ILR260: WEEK THREE ASSIGNMENT: Rough Draft of the Final Project

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Week Three Assignment: Rough Draft of the
Final Research Project

Overview

This is the assignment that is going to take you from a collection of write-ups on

individual sources to an actual draft. It might be helpful to think of the writing

you’ve done thus far in the class as a set of research-project construction

materials. For example, the Project Introduction, end of Week One, represents a

foundation for the final project. In Week Two, you’ll work on source write-ups:

these are your building materials.

Now you are going to prepare some binding agents (transitions! synthesis! see below…)

to bring everything together in the form of an actual draft of your research essay.

ILR260: WEEK THREE ASSIGNMENT: Rough Draft of the Final Project

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Be aware, though, that you are likely to find you also need more, or different, materials.

It is at the drafting stage that we often notice significant gaps or unanswered questions

in our research. We realize that more research is required—and possibly also

refinement of the original research question.

This kind of looping back is not a sign of trouble. Rather, it is a natural part of the

research writing process, which almost never follows a tidy straight line from idea

formation to source gathering to drafting.

Two of our Week Three readings are of particular importance for the draft.:

• Week Three assigned reading on Synthesis

(https://info260.hcommons.org/synthesizing/)

• Week Three Lecture on Transitions (http://info260.hcommons.org/?p=112 ).

The Synthesis lecture will help you begin thinking about how your ideas fit together, and

how best to arrange them. The Transitions lecture will help you think about how to

signal these relationships to readers.

For a reminder of what the finished product will look like, see the Final Research Project

specifications document on this assignment. Note, though, that no concluding

paragraph is required in the Week Three Rough Draft (we will work on conclusions next

week).

How to develop your work into a rough draft

As the old saying goes, “there is more than one road to Rome.” Below, however, is an

approach that you will likely find helpful for transforming your week-one introduction,

week-two library report into the Week Three Rough Draft. If you are having trouble

getting started or are short on time, try tackling the items below one at a time. Also, if

the order of tasks below isn’t working for you, go ahead and jump around—

whatever gets you started in transforming the pieces you’ve been developing to this

point in the class into a draft that you can submit at the end of Week Three.

ILR260: WEEK THREE ASSIGNMENT: Rough Draft of the Final Project

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“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs” –Henry Ford

☐ Join all of your project-related work into a single document: the Week One

Introduction, and the Week Two Library Research Report.

☐ Carefully review any revision recommendations you’ve received on your earlier work.

If substantive changes are needed (especially changes to the research question itself!),

you will want to attend to those first. If you are confused about any feedback

you’ve received from your instructor or classmates, get that confusion cleared up.

☐ Read/Re-read the assigned page on Synthesis and begin arranging your source write-

ups. You began the process of synthesis in week-two when you analyzed sources in

terms of how they spoke to your research question. Now return to these week-two

source write-ups and examine them carefully. What are the different components of

your inquiry that they help address? Which of the sources develop similar claims? Which

represent areas of debate within your inquiry? What are some similar or different

methodologies you see being employed to study issues related to your research

question? What similar or different values or priorities seem to be motivating the

research? Are there areas of strong consensus? Are there questions or sub-questions

that your sources downplay or ignore?

The idea here is to think about all of the different things you might say about your

sources in relation to one another. Jot down some notes (you might want to do this

directly on your document in a different colored font), and move paragraphs around so

that related ideas appear together. In some instances you may want to merge two

source write-ups into a single paragraph, or divide one write-up into two paragraphs.

☐ Are there gaps in the skeletal draft you’ve constructed that point to the need for

more research? If so, now is the time! Re-visit the strategies you practiced in Week Two

(using different databases, using one source to find others, etc.), and, as always, don’t

hesitate to contact a librarian if you are in need of research assistance

([email protected]).

ILR260: WEEK THREE ASSIGNMENT: Rough Draft of the Final Project

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☐ Read/Re-read the Week Three lecture on Transitions. Do you see how transitional

phrasing can be used to express the kinds of relationships among ideas that you’ve been

reflecting on? Take a look at the sample Final Research Project as well. Notice how the

author uses transitions to show his readers relationships between the sources he found

through his research. Note that he has synthesized his sources (he has identified

relationships, contradictions, gaps, etc.) and that each paragraph begins with a sentence

or two that make these relationships explicit for readers.

Again, synthesis—and the expression of synthesized ideas through carefully-

crafted transitions—is the glue that holds the individual paragraph together and helps

them cohere as a single research project. Try writing some transitions that express the

relationships you’ve identified among your sources.

☐You attended to substantive revisions earlier in this process. Now is the time to attend

to any more localized matters your instructor or peers commented on at an earlier

stage, or that you’ve become aware of yourself upon reviewing your work. Take a look

at the minimum requirements for the rough draft. Is your draft on track to meet these

requirements? Revise as necessary. To get even more mileage out of this draft, check

what you have against the Final Research Project specifications and the grading criteria.

Strive to submit your best effort at this stage as a means of ensuring that the feedback

you receive from peers and your instructor will be feedback that you can use (rather

than a recitation of things you already know about and had intended to get to later).

☐Check your work against the list of “Presentation Norms in academic papers” that

appears in the class lecture on Document

Design: https://info260.hcommons.org/document-design/

Example

The following annotated example calls attention to specific draft requirements:

https://info260.hcommons.org/annotated-sample-draft/

*Note that this example contains a chart. You may include visualizations, but they are

not required in a paper.

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Grading of the Week Three Rough Draft

Evaluation of the draft will be based on demonstrated draft-stage effort to fulfill project

specifications. Drafts that demonstrate an attempt to meet all of the specifications

below can potentially receive full credit (100%/A+) even if they do not yet meet the

specifications at the level required for the final version of the research project.

Specifications

• Introduction communicates the research question, and this question matches the
actual content of the essay.

• Essay emphasizes high-quality, relevant, scholarly sources.

• All body paragraphs focus on discussion of research findings and explain the
significance of these findings in relation to the research question.

• Source identification* is correct, clear, and concise.

*Remember that, in ILR260, “source identification” means doing what journalists do and
explaining—briefly—who our sources are.

• Sources are synthesized and paragraph transitions are used to
signal relationships between ideas.

• Writing is clear and accessible to non-specialist readers.

• Citation follows APA style (unless you’re a humanities major and have arranged to
use MLA).

• Essay adheres to presentation norms of academic papers

Note: no conclusion is required at this stage. We’ll tackle the conclusion during Week
Four.

Work that substantially deviates from the assignment requirements (for example, the

draft offers something other than analytical research writing, or it relies on sources

inappropriate to an academic research project, or it contains sentence-level problems so

serious as to prevent assessment of other aspects of the work) will receive partial or no

credit.

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If you run into problems while working on your Draft during Week Three, don’t hesitate

to ask for help!