Writing a Research Proposal

Remember Swales and the CARS model?

• Establish territory– Claim centrality– Make a topic generalization– Review previous items of research

• Establish niche – Counter-claim– Indicate a gap– Raise a question– Continue a tradition

• Occupy niche– Outline purposes– Announce principal findings– Indicate research-report structure

Establish your territory.Claim centrality Technology is

everywhere we look. Children have cell phones; celebrities “tweet” their escapades; politicians use Facebook to promote their campaigns.

Review research

Recent debates among composition scholars examine the role of technology in the writing classroom.

Topic generalization

Technology has impacted literacy practices for hundreds of years.

Establish your niche.• Counter-claim• Indicate a gap• Raise a question• Continue a

tradition

Technology is everywhere we look. Children have cell phones; celebrities “tweet” their escapades; politicians use Facebook to promote their campaigns. While most would agree that social networking technologies have made an indelible impact on popular culture, few have explored the possibilities these technologies can offer in the context of the college classroom.

Occupy your niche.• Outline

purposes• Announce

principal findings

• Indicate research-report structure

Technology is everywhere we look. Children have cell phones; celebrities “tweet” their escapades; politicians use Facebook to promote their campaigns. While most would agree that social networking technologies have made an indelible impact on popular culture, few have explored the possibilities these technologies can offer in the context of the college classroom. Therefore, I propose to examine the ways that social network technologies can be used to teach students to write.

Describe your data.• Secondary research

– Short summary of potential scholarly sources

Jones, Smith, and Ruskin discuss their efforts to incorporate Twitter into FYC classes in their article “Tweeting to Teach Rhetorical Situation.”

Describe your data, part 2.• Primary research

– Description of your potential research methods (interviews, experiments, surveys, observations, textual analysis)

I intend to observe the use of Facebook in a FYC classroom, analyzing students’ posts, and interviewing the students and instructors involved in order to assess the pedagogical effectiveness of using this social networking site to teach writing.

Sum it up. • Why is your question worth pursuing?

What are the larger implications for your study? What do you hope to discover?

Examining the use of social networking in the college classroom can help us imagine new and innovative ways to teach writing.