an Annotated Bibliography essay about the "GUN CONTROL"

Annotated Bibliography: Students will collect 5-6 sources based on a topic of interested, and compose an annotated bibliography. Conducting proper academic research is a vital skill that students can apply to a variety of situations beyond a writing class. These papers will be between 1,000-1,250 words (4-5 pages) in length. This project is worth 20% of your final grade.

The goal of this assignment is to get you to begin to think about how to conduct research and also how to break down scholarly writing into more manageable sections for personal reference. For this assignment, you can write on any topic you wish. With that in mind, make sure that you can find research on your topic of choice. Think of this project as conducting research for a rather lengthy paper, so make sure your topic is viable enough to support the amount of research you will need.

If you have any questions on your topic, please contact me and I’d be glad to give you some suggestions. Below I have included some sample topics to give you an idea on what you might write about. If you have any idea of what you might potentially major in, it might be worthwhile to think about how you could research that potential career.

For this essay you will be required to compile 5-6 sources for this project. At least 2 of these sources need to be academic, but there is a preference for including as many academic sources as possible.

Assignment breakdown:

Introduction: .5 a page

Annotations-3-4 pages

Conclusion: .5 a page

Introduction: For your introduction, you should structure this as a more traditional essay. In this section of your essay, you should let your readers know what exactly you are going to be researching, and what you hope to learn from it. Like with every essay this semester, you should have a focus statement that lets your readers know exactly what you are writing on, and why you are writing on this subject.

Annotations: An annotation, in this sense, is just a brief summary of the article you have read. In your annotations you should briefly summarize the article you have read, and highlight the key points of the article. In your annotations, you want to use an objective and scholarly style of voice. Here, you will not want to include your personal opinion of the article, but instead an objective overview. Much like our response to text essay, make mention of specific examples from the text you read to support your claim of the argument being effective, or ineffective. You could also comment on what the thesis statement of the essay, and make comments on the successfulness in which the author explained said thesis.

In addition to these objective annotations, you can also include a brief reflection paragraph. In this section, you can express your personal opinion on the articles you are reading. Here, you can also highlight specific questions you have after reading the article. What specific questions come to mind? Are there other articles mentioned that may be worth reading? What new ideas do you have on your subject?

Conclusion: Like your introduction, your conclusion should function as it would in a more traditional essay. Use your conclusion to reflect on your research, and let your readers know where you would go from here. What kind of questions do you still have about your research? Did your research support your original ideas?

Academic vs. popular sources

Your annotations should consist of two types of sources: academic sources, and popular sources. Academic sources include books, database articles, or academic websites (.edu). Popular sources are general websites (something you googled), newspaper/magazine articles, youtube videos.

Sample Topics:

Violence in video games: Do video games make people violent? Conduct some research and see if you can find any link between violence in video games, and violence in real life. Is there a connection, or are people misplacing their anger and using these games as a scapegoat?

The status of modern education: Building off the essay we just read from Partanen, what do you think about modern education? Are the modalities employed by instructors effective? Is it worth the cost to go to college?

Gun control, global warming, abortion, and all those types of topics work as well.

Things to Remember

As this is your initial foray into research, it is find to have a scope that is very broad. However, keep in mind that you will need to whittle down your topic at some point. If you start with a large topic in the beginning of your research, that is fine, but by your conclusion you should have a more refined idea of what kind of topic you will be writing about. Think about the exercise of looping we discussed early on in this class.