Posted: September 13th, 2017

Annotated Bibliography and Research Essay

Annotated Bibliography and Research Essay

Order Description

WRTG 102

Annotated Bibliography and Research Essay Assignments

Part 1: Annotated Bibliography

Note: This project will not be eligible for revision for a higher grade

DUE: By 11:30pm Wednesday, 4/22, under ASSIGNMENTS (no workshop for this paper)

Specifications:

An annotated bibliography is the first step to creating a solid research project. The idea is to find sources that would potentially work as support for your essay, read and summarize them, and discuss how each source would best be used in the essay, along with the piece’s strengths and weaknesses. This allows you to collect, read, and prepare your sources prior to the drafting process of the research essay.

An annotated bibliography includes a set number of sources. You discuss each source by first, citing it in MLA 7th edition style. Next, you summarize the source. Next, you discuss strengths and weaknesses of the piece, followed by briefly explaining how you would use it in your research essay. The sources are presented in alphabetical order, and the bibliography is completely double-spaced.

Requirements:

You must include 5 sources in your annotated bibliography

2 of those sources must be articles from peer reviewed, scholarly journals

The other 3 sources may come from a mixture of books, documentaries, journal articles, or other types of work that meet the requirements for source credibility for academic research. Any work from a website must have a clear author, have a creation date listed, be nonbiased, and include a bibliography of sources used to create the site’s information.

All citations and documentation must be done in complete and correct MLA 7th edition format

All paraphrased and quoted material must be documented correctly.

The sources included must be appropriate for use in one of the prompts for the research essay (see below for that assignment)

Use of proper grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics, and attention to coherence is expected

Part 2: The Research Essay

Note: This paper will not be eligible for revision for a higher grade

Due for workshop: Wednesday, 4/29

Due in final draft: By 11:30pm Monday, 5/4, under ASSIGNMENTS

Specifications:

Choose one of the prompts below on which to focus both your annotated bibliography assignment and your research essay.

CHOICE A: The Importance of Being Oscar. For this prompt, you will research Oscar Wilde, the writer, and discover why he was considered the premiere playwright of his generation. What is it about his plays that struck a chord with late Victorian audiences? What themes did he work with? How did the critics respond to his work when he was alive? How has that response changed over time?

CHOICE B: Discuss a common theme found in both The Importance of Being Earnest and Trifles. What comments do the plays seem to make about relationships? The war between the sexes? The differences in class? Crime and punishment? Society?

CHOICE C: Discuss the history of the theater. You could focus on one of the fathers of drama (Aristotle, Thespis, Aeschylus, or Sophocles) or the lot of them and show how they formed drama today. You may want to explore Greek Theater or Elizabethan Theater, or compare the two. You could look at Contemporary Theater and note how it varies from the Greeks and the Elizabethans. You may want to explore the structure of the actual theaters. Look at the theater in the round concept that the Greeks used, as opposed to the proscenium arch that Elizabethans made popular and are still in use today. Another possibility would be to focus a study on one of the early theatrical traditions, such as the miracle and mystery plays, or traveling troops. You may want to look at how the church almost put an end to theater all together.

What I look for in the research essay:

The essay is thesis driven, so you need to make a clear, debatable point about your topic. I look for your comprehension of the literary and theatrical techniques we’ve discussed in class, and your ability to recognize their use in a play, as well as the purpose for their use. I look for smooth writing style, coherence, unity of ideas, excellent structure and development of those ideas, smooth integration of quotes and paraphrases, and proper parenthetical documentation and citations in MLA 7th edition format. If you are doing option C, your paper will be more research oriented than theory oriented, as with options A and B. All three options require thought, a point that you want to make in the essay, and thorough research.

Requirements:

You must use a minimum of 5 sources in the essay. Ideally, they will be the same sources from your annotated bibliography, but they don’t have to be. 2 of those sources must be peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles. The other 3 sources may be a mix of books, documentaries, films, and other articles from credible web sources. You may use more than 5 sources in the essay.

All quotes and paraphrases must be correctly and completely cited and documented using MLA 7th edition format. Proper paper formatting in MLA must be adhered to as well.