GUIDELINES FOR PROPOSAL / A.

Antonopoulos

NO STAPLES PLEASE! NO RECTO-VERSO PLEASE!

On ONE-PAGE only – write a well-conceived paragraph, single-spaced, with a

title, subtitle, and tentative bibliography; no cover page, please; just include
your name, ID, and course at the top left.

The proposal gets you started early while emphasizing the problem/thesis
structure of academic papers. Here are the questions that can be adjusted to
fit your proposal as you move from a topic focus to a problem-focus.

NB: You will need to go through several drafts before you get it right.

ADDITIONAL TIPS

Questions to Think On Before Writing Your Proposal

1. What interpretive problem or question do you intend to address? Explain the

problem, showing how it arises from your chosen text/s…
2. What makes your problem problematic? What disagreements among
scholars, gaps in knowledge, or complexities or inconsistencies in the text/s
characterize the problem?
3. What’s at stake in addressing this problem? Why is it significant? To whom
does it matter? How will solving it advance the conversation? How does your
small problem connect to some larger problem?
4. In addition to your chosen text/s do you envision using any other primary
sources such as other kinds of sources – contemporary historical documents,
empirical evidence, visual media, and so forth?
Attach a preliminary bibliography of peer-reviewed scholarly articles or books
that seem relevant to your interpretive problem. Some of these may serve as
argument sources in your final paper (the network of other voices in the
conversation that you are joining, summarizing effectively another critic’s views
and integrating them into your own argument.

Some Additional Guidelines for Writing Tasks in Preparation of your Proposal

A. Eight Exploration Tasks for an Argument Addressing an Issue

1. Write out the issue your argument will address. Then write out your
tentative answer to your issue question. This will be your beginning thesis
statement or claim.
 2. Why is this issue controversial? Who are the stakeholders in the
controversy? Why don’t they agree? (For example, is there not enough
evidence to resolve the issue? Is the current evidence ambiguous or
contradictory? Are definitions in dispute? Do the parties disagree about basic
values, assumptions, or beliefs?)

3. What personal interest do you have in this issue? What personal experiences
do you have with it? How does the issue affect you?

4. Who is the audience that you need to persuade? What values, beliefs and
assumptions cause them to take positions different from yours? What
evidence do they use to support their positions?

5. Through idea mapping or free writing, begin planning your own argument.
What are the main reasons and evidence you will use to support your
position? As you generate reasons and evidence, you are likely to discover
gaps in your knowledge. Where could your argument be bolstered by
additional data such as statistics, examples, and expert testimony? Where
and how will you do the research to fill these gaps?

6. Role-playing your readers, imagine the counterarguments that your

audience might make. Where does your claim threaten their beliefs, discount
their own values, or otherwise cast them as losers rather than winners?

7. How can you respond to these objections and counterarguments? Take them
one by one and brainstorm possible responses.

8. Finally, explore again why this issue is important. What are its broader
implications and consequences? Why does it matter?

B. Writing A More Formal Exploratory Essay for Yourself

Write a first-person, chronologically organized account of your thinking process as

you explore possible solutions to a question or problem related to this course. Begin
by describing what the question is, how and why you became interested in it, and
why it is problematic for you (that is, why you can’t answer it). Then, as you
contemplate the problem and do research, narrate the evolving process of your
thinking. Include three kinds of information for your reader: 1) external details of
your search (coffee shop conversations, trips to the library, methods for finding
sources—the narrative “story” of your search); 2) summaries of the new
arguments/information you recovered along the way (summaries of arguments you
read from the scholarly literature, new information collected from interviews,
discussions with classmates, and so forth); and 3) your own internal mental
wrestling to make sense of new material (what you were thinking about, how your
idea were evolving—reformulating the problem, changing your mind, experiencing
confusion versus “aha!” moments). For this essay, it doesn’t matter whether you
reach a final position or solve the problem; your reader is interested in your
process, not your final product. Make your exploratory essay an interesting
intellectual detective story—something your readers will enjoy.

C. The Generic Term-Paper Assignment:

Write a researched argument [specify length] on any topic related to the subject
matter we have been studying. Early in your research process you must identify
within your topic area a problem, question, or controversy that requires from you a
contestable thesis statement supported by your own critical thinking. Use the
introduction of your paper to engage your reader’s interest in the problem or
question you plan to address, showing why it is both problematic and significant.
The body of your paper should be your own contestable response to this question
made as persuasive as possible through appropriate analysis, argumentation, and
use of evidence. Midway through the course, you will submit to the instructor a
proposal that describers the problem or question that you plan to address and
shows why the question is 1) problematic and 2) significant.

D. All Texts Are Trying to Change Your View

1. Before I read this text, the author assumed that I believed . . . [fill in].
2. After I finished reading this text, the author wanted me to believe . . . [fill in].
3. The author was/ was not successful in changing my view. How so? Why or
why not?
E. Sample Questions to Pose/ Spur Rhetorical Thinking

Question to Ask / Purpose or Value of This Question

What is my level of expertise relative to my assigned audience? (Note: A

student may be a novice relative to the instructor but an expert relative to some one
else)
Helps write determine an appropriate level of vocabulary and syntax as well as
amount of background or development needed.

How do I want to change my reader’s view of my topic?

Helps write establish a contestable thesis in conversation with alternative views.

How much does my audience already know about the problem/issue I am

addressing? How much do they care about it?
Helps writer compose an effective introduction. The less an audience already knows
about the writer’s subject, the more the writer must provide a background and
context. To motivate the audience to care, the writer needs to make the problem
vivid and to show why addressing the problem matters.

What’s the “news” in my paper? What constitutes old information and new
information for my audience?
Helps write connect new information to old information. Readers need to know the
“news” quickly—usually in the title or subject line and certainly early in the
introduction. But the news makes sense only when linked to the reader’s previous
knowledge and interests (old information).

How resistant is my audience to my thesis? Helps the writer accommodate

resistant readers. Resistant audiences need assurance that the writer has thought
about and respects alternative views; they’ll expect the writer to anticipate possible
objections and respond to them.

How busy is my audience?

Helps writer think about reader’s environment. Busy audiences often prefer concise
documents with easy-to-scan structures and meanings up front.

Adapted from Bean, Engaging with Ideas (2011).