How to draft a research proposal for a composition class?? (Help!)

[dcan]

Just a few quick questions in case someone here has taken this course (ENC-102 at TESC) or otherwise has some helpful advice...

1. What is considered "research" for the purposes of a composition class designed to teach you how to write a research paper? (I'm not in a physics class, in other words, so what is "research" in this context?)

2. How do I determine what to research?

3. What format should I use for a research proposal?

I am enrolled in Composition 102 (ENC-102) at TESC. This week's assignment is to "write a short research proposal." Our final project is to write a 5 page "research paper" with 5 sources, in MLA or APA format. The entire course revolves around teaching you to write a research paper, so its the process that's important, not the research itself -- I'm not working on the theory of relativity here. Still, you'd think they would advise us on what format to use...

There are no guidelines other than four topics we are instructed to cover:

• Your purpose in writing the paper
  
• Your intended audience
  
• Your position as the writer
  
• Your preliminary thesis
  

That's it. No word on format, layout, or length. I have literally never written something like this before. Now, I know this should be easy to put together, but I don't know what format to use. Should this be written like an MLA or APA essay? I can certainly do this in a 5x5 essay format. Or should this follow a "fill in the blank" type of template using the above or similar headings? I can't really find anything in the books on how to write a research proposal per se, and what I find online is really geared towards either an over-the-summer field research study or a grad school thesis project -- both of which typically use section headings.

I know the obvious answer is to ask the instructor, and I will, but it's Thursday night and I just got my computer back online after an outage earlier this week, so I'm running short on time. :nopity:

I'm considering punting and writing it in MLA format as that is what I've written the first three essays in, and I received high marks for each. But I'm stumped and not sure what to write about either. If I'm given a series of topics I can pick one and go, but if it's 100% up to me it's like staring at a blank piece of paper... :confused:

Should I go with MLA essay, or something else? Is there a (brief) example available somewhere online that I just didn't see?

Many thanks for any help! cheersmate

[ryoder]

I would start writing it without worrying about formatting. Make up a super quick outline and begin each paragraph from the outline. Then write your introduction and conclusion paragraphs. Then go back to each supporting paragraph and fill it in quickly with little regard to facts, formats etc.

I tend to make assertions with no substantiation and then put (CITE) after them.

For example.

Genetic engineering has many positive benefits and has decreased famine by 30% (CITE).

Then go find the real percentage through research. Once you find it, in APA format you can say.

Genetic engineering has many positive benefits and has decreased famine by 30% (Nicholls, 2010).

Nichols (2010) stated that "genetic engineering is way cool" (p. 55).

These are your two most often used citations, the parenthetical and the direct quote.


Some sentences actually can be made up of 2 citations.


Genetic engineering is way cool (Nichols, 2010) and research shows that 95% of genetically engineered mice are smarter than other mice (Yoder, 2011).

This is how I write my papers.

[dcan]

ryoder,

Sorry, I rewrote my question a fair bit over the past few minutes. Apparently I mis-read my syllabus and the topic I chose was from a list of topics we are supposed to write an argumentative essay about later on. I can't believe I missed that. So I don't even know if that will be a valid topic for research. Too bad because I have a lot of interest and some personal readings on that topic anyway.

I just fired off a series of questions to the teacher, but my fundamental problem now is, if I'm not constrained by a topic, I'm kind of drawing a blank on what to research over the next few weeks, not just the format in which to write the proposal. This really threw me way off tonight.

How do you decide on what to research? And as I (re) wrote above, what is considered "research" in the context of a class like this? I'm not doing "real" research, so I'm guessing more of a background "synthesis" type of paper with my own opinions based on the sources.

I'm tossing around the idea of just looking up similar lists online (essay prompts) and going from there...

Incidentally, you and I apparently have similar writing approaches. Also, genetic engineering certainly is cool, until you redefine the nature of "human". What happens when some people are "human" and other's aren't? What happens to the very foundations of liberal democracy when suddenly all men are not created equal?

[rebel100]

I like to keep my topics broad. I want to insure that I can easily find plenty of relevant information to cite without looking to hard.

You should never use Wikipedia as a source, but I often start there when researching a topic. there are typically links to scholarly articles in the Wiki footnotes. For me this streamlines the process and helps to focus the paper. Research is simply the ability to locate information and use it properly to bolster your paper. Purdue OWL: Research Papers

I suspect the instructor just wants to see that you can locate relevant material, cite it properly (APA or MLA), and form a decent paper with acceptable grammar. I would recommend learning and using APA format. The further I went in school the more APA was the citation method of choice per the instructors. I think you will be well served by mastering it now.

Work hard and take the assignment seriously, but don't over-think it.

Good luck,

Reb

[PonyGirl93]

Sorry I'm a little confused? You don't have an assigned topic? If so, ahhh the possibilities! The easiest thing to do is pick a popular social issue (but not one too polarizing), say the death penalty. I am currently itching to write a paper on the death penalty, but naturally it doesn't come up in any of our essay topics :p Anyway, you can turn basically any issue that you have any opinion on into an interesting topic for research. Maybe just type a few into Google and see what comes up; there's a lot more info out there on some topics than others.

Anyway, once you have a topic, my first stop is Wikipedia, as rebel said. I go straight down to the references and click on any and all that look promising.

If you have a library card, check your library's website for a reference database. EBSCOhost saves my butt every time I have to write a research paper. You can search scholarly journals and such, and my library even gets you access to all the newspapers in the area. Just make sure you check the option that says "Full text only," there's nothing more frustrating than reading an abstract that would be perfect material and then discovering that the article isn't publicly available.

In my experience, professors (particularly TESC profs) want research papers in APA format. As rebel said, Purdue Owl is fantastic and concise. If you get stuck on a particular thing, just Google it. Last paper I was writing I had to Google how to cite Gallup and several helpful sites came up.

Good luck!

[scorched]

DCAN...

if your pursuing a degree in CIS try and see if you can make it in line with that.
something along the lines of is the use of social media detrimental to productivity in the work place. quite controversial and yet tons of opinions and research should be available.

I can assure you I am a very unpopular person in IT when I go in to consult, as I always demand that HR make employees sign acceptable use polices. I don't prevent sites like facebook, but the way our proxy is set up, I can track individual users and how much time they spend doing social media versus actual work. People don't understand that technology at home is exceeding technology at work, and its mainly because of cost and scale.

My opinion is that the new generation feel entitled as it is, and they can't understand when their older counterparts are doubling the amount of work, why they would get warned or later fired.

Sites I use for non google/wikipedia research.
ipl2: Information You Can Trust
CiteSeerX
http://completeplanet.com
Scitopia.org: Integrating Trusted Science + Technology Research
http://infomine.ucr.edu
Scirus - for scientific information
Reference, Facts, News - Free and Family-friendly Resources - Refdesk.com
http:/brint.com

Search engine searching:
MetaCrawler
Dogpile Web Search

[dcan]

hmuchmo,

I completely agree with you regarding the policy issue. I'm in the Air Force, and laughably the DoD about two years back made a decision to "embrace" social media and opened access to Facebook/etc from work -- subject to body cavity monitoring, of course. So while we lock down the permiter, we let social media be vectors for social engineering and malicious logic attacks that are actively invited into the network. Boggles my mind.

I've got some ideas floating around. I may go with something along those lines, not sure yet.

Thanks for the advice!

[scorched]

DCAN.. thanks for your service!
I am former AF myself. I am in IT now, but was in avionics in the spooky world with the F-117a's.

Where are you stationed? I have done a lot of consulting to the DoD for IT stuff.