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FOR WRITING A PROJ ECT PROPOSAL
Everett Community College
Aaron Barrell
En glish 102
Topic Proposal (Ongoing Assignment)
The purpose of this writing assignment is to help you make use of the writing and think-
ing you’ve done in developing your own essay topic. Write in complete sentences and
paragraphs, but don’t worry too much about how this is organized—it should read
more like several pages of well– developed notes than as an essay draft. Your proposal
should include two separate sections:
• Choose a topic that matters: Follow the suggestions in the Roadmap section of the
relevant genre chapter. Tell me what you plan to write about. It’s likely that many of
• Consider your rhetorical situation: Answer questions from the Roadmap section of
the relevant genre chapter. While you must address your intended Purpose, Audi–
Be prepared to discuss your topic and rhetorical situation in class.
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FOR WRITING IN MULTIPLE MODES
Hofstra University
Carole Clark Papper
Writing Studies and Composition 001
Multimodal Composition
For this two– part proj ect, you will need to select one of your already– completed essays and
convert it/expand it into a multimodal composition (Part 1). After you’ve done that, you’ll
need to compose a short re ection (Part2) on the pro cess and what you’ve learned by doing
this proj ect.
Part1
For a literacy narrative, you might incorporate pictures of signi cant books or charac-
ters in stories you identi ed with, or photos of a parent or older sibling reading to you.
Maybe a photo of a favorite teacher who helped you or inspired you. You might be able
For a personal narrative, follow similar guidelines: incorporate images of the event or
people involved, of the location(s), or of any impor tant objects. The key is to incorpo-
Or you might re- create the entire essay as a visual: select a number of images
(7–10) that when viewed sequentially will tell your story. Choose from photo graphs,
advertisements, pictures from promo materials for places, etc. (If you have Photoshop or
similar software, you might even doctor up some of the photos.) Be creative— let the
If you choose your Position Paper: You’ll want to think carefully about your medium of
pre sen ta tion. Depending on your topic, sound and images can seriously enhance a posi-
tion by making it more graphic and immediate than merely typed words on paper can.
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student and faculty diners. Or you could create a yer, a brochure, or a poster incorpo–
rating still images and captions from interviews.
If you choose the Visual Rhetorical Analy sis, you might pres ent the paper in a slide–
show (have you tried Prezi?) where you could incorporate the original ads with some
video clips of the same products. Or you could create audio or video interviews with
other users. As with the other options, suit your medium of pre sen ta tion to your topic
and audience.
Chapters 33, DESIGNING WHAT YOU WRITE, and 34, WRITING IN MULTIPLE MODES,
Part2
In your re ection, you’ll want to explain and justify your choices (how you deci ded on
which modality, medium, or genre to use, and why you think these were best suited to
your purpose and content).
Questions to think about:
• What is your rhetorical purpose here?
• Why do you want to publish in the medium (print, podcast, computer) you’ve
selected?
• What do you know about your audience? How will the medium you’ve chosen best
meet their needs?
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Stanford University
Andrea Lunsford
PWR2
Oral/Multimedia Pre sen ta tion Assignment
Oral script for your pre sen ta tion
Your task for this major assignment is to take the wealth of material you have gathered
during your research for a print essay and mine it for a ten– minute pre sen ta tion, sup–
ported by multimedia, that will be spellbinding to your audience. To do so, you’ll need
• Lots of signposting that directs your listeners
• Purposeful repetition
• Avoidance of inde nite pronouns, vague references, and long or complicated
sentences
• Clear and explicit transitions
The multimedia component of the pre sen ta tion
Beyond the script, you will need to orchestrate the other media you will use so that every-
thing supports the message you want to get across. Some of you may decide that you
want your pre sen ta tion to be accompanied and supported by a website that you design. If
doubt, of the controversy surrounding Power Point and other pre sen ta tion software:
Edward Tufte, professor of po liti cal science, computer science, and graphic design at
Yale, has famously proclaimed in Wired that “Power Point Is Evil: Power Corrupts and
Power Point Corrupts Absolutely” (September 2003). Sherry Turkle, psy chol ogy profes-
sor at MIT and author of the acclaimed Life on the Screen, is also skeptical of Power Point,
noting its tendency to oversimplify and to leave speakers and viewers with the percep–
tion that the points on a slide are logically coherent when, in fact, they may have very
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For all the criticisms, however, pre sen ta tional software is increasingly power ful
inhelping scholars to pres ent the results of their research. Your job in the upcoming assign–
not engage) your audience. In this case, both images and words count as visuals. As Leslie
Marmon Silko says in Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, “In the creation of the text
power of all your visuals as the pathos of your slide/screen; and think of the professional
quality of design and credibility of the claims as the ethos of your slide/screen.
