This assignment is due in your project faculty mailbox on Friday, January 9 (week 1). The more background and general information you acquire, the easier it will be to specifically establish the core of your work and determine the extent of your interest.
The description of your project should be at least 250 words clearly stating the major theme and/or activity, with related and relevant issues. Here are some useful hints for writing your description, extracted from the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers :
€ Select a subject and/or an activity that interests you and that you can develop within the assigned limits of time and space.
€ Determine the purpose of your project. What do you want to achieve through your research, inteviews, community-based work, etc?
€ Gather your ideas and information in a preliminary list, eliminating anything that seems out of the scope of the specific focus of your project.
€ Arrange materials in an order appropriate to the aims of your project and decide on the methodp or methods you will use to develop it.
€ Be realistic