Formal Paper – Project Proposal
What is the Objective in Writing This Paper?
Your primary goal in this assignment will be select a topic of your own research for the coming Persuasive Argument paper (along with the Annotated Bibliography) and receive approval for the topic or feedback on how to shift the topic to something that will work for those later goals.
What writing / thinking skills will we learn with this assignment:
As we begin our second formal paper, we will build on skills used in the first paper, but intentionally work on learning or adding the following skills:
Learning/reviewing how to read assignments critically for purpose and parameters
Learning/reviewing how to select a research topic for a longer project and to meet assignment purpose
Learning/reviewing how to ask a research question as a topic starting place
Learning/reviewing how to narrow the topic for better effect in argument
Topic and Content Requirements:
These are the things the student should do to be most successful:
Students should begin by thinking about topics that they are interest in. Any issue initially if fine as you begin thinking.
Once initial single word interests are found, Students must find an issue within that topic that is Debatable (reasonable culture currently disagrees), Plausible (research already exists on the topic), and Consequential (our position on the topic could potentially change the way society functions if taken far enough).
Students should select a current disagreement in society to argue about within that topic of interest. Ideally, upon narrowing the topic, this issue should be related to a proposed law, policy, or regulation that has not be enacted or that has recently been enacted or that is possibly being removed.
Though this may be challenging to find right away, having a real policy or regulation to argue for or against as a starting point will very much help the effectiveness of your argument and the speed and specificity of your research. Again, for the topic above, I may find out that California has recently enacted a regulation that says NCAA athletes should be able to make a profit off of their image if they choose.
Students should then create a research question on their topic, being as specific as possible at this point if able. This research question needs to begin with SHOULD to be on the right track. For example, “Should Missouri enact California’s ‘Fair Pay to Play Act’ for NCAA college athletes?”
Students must ultimately argue what SHOULD or SHOULD NOT happen on their policy or regulation of choice. Any argument that just explains what IS, MIGHT, COULD, WILL, or other state-of-being verbs will likely be ineffective for our end goals. Make a claim in the final paper that interprets the data to a position of what SHOULD or SHOULD NOT happen with that specific law.
Once a topic and disagreement is selected, the student should draft their proposal.
This proposal should include three distinct parts and each part can act as a single paragraph. Each paragraph can be a brief paragraph and the student may use bullet-points or headings if they wish to separate them.
These parts are:
In one brief paragraph, explain the topic you are writing about briefly, the initial research question you plan to investigate, and who you believe the target audience is for your project. Be specific not generic in who your audience is.
In the second paragraph, briefly explain what position you initially plan to take on the topic. If you had to decide today, would you say this law or policy should or should not be enacted, changed, updated, etc.?
In the last paragraph, explain what ideas you may start researching as you learn about this topic. What are some questions you might ask or things you might need to know to argue about this?
Format Requirements:
This is how the writing should appear in presentation:
The paper will be One page more or less, but must have at least three paragraphs. Any length is fine, but keep this fairly brief.
The paper must use standard MLA formatting for setting up a paper. This includes having:
Times New Roman, 12 point font.
Double-spacing the paper lines.
One inch margins
Appropriate Heading and Header information
An original title centered over the body paragraphs.
First line indention of paragraphs
0pt spacing between paragraphs (even spacing throughout)
No extra spaces between heading, title, pages, and paragraphs.
The paper must be submitted on-time. Be sure that you are meeting the deadline for submission to avoid penalties.
