ENGL 1301
Assignment 1: Research Question and plan
See Syllabus for due dates and point values
Roughly two pages
Meets all objectives
This assignment, which serves as a precursor to your next three assignments, asks you to formulate a research question, motivation, and plan, so that your research process is that much more effective and focused. You are encouraged to choose a topic you are covering in another class, or one that is relevant to your major.
For this, please turn in a memo (see D2L for various memo templates online) which includes:
- Your specific research question. This can be over any topic you choose, but of course, making it over something that you find interesting is crucial. What do you want to find out? That is your research question.
- Your motivation. What made you choose this topic and this question? This will help me to see what “stakes” you have in this topic.
- Your answer to the “so what?” question. Why should your audience care about this topic? What do you need to consider to involve your audience in your topic?
- The international perspective: What might be the global implications or considerations or ramifications of your research question? Might it be answered differently in different parts of the world? How do you plan to incorporate that?
- Your very general research plan. What kinds of information do you think you will need to find? Where might you find it? What do you expect to need to look up?
This assignment will be the launch pad for the rest of the major assignments for this class, so make sure to put some thought into both your topic and what brings you to that topic (your motivation). Give yourself time to brainstorm a list of topics before you narrow into one. Discuss your topic with friends or family. From there, then, put your memo together, with me as your audience. There are also a number of resources in our D2L course (Assignment 1) that include strategies for generating a topic. (Note: it is considered plagiarism to use papers from previous classes. Please don’t do this.)
Grading Criteria:
- The assignment meets all five bullet points clearly and concisely.
- The research question illustrates clear thoughtfulness and an international relevance
- The memo demonstrates an understanding of genre, in what is expected of a memo, and audience.
- The paper is clear with few grammatical mistakes.