Play Roles Affecting Actors Personal Life

RESEARCH PROSPECTUS 

Writing #2

SYNOPSIS OF WRITING #2

Since the final three major writing tasks of the term are all connected, this second piece is actually the starting point for your fourth piece. (See "A Preview of Writing #4 below.) Rather than being a "paper," Writing #2 is a research "prospectus" (or "proposal") that will preview for me such issues as what your documented study (Writing #4) will be about, how you will go about it, and what other theorists have already said about the topic you are working on.

The prospectus should be at least three pages long, and it will use MLA documentation.

A PREVIEW OF WRITING #4 (Final Project)

Writing #4 will be a documented study. It needs to be of interest to an academic audience regarding the world of film. That projection/repsentation will be at least 15 slides long (not counting the works cited slide) and will use research methods appropriate to its central research question. It will also utilize a documentation system appropriate to its subject matter. After the projects are all turned in, each student will also present to the rest of the class the findings of his or her study.

There are a good many options for a discourse such as the one you will produce for Writing #4, possibilities we will explore by looking at various articles. Above all, your study will do the following:

1. Be appropriate for academic readers

2. Be unified around a research question rather than simply reporting on several different aspects of a topic

3. Be "original" in that it attempts to wrestle with a topic that has not already been rehashed again and again in print

• This “originality” will stem from the academic study of film. In other words, your topic must be about film in some form or another. We will review several ideas for topics in class together.

4. Be "research"--which may mean textual study, library sources, historical sources, survey methods, interviews, or other appropriate techniques.

COMPONENTS OF THE PROSPECUS (Writing #2)

Since this is a different sort of writing than most of you have ever written, we will spend some time talking about what a prospectus needs to be like. (For this, we will build on the sample prospectus on Canvas.)

 The following will serve as the essential components of your prospectus:

1. What is the central research question in the study?

2. What is so important about the question? (I.e., why/how is it of worth to an academic audience?)

3. What have other theorists/researchers had to say about the central research question you are investigating? (This is also often known as the "Review of the Literature" section of a prospectus.) (Must include at least 5 sources.)

4. What do you plan as your methodology for the study?