Types of Visuals
Decorative visuals are ones that make an aesthetic or emotional contribution to your
pre sen ta tion. Such visuals can serve as a strong “hook” at the beginning of the pre sen-
ta tion, but be aware that they can draw attention away from you and your message,
visuals, you need to ask yourself how relevant this one is: does it contribute to audience
attention or distract from it? Does it have little relevance to your pre sen ta tion? Does it
appear without any explanation? If you answer yes to any of these, you should consider
dropping the visual.
Representative visuals represent or symbolize an idea, concept, or artifact. You can think
of these representative visuals as metaphors— like the logo of a product or the hood
Orga nizational visuals guide your listeners, much as signpoint language does in either
oral or written texts. In Power Point, the most common or gan i za tional visual is the bul-
let point, and you can use these to good advantage. But remember that these or gan i-
Interpretive or illustrative visuals work to clarify complicated ideas, pro cesses, or sys-
tems, and so they demand explanation from the speaker as well as some additional
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visual aids, such as text labels, arrows, etc. Such visuals might include graphs, maps,
pie charts, models, diagrams, and other complex drawings.
See Ch. 33 in Everyone’s an Author for more about types of visuals and how to
incorporate them e ectively into your text.
Words and images . . . verbal and vocal information
Oral/multimedia pre sen ta tions combine the visual power of the screen with the verbal
power of the rhetor or speaker. You need to think carefully about how to put all the
parts of the pre sen ta tion together (the words you say, the movements you make, the
slides you show) in such a way that your audience experiences this pre sen ta tion as a
Remember, as you prepare, that in our pre sen ta tions, the slides should never
stand on their own: let’s think of these oral/multimedia pre sen ta tions as “stand aside”
pre sen ta tions, that is as ones where you stand aside from your slides and the audience
experiences the visual/verbal/vocal e ects. In almost all cases, avoid reading from
Logistics to consider
• For pre sen ta tions in class, it makes most sense to have ALL pre sen ta tion slides
loaded onto one computer; this helps avoid having to shift between machines and
thus wasting time. REMEMBER: If you have an audio le (or several) as part of your
• Think carefully about size, color, font, etc. Make sure that your font style and size is
easy to see and understand from the back of the room. Check that color combina-
tions don’t obscure your point and that they are easy on the eyes. In addition, con–
sider the ratio of text to image or visual and try to minimize the amount of text on
any slide.
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Before you have a formal practice run . . .
• Go over your script again, very carefully. Note every thing you can about how you
can improve it.
• Work once more on your introduction and conclusion. How does the introduction
hook your audience and make them want to hear more? How does the intro make
• Make sure to coordinate what you SAY with what the audience members SEE.
• Make sure you use plenty of signpost language in the pre sen ta tion. And remember
force to be heard at the back of the room.
• Think about how you might get your audience involved in the pre sen ta tion and try
this out on friends.
• Fi nally, arrange for a formal practice session that will be taped, with a media center
or with friends. Take time afterwards to watch and listen to the taped pre sen ta tion
very carefully, taking note of things you want to improve.
For the pre sen ta tion . . .
• Make sure to get a good night’s rest and to eat a good breakfast.
• Dress for success: you want to look good but you also want to be comfortable so
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Northwestern State University
Thomas Reynolds
En glish 1010
Short Writing Assignment #2: Make a Meme Image (Group Proj ect)
Review the information we have discussed about memes based on the following sites:
• “Every thing You Need to Know to Make Your Own Memes” from Digital Trends
Considering the premise of a meme image and the many versions available to remix,
complete the following assignment with your assigned group.
Create a meme that works o a common image, type, or slogan that you have
encountered ( either before or during our review of memes this week). Your meme
should be original in some way, but part of the genre of the meme is that it often picks
up ele ments from already existing memes in our culture. For instance, you might take a
picture of your cat doing something silly and type a grammatically incorrect comment
associated with certain types of comments. You may use what ever program you wish to
complete the meme; just be sure to save your image so that you can submit it and we
can view them as a class.
