Essay Proposal Assignment | Online Assignment

I need these assignments to organize a 5 page essay. Homework 4 document is the topic that I chose.

HW #6: Annotation Practice

Goals

The primary goal of this assignment is for you to practice annotating a citation and to receive feedback on that annotation before submitting your annotated bibliography assignment. A secondary goal of this assignment is to encourage you to think critically about possible resources for Essay #3 while engaging in annotation as a part of the topic selection/research process.

Directions

Using your proposed topic for Essay #3, choose one (1) proposed peer-reviewed article for Essay #3 and

1. Cite the proposed peer-reviewed article according to MLA format.
2. Write a 3-5 sentence annotation for the peer-reviewed article. Include
   • A brief summary of the most important information in the article (research findings, statistics, etc.) (1-3 sentences)
   • How the article will support your Essay #3 topic/question (2-4 sentences)

This is a brief exercise, but should use formal, academic language. However, you can use “I” in the annotation.

This is a preliminary article choice; you do not have to use the article submitted for this homework in Essay #3 if you change your mind about its usefulness.

Turn in your annotation via Sakai by 11:55PM on July 5, 2020.

Grading

You will be graded on

• the appropriateness of your proposed article
• the formatting of your citation
• the summary in your annotation of the article’s important information for your essay
• the explanation in your annotation of how you’ll use the article in your essay

The Annotation Practice is a homework assignment and counts as part of the 10% homework grade for the course.

How to Search

This video from the Durham Tech Library offers a solid introduction to how to search for resources using the Durham Tech Library: https://warpwire.durhamtech.edu/w/xwIAAA/ (we’re mostly interested in the first two minutes, though if you want to know more about saving your search results, the last 30 seconds are significant).

For our purposes, make sure that once you’ve entered your keywords that you

1. Make sure you click “Scholarly and Peer-Review” (you must use scholarly/peer reviewed articles for Essay 3).
2. Make sure you click “Items at my institution” (we don’t have the time to wait for items to be delivered from other institutions via inter-library loan).
3. Make sure you click “Full Text Online” (this way you’ll only get resources that you can read immediately without having to go to the library).

If you run into any issues, feel free to email me. You can also chat 24/7 with a librarian at Durham Tech, who can help you with research and finding sources: https://www.durhamtech.edu/library/chat-with-librarian

What to Search

Okay, so after watching the video you know how to search, but that still leaves the question of what to search. The research process is much like the writing process in that it can be divided into stages but those stages aren’t necessarily linear.

It looks something like this:

Idea/topic (this is where you know the general thing you’re interested in – “DNA privacy” is the example in the DT library video).

Refine the idea/topic (“DNA Privacy” is too big, so let’s say you’re interested in DNA privacy because of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, so add “race” to your idea/topic).

Try searching (this is the tricky part; sometimes your topic won’t have peer-reviewed research, or you’ll discover that you can refine your topic even futher: “DNA privacy” “race” and “civil rights” or something like that.

Again, the process rarely goes 1,2,3. Instead, you might start at 1, move to three, end up at 2, then go back to 3 again, find some articles but discover one of them doesn’t quite work so you’re back at 2, etc.

Hopefully, there’s something you’re already interested in. As the assignment sheet suggests, your major or career path is a good place to start looking for ideas. I’ve had papers on nursing patients with dementia, environmental impacts of electrical generation through dams, and responses to school shootings. Peer reviewed research tends to favor topics that have been around a while (so you’re unlikely to find a lot of articles on COVID-19 because it’s very new).

So You’ve Found an Article…

Congrats! Based on the title it looks like you’ve found an appropriate article – what now? For now, I would recommend reading through the “abstract” portion of the paper, which lays out the basic topic, the methods, and the conclusions that the article reaches. This should give you a good idea of what the article is about. You might, at this stage, skim through the introduction to get some context as well. Once it looks like the article will work for you, you can start an annotation and get more details from reading more of the article (after the abstract and intro, the “discussion’ and “conclusion” sections are your best bets. I won’t be expecting you to read and understand all the details about method or statistics in your articles).

To give you some help refining your topic and generating search terms, we have the Building Searches assignment, due by the 1^st. Note that you have to complete the activity and upload your worksheet by the 1^st, but you don’t absolutely have to use the topic you use for this homework as your final topic for the Annotated Bib/Essay 3. It helps if they’re the same, but if you have to change things up, that’s okay.