake

Note well: Assignment instructions

The term “prompt” means assignment or instructions.
This is where you submit your final draft. You will not be submitting a “prompt”; you will be submitting a brief essay.
You are proposing a topic for your research essay–that research paper will be due a few weeks before the end of the semester. This assignment is not the research paper.
Topic Space: Some text that we have read or will read during the course.

Include a working bibliography–rather than a Works Cited or Reference list because you don’t actually have to cite your sources: list the most interesting poems or stories you see on the syllabus reading list. What particular text do you want to do your research essay on. I originally wanted to make everybody write about the novel that we will read about halfway through the course: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolff. But I decided to open your choices up to any of the texts we will study in the course.

You should have a minimum of 5 sources listed altogether. They can be different primary texts that you have glanced at or looked at more carefully. Or you may include secondary texts if you want to go ahead and start looking for secondary sources (academic articles about an author or text).

So the proposal has to have two parts in this order:

Your text: 400-500 words, proposing your topic and plan of action–the plan of action should reflect the next stage in the process, doing the annotated bibliography.
Working Bibliography — 5 Sources Minimum
How to Write Your Paragraphs: My Implied Rubric

Study the excerpt from Bergmann’s book that is attached here. Consider Bergmann’s approach to proposals in the handout, especially her two examples of student proposals: your topic is different, but you need to use the same kinds of statements and language. Bergmann Research Proposal Assignment.pdf To reiterate: Bergmann lays out the general idea for this paper on pages 77-79 of the handout. Study the language in the examples–this is what your proposal should sound like. But her examples are not in MLA format: you must use MLA. Note that personal reasons for choosing your texts are encouraged.

Grading Criteria for the Essay

You should consider these bullet points as a checklist for your essay: this is not really a rubric, but these are the criteria upon which I will be grading this paper.

The proposal needs to reflect the two requirements of the final research paper: 1) the preparation you will need to for a researched discussion of some text we are going to cover, and, 2) some description of how you think your narrowly focused inquiry will work. So how do you propose to focus your inquiry? What questions about the text do you want to answer by doing research?
For the next major assignment in the paper process you will have to do an annotated bibliography. I suggest looking at some academic articles, especially for the conceptual work you will need to do for the research paper, perhaps not to read them immediately, but to see what kinds of academic discussions are going on concerning the author or poem or story that you want to write about.
Your Working Bibliography needs to include 5 sources listed in MLA or APA style. If you cite sources in your paragraphs, make sure they are listed in the Working Bibliography. This is not an annotated bibliography. Do you know the difference?
A proposal is not like a normal essay: your audience is different, usually a professor or an expert on your topic or your superior at work. Your purpose is to propose: to get them to say yes to your idea for research (in this case on some aspect of the privacy issue) or to get them to help you get on a good track to do some research. What kin do of issue about your text do you propose to research? How have you shaped your research question and why have you shaped it that way? Why is it worth researching? What do you expect to find? How will that help you answer your research question?
Note well: in this proposal you are not doing the research or reporting on any in-depth research. Your research so far has not been focused and in-depth.
The proposal needs to make the case that your research will be worthwhile, that it will serve some good purpose.
Instead of a thesis, you begin with explaining your research question: and you develop the question by thinking more and more carefully about your text or author as you build up your working knowledge or the research on the text.
Formatting: you must use MLA–this means for both citation mechanics and for layout of the whole document.
Sentencing: your sentencing is key to the clarity of your writing and thinking. You sentencing should be absolutely free of these particular errors: fragments, comma splices, fused sentences, and mixed constructions. And if your sentences are unreadable or unclear, you will not succeed.
Final drafts should be between 400 and 700 words.
You are just trying to make the point that you have a good idea for research on one of our texts and good questions related to the idea.

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Here are Bergmann’s focus questions. You will have to make some adjustments for our literary context. You should give clear answers to them in your proposal:

What is the problem? (What is the issue around your text that you want to investigate?)
What is your solution?
How are you going to arrive at your solution?
What product(s) will be the outcome? (Sort of built into your assignments: annotated bibliography and an essay.)
When will it be finished? (By the deadlines . . . ?)
What resources will be used/needed?
But this is not really a problem/solution kind of topic. So how must you alter her focus questions to produce a good proposal in this situation?