Your meme should:
• show understanding of what a meme is.
We will have a class vote for the best meme, and the winning group will earn extra credit!
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Northwestern State University
Thomas Reynolds
En glish 1010
Short Writing Assignment #6: Make an Infographic (Group Proj ect)
Review the information we have discussed about infographics based on the following
sites:
• “What Is an Infographic?” from OpenCC (youtube . com)
• “What Is an Infographic?” from Customer Magnetism (customermagnetism . com
Considering all that we have discussed about infographics, you will create your own
with your assigned groups based on (1) your own topic, (2) researched and cited infor–
mation about that topic, and (3) design ideas that make your pre sen ta tion in ter est ing
and understandable. You may use any program you wish to create your infographics.
Those of you with graphic design and/or advanced computer skill may nd it faster to
1. Go to www . easel . ly/ (Firefox works better than Internet Explorer).
2. Sign up (it’s free).
6. If you go back to “Home,” you will see your infographics so that you can continue to
edit them until they are ready.
7. Once it is done, go “Home” and then click “Share” below your infographic and send
it to me.
Your infographic should:
• pres ent researched and cited information about an in ter est ing topic in an in ter est ing
way.
We will have a class vote for the best infographic, and the winning group will earn extra
credit!
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FOR CONDUCTING RESEARCH
University of Montana– Missoula
Amy Ratto– Parks and Sarah Dozor
WRIT 101
Listen, Then Tell Us What You Heard: The Personal Academic Essay
Background
As you have read in your text, one of the foundational princi ples of studying rhe toric is
listening. For this rst major inquiry assignment you will practice listening as you pursue
answers to your own research question about Montana, Missoula, or UM. You will
learn how to ask a quality research question, conduct academic research, integrate and
Your purpose in this essay is not to nd the answer to your question. Indeed, if
you can nd “the answer” then you have not asked a quality research question. Your
purpose is to explore opinions and ideas in order to create a conversation among voices
Assignment
Write a 6–8 page research– based essay in response to a speci c research question of
your choice; topic must allow you to engage on a personal level. Your essay should:
• address a speci c research question of personal interest.
• pursue even tentative conclusions by the end.
• breathe—it should not have the stu y Encyclopedia Britannica voice; if you have cho–
sen a topic of interest to you, this should come naturally.
Required Ele ments
The following should be stapled together neatly when you turn in your paper to me:
• invention work/drafting materials
• sketch with class comments
• workshop draft
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Johnson County Community College
Matthew Schmeer
ENGL 121
Essay 4: Reporting Information (Research/Information Synthesis)
Given that you are enrolled in college and engaged in the pro cess of gaining knowledge
and expertise, for this assignment you will write an informative synthesis (research
paper) on how we know what we know. Your goal is to write an essay which explains
Your goal for this essay is not to argue your own position, but to pres ent the
competing theories of expertise and the varying positions and points of agreement and
disagreement of other authors. Your job as a writer is to inform the reader about your
I will provide you with several “starter” articles in ANGEL to use in your essay,
and you must use at least two of these for your paper.
You are also required to nd and use at least ve additional “college– level” sources
for this essay besides those mentioned in this assignment. Three of these sources must
come from the college library or from the college’s research databases. If you choose to
use more than seven sources, your additional sources must come from the college
library or the college’s research databases.
Do not use Wikipedia or other “crowd- sourced” websites as cited sources for
this assignment. Doing so will result in an automatic F for the assignment.
This assignment has two components. Each part is worth 100 points.
Part1: Annotated Bibliography
Before using these sources in your essay, you will nd and summarize each source for
the Annotated Bibliography portion of this unit. An Annotated Bibliography is basically
a Works Cited page that includes a summary of each of the entries (see the Every one
must also have a two to three sentence paragraph that evaluates the source and justi es
the validity of the source for a college- level research proj ect. Only two of these ve sources
may be web– based (found on the open internet through a search engine).
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All entries must be presented in appropriate MLA Works Cited format; the for-
mat changes for each type of source, which we will discuss in class. One note: I want you
to include URLs (web addresses) for any sources found on the open internet, but not
from library databases ( we’ll discuss how to do this in class, too).
