Essay Assignment: Proposal with Annotated Bibliography

Before you begin writing any essay or assignment, the first thing you should consider (as a writer) is your own purpose and audience as you write. Thus, on your assignment pages, you will see a statement about your purpose and/or audience at the beginning in order to help you get oriented in your task.

Assignment Purpose

A research proposal is a way for you to show your teacher that you have carefully considered your topic and its viability for an upcoming, major writing project. It helps you to show your teacher that you have taken several things into consideration when choosing your topic–your rhetorical situation for your own writing, multiple perspectives on the issue, the viability of your topic–to determine that the topic is appropriate for the assignment parameters.

An annotated bibliography is used by academics as a research tool. It is generally a good method for keeping track of research, as well as a way to begin to summarize and evaluate sources that you will use in the upcoming argumentative essay. As you work on this project, keep in mind that the summaries (annotations) you complete here can be useful as you write the actual argument later: if you do well with summarizing, then you have a good block of evidence that you can use as a foundation in your argument later.

Your purpose as you work on this assignment is to:

• Propose a topic for your upcoming Researched Argument project, which involves connecting to and refining the focus for your own argument.
• Demonstrate that you can choose an audience and a purpose for that project.
• Conduct research for your project, finding sources for your research project by using the Vol State Library.
• Analyze and evaluate sources for appropriateness and credibility.
• Accurately summarize ideas and information from scholarly sources.
• Practice MLA-style Works Cited entries.

Assignment Audience

Your audience for this essay basically consists of your teacher, as you will be proposing your topic to her and requesting to write on that topic for your upcoming Researched Argument Essay project. This is your chance to show your professor that you understand the goals of an argumentative essay and that you can choose an appropriate topic for your Researched Argument essay, where you will be writing to a more academic audience. Those people will have an interest in the topic that you have chosen. (In summary: You’re asking your teacher permission, in a very formal and extended way, to write on a topic by showing that you can do some preliminary research and narrow your focus, purpose, and audience for your upcoming project.)

Task: The Assignment

There are two elements to this project: 1) the proposal and 2) the annotated bibliography. The proposal should be roughly 2 pages. The annotated bibliography should be 4-6 pages long. Each annotation should be about 200-300 words. Thus, the total length of the combined elements should be 6-8 pages.

For information on how to write/format the proposal, you will receive specific and detailed instructions in the . You are welcome to go directly to those notes before we get to Module 5, but it’s important to do in-depth research before writing the proposal. That’s why we do the annotated bibliography.

The annotated bibliography should include citations and annotations for four (4) sources that offer insight into the points of view on the issue you are going to write about for your Researched Argument essay. These will not be factual/reference sources; instead, you are looking for the debate, what “they say”: What are the different voices and perspectives on the issue? The goal in your annotated bib is to show that your topic is debatable and that you understand what the debate IS through doing good research. For formatting guidelines, go to Module 5 and watch .

Follow MLA guidelines for formatting your document, including heading, spacing, font, page numbers, and margins. Font should be Times New Roman, 12 point. There should be a hanging indent for the annotated bibliography entries, but the proposal should be in traditional essay/paragraph format. For information on formatting an annotated bib, go to the and watch the in Module 5. Follow MLA manuscript format. See .

Steps for the Process

1. Do preliminary research and choose a topic. Complete .
2. Conduct in-depth research, evaluating sources as you work.
3. Compile Annotated Bibliography.
4. Write Research Proposal according to guidelines in .
5. Submit full project by due date.

Criteria for Success

Your work will be evaluated by your teacher using a grading rubric. Click to find out how your work will be evaluated.

The information provided below is intended to help you understand how to more successfully meet the standards outlined on this grading rubric.

Research

Find four (4) sources that help you to understand the conversation about the issue you’re going to write about. The majority of these sources (at least three) should be scholarly sources found in the librarys databases. Additionally, you may use the Internet to search, but limit those sources to the most credible and authoritative sources you can find, and complete a or the form (in Module 4 Resources for Evaluating Sources) for each Internet source you use and submit it with your work.

Documentation of Sources

For this project, you will be expected and required to document your source(s) according to 9th edition MLA documentation guidelines. As you work, look for quotes that may be useful when writing your Researched Argument essay. Since annotations ARE summaries, you do not need parenthetic citations for those. However, if you directly quote from the text of a source in the annotation, it should be smoothly and accurately incorporated into the text of your annotations, and in-text citations should be provided; by contrast, parenthetic citations are necessary for any and all summaries, paraphrases, and quotes included in the proposal section of this assignment. You are also encouraged to begin using Noodletools to cite sources of various types.

If you use GenAI in the text of your assignment, it is important that you give credit to that source in the appropriate use of signal phrases and acknowledgment of ideas. For information on citation of chatbots, review information from on “Citing GenerativeAI in Academic Work.”

To discourage plagiarism, this assignment will be turned into the Dropbox in eLearn, which will send it through the Turnitin plagiarism detection service. Turnitin also includes an AI detection tool that the teacher will reference as a starting point for discussions about the use of GenAI.

AI Transparency

At the bottom of your assignment, after the annotated bibliography, write a reflection statement to offer insight into and to indicate your use of AI for this assignment. Refer to the page for guidance. NOTE: You should include this statement whether you used GenAI or not. This assignment should not be 100% generated from GenAI sources. Any information generated by GenAI should be underlined, and the total use of GenAI should not be more than 15% of the assignment.

Appropriate use for this assignment includes asking GenAI to help you brainstorm potential topics and to aid you in the process as you conduct preliminary research. You might also have GenAI help you with citing the sources in MLA format. However, it is up to you to write the summaries of your sources, to write the proposal itself, and to evaluate the sources for credibility and authority on your subject.

You should avoid using Grammarly or any other such tool to alter the language of your text, as it tends to remove evidence of your own writer’s voice.

Annotations

Each annotation should be one substantial paragraph. Each item in the annotated bib should begin with the MLA-style citation for each source. Under that, write an annotation that does the following things:

• Introduce the writer(s) of the article as the lead-in to the annotation, just as you would do in the signal phrase if you were quoting or introducing the source in the text of your essay.
• Begin each annotation with the authors full name and his/her credentials. Include details about the genre (type) of the work as a way to build ethos;
• Summarize and describe the key issues discussed in the source. Provide much of the following information:
• Sometimes it helps to analyze the rhetorical situation, such as the purpose of the work and the intended audience, but it is not always necessary.
• However, a summary should include the central idea of the work, the key points of the work, a comment about the inclusion of charts, graphs, glossaries, and any details that are necessary to YOUR understanding of the issue that will be relevant to your focus in the upcoming Researched Argument essay.
• Note the positions the writer takes on the issue. Put the writer’s main ideas into your own words without imposing your own thoughts or opinions onto what they are trying to say.
• Be aware that you DO NOT have to include everything, but it’s important that you NOT misrepresent the source. Consider counterarguments and claims alike.
• Evaluate the quality of the source, including the relevance, potential biases, currency, etc.
• Offer a brief statement in the annotation (1-2 sentences) about why your audience (scholarly readers) would find this source credible, reliable, and relevant.
• Assess the author or authors’ credentials. This might require additional research.
• End the annotation with a statement to explain the relevance of this source: how you may be able to use this source in your upcoming Researched Argument essay.

Guidelines for Success

• Your proposal should demonstrate to your teacher that you have narrowed your focus to a specific topic, but you should not take an argumentative stance just yet. Describe the different points of view that you come across, and show why you’re invested in writing on this topic. Show that you understand who your potential audience will be, and what your purpose in writing will be, for the final Researched Argument essay. In other words, this is a proposal of a topic for that final argumentative essay, but you aren’t writing the argument yet.
• Your annotated bibliography will include the first 4 sources you have found related to your general topic. We will find more when we work on the final project, so this is just to show that your topic is viable and debatable.
• Most sources should come from the Vol State Library databases: . for any needed assistance.
• Find sources that are varied, scholarly, and meet the standards of high quality. Do not use Wikipedia or any other non-scholarly websites or materials. These sources should offer differing points of view on the issue.
• The items/entries on your annotated bib should be in alphabetical order based on the first letter of the bibliographic entry.
• Your Annotated Bibliography should not be persuasive; it should not take a position or provide an opinion. This is an informative project that introduces your readers to your sources, discussing their content, quality, and approach to the issues they raise.
• For information on how to write/format the proposal and how to write annotations, see the and the .