English Comp II (Due Today)

Annotated Bibliography Project Sheet

What: Join the larger conversation surrounding the issue identified in your Argument from Fiction by familiarizing yourself with relevant sources. After undertaking the research process as outlined in the lectures, you will complete a two part project. In Part 1, you will describe your engagement with the research process; in Part 2, you will cite and evaluate six sources (four popular, two scholarly) that deepen your understanding of the issue.

Why: Courses throughout your collegiate career will require you to engage in academic research, which includes forming research questions, identifying your information needs, navigating digital collections of information, and evaluating sources. This unit allows you to practice these skills. In addition, you may use these same sources in the next project for this course, the Expanded Argument from Fiction.

Physical Requirements

For Part 1:

In about a page, describe

· your research question

· your interest in the question

· the significance of your question (that is, to whom and why does your question matter?)

· your research process

· What did you already know about the issue?

· What did you need to learn about the issue?

· What steps did you undertake to find useful sources?

· What would you have done differently if you had more time to work on your research?

For Part 2:

For each source:

· Begin with a full citation that conforms to MLA 8 guidelines

· Summarize the contents of the source

· Evaluate the source’s credibility using the steps from the lectures

· Explain how this source is helpful in answering your research question

Example:

Jones, Amanda A. “Challenging ‘Slacktivism:’ Activism on Social Media is Not Enough.” Huffington Post, 31 Oct 2016, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/challenging-slacktivism-activism-on-social-media_us_5817c2dbe4b09b190529c8ae. Accessed 28 Sept 2018.

In this article, Jones argues that slacktivism is an ineffective method of seeking change because taking concrete actions is more beneficial to the cause than simply raising awareness. Although I thought this would be a useful source because it provides a direct answer to my research question, this is not a credible enough source to include in an academic argument. The Huffington Post gets mixed reviews for credibility from media watchers, and Jones is writing from her personal experience as a community organizer without supporting her claims with any other sources. She also tends to use emotionally-charged words because her purpose is to persuade the reader to engage in slacktivism rather than inform the reader about the issue.

Outcome-Based Expectations:

· Examination of Texts

· clearly express a research question based on an issue in the text

· Rhetoric

· sufficiently explain each element of Part I

· Use of Sources

· cite and evaluate a total of six sources

· four popular sources

· two scholarly sources

· Organization

· carefully lead the reader through your line of thinking in summarizing, evaluating, and explaining the usefulness of each source

· faithfully follow MLA formatting

· Standard Written English

· be generally free of grammatical errors