All entries and annotations must be double– spaced in Times, Times Roman, or
Cambria 10– or 12- point font.
pages. There should be at least seven total sources included when you turn in the
paper— and you should use each of those sources in your essay, too.
Part2: Informative Synthesis Essay
Your research paper will explain how people become “experts” in a given eld, with an
emphasis on how the internet has changed that pro cess. Your paper will focus on what
others have to say about this topic, but needs to go beyond merely repeating what
To write this section well, the majority of your essay should refer to or come
from your sources in the form of summaries, paraphrases, and direct quotations. In
fact, I am requiring you to use at least two di er ent sources by di er ent authors per
informative paragraph, and explain the connection between their ideas.
Additionally, you may only use one instance of block quotation for this essay.
Ifyou use a block quotation, you must spend as much space analyzing or discussing
the material in the block quotation as the block quotation itself takes up in your paper.
signal phrase, and integrate each direct quotation into your essay to avoid what I call
“ oating quotations” (explained in class).
Remember that an informational synthesis focuses on presenting a clear, well–
structured overview of a speci c aspect of an issue.
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of learning based on the two starter essays I have provided the class, to a discussion of
how people learn within a speci c eld, to a discussion of how the internet has changed
how people learn within that eld.
For example, a student might write about how people use feedback from their
peers and clients to get good at things. Then the student might move to a discussion of
how chefs use feedback from other chefs and customers to perfect their recipes. And
then the student might write about how the use of YouTube, Skype, and Facebook has
changed how chefs get feedback from customers to improve their own recipes. Note
Audience
Assume you are writing for an academic audience of your peers who are not familiar
with your in de pen dent research. This forces us to consider a very real writing condition.
Most of the time, when we write for a nongeneral audience, we have to consider the fact
that the audience might have read the major works in the eld and is familiar with com–
mon knowledge. We don’t want to insult the intelligence of that audience by overlook-
ing impor tant works or by overexplaining things every body should already know. At the
Style & Format
Your Annotated Bibliography will be roughly 5 pages long, depending on the number of
sources and the length of the annotations. In short, the Annotated Bibliography will be
essay with a story, and then interweave scenes and information from your research into
the essay, bouncing back and forth between the story and the research.
There is NO WAY to successfully complete this assignment in less than ve pages.
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Evaluation Criteria & Grading
Your Annotated Bibliography will be evaluated based on the proper documentation of
the works cited entries and the breadth and scope of the annotations.
Your Annotated Bibliography will start out worth 100 points—50 points for the
Works Cited entry and50 points for your summaries. Each error in documentation will
knock o one point. If there are ve or more errors in a works cited entry, the entire
Grades for the Annotated Bibliography will be recorded as such:
90–100 A
80–89 B
70–79 C
60–69 D
0–59 F
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Everett Community College
Aaron Barrell
En glish 102
Essay 5: The Research Essay
For this essay, you will compose a hybrid (multigenre) research essay on a topic you
have developed within the theme of the course. I’ve broken down the drafting stage of
the writing pro cess for this essay into stages— a rst and a second draft.
First (Rough) Draft
Compose a single document that contains two parts. What I mean by “rough” here is
Part A: Synthesizing Sources
Focus primarily on two things in this portion of the rough draft: what your sources have
to say and what you have to say.
• Include a title.
• Do not include an opening or conclusion, yet— just the body paragraphs.
Part B: Re ection
This is where you’ll be including some re ection on your writing that you’ll excise when
it comes time to produce the polished draft, but will help me provide helpful comments.
Be as speci c as you can.
• Write out your thesis, even if it also appears in PartA.
• What are you most interested in about your topic? Least interested in?
• In what areas are you most concerned about succeeding? In what are you most
con dent?
• Aside from an opening and a conclusion, what is missing from this draft?
Please include a Works Cited or Works Consulted page, and format according to MLA
or APA style (including in- text citations).
