ENGL541 Research proposal and Bibliography
Weight: 40%
Length: 1500 words
Submission format: .pdf .docx
Assignment Instructions
Please ensure that you consult the requirements for a Literary Essay,
and the required assignment presentation provided in the Unit Assessment
Summary before submitting your essay.
***This assignment requires that you read ahead in the unit to choose
the texts on which you will focus.
In this assignment you will set out a research proposal for the research
paper that you will write for Assignment 2.
Your task in Assignment 1 is to explain how you will carry out a
research project on TWO or THREE of the prescribed literary texts for this
unit.
Your first step will be to establish the literary texts on which you
will work, and the topic or focus for your research. Identify a particular
research issue, or come up with a question or questions that you want your
research to answer. Topics could, for example, include an investigation of a particular
theme (such as religion, politics, gender, the monarchy, discovery) or
character type; a New Historicist interpretation of how different texts respond
to important issues of their day; an examination of the role of genre and form
as a way of conveying meaning; a consideration of how texts negotiate the act
of writing; and so on.
Whichever approach you take, the focus of the essay must be
the literary texts you have chosen to analyse.
The next step is to undertake a survey of the scholarship in the field. For
this task you should focus on scholarly work in books, journals, and journal
data bases–avoid general online sites which might not contain correct
information.
I encourage you to use this opportunity to pursue what you find really interesting
in the texts set for the unit.
Now, outline your possible project, using the following headings as a
guide:
1. Title, Thesis Statement,
Objectives/Aims (Approx. 200 words)
Give your project a title, provide a thesis
statement, and outline the topic you have chosen and your reasons for choosing
it: why is your topic interesting?
2. Outline your main ideas so
far (Approx. 500 words)
Briefly outline a few major points that you could
develop further in your Research Essay. Describe your ideas in paragraphs, not
dot points.
3. Provide an annotated bibliography
(Approx. 500 words)
Provide an annotated list of five scholarly works
you have consulted that have relevance for your topic. An annotated
bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each
citation is followed by a brief (here, write 100 words) descriptive and
evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to
inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.
Check how to do this on the following site:
http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill28.htm
Please use the MLA Referencing Author-Date Style for
referencing quotations and the Works Cited page. Another link is: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
Marking criteria
relevance
of the answer to the essay topic
demonstrated
ability to engage closely with and critically analyse the language of
literary texts
demonstrated
ability to support critical arguments with quotations from the text/s
under discussion and/or other evidenced sources
demonstrated
ability to develop and articulate a clear thesis in the introduction
demonstrated
ability to construct coherent patterns of argument and to express ideas
clearly and succinctly and in a logical sequence
demonstrated
competency in using secondary material critically and in order to promote
independent thinking on the assignment topic
demonstrated
ability to correctly structure an essay, paragraphs, and sentences and to write
in a grammatically correct manner
demonstrated
understanding of the subject matter of the unit
compliance
with the presentation requirements
compliance
with the Unit referencing requirements.
compliance
with the UNE Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct policy.