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Due:_______________
At least 5–7 pages in length (the re ection should not exceed 2 pages)
Second (Polished) Draft
For this assignment, you will compose a polished draft of your research essay. You’re
aiming for the best, most complete essay you’re capable of here— even though you
When it appears in the portfolio, this essay will be evaluated according to the fol–
lowing criteria:
• E ective use of the characteristic features of the primary genre in which you’re
writing
• Complete and accurate bibliographic citations (MLA or APA)
Due:_______________
10–15 pages in length (including a Works Cited page)
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FOR CONSIDERING STYLE
Stanford University
Andrea Lunsford
PWR2
Sentence Style
In making this assignment, I have several goals in mind:
1. To stretch your syntactic muscles, challenging you to sustain a thought in syntax for a
minimum of 250 words;
2. To focus your attention on sentence structure, on the “skeleton” of a sentence;
Part I: The Lonnnnnng Sentence
During the last eight hundred years, En glish has moved from a primarily paratactic
structure to a primarily hypotactic structure. The King James Bible illustrates parataxis,
as does Beowulf: parataxis builds up sentences in parallel sequences of clauses and
phrases, joining them with coordinating conjunctions (most often “and” or “but”).
Examples of long sentences
“Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say,
‘Wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and
drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate- lled policemen
curse, kick, and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority
of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the
midst of an a uent society; . . . when you have to concoct an answer for a ve– year- old
next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever
ghting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’— then you will understand why we nd it
di cult to wait.” — Dr.Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
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“All the Christmases roll down the hill towards the Welsh– speaking sea, like a snowball
growing whiter and bigger and rounder, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down
the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice– edged, sh– freezing waves,
and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out what ever I can nd; holly or robins or
Goes the Weasel’ and ‘Nuts in May’ and ‘Oranges and Lemons’ on the untuned piano in
the parlor all through the thimble– hiding musical- chairing blindman’s- bu ng party at the
end of the never– to– be– forgotten day at the end of the unremembered year.”
— Dylan Thomas, “Memories of Christmas”
“How did it come about that a man born poor, losing his mother at birth and soon
deserted by his father, a icted with a painful and humiliating disease, left to wander for
twelve years among alien cities and con icting faiths, repudiated by society and civiliza-
tion, repudiating Voltaire, Diderot, the Encyclopédie, and the Age of Reason, driven
the ethics of Tolstoy, and, altogether, had more e ect upon posterity than any other
writer or thinker of that eighteenth- century in which writers were more in uential than
they had ever been before?” — Will and Ariel Durant, “Rousseau and Revolution”
“Though in many natu ral objects, whiteness re ningly enhances beauty, as in imparting
some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though vari ous
nations have in some way recognized a certain royal pre– eminence in this hue; even the
of Amer i ca the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor;
though in many climes, whiteness typi es the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the
Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk- white
steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most August religions it has been
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made incarnate in the snow- white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the mid–
winter sacri ce of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology,
that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great
Spirit with the annual tidings of their own delity; and though directly from the Latin
word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture,
“Procrastination, my best friend, is always there for me, stopping me from accomplish-
ing what ever I need to do and instead leading me to all kinds of fascinating distractions—
like learning how to play the theme song to Peanuts on the piano; seeing every movie on
the Ohio State movie channel; putting an entire glow- in- the– dark solar system on the
ceiling above my bed; painting my ngernails sparkling blue; guring out the theme song
be doing my homework; play the drums when I am supposed to be reading a book; take
up photography when I am supposed to be practicing my drums; and watch tele vi sion
when I am supposed to be doing every thing else, all of which suggests that without my
friend procrastination, I would not be the well- rounded person I am today!”
— Elizabeth Linville, rst- year writing student
Guidelines for writing your own 250– word sentence
1. After identifying the basic structure of at least two of the example sentences above,
decide on the structure you want to use and then write a sentence that is at least 250
words long AND that is punctuated perfectly according to standard conventions. If
you deviate from standard punctuation, you must explain and justify the deviation.
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Part II
Now study your sentence and then condense it into exactly 25 words, capturing the
heart or main message of your 250– word sentence. Read both aloud and make some
notes about which you like better and why.
Part III
Part IV
Fi nally, illustrate visually either your tweet or your 25– word sentence. You might create
the illustrations by hand or by computer; or you might create an electronic text that is
accompanied by sound and moving/still images or animations. You can nd in ter est ing
examples of such sentences by Googling “electric lit er a ture single sentence animations.”
Chapter 29 demonstrates how one sentence can be written in all these ways.
You may also want to refer to Ch. 31 on HOW TO WRITE GOOD SENTENCES for this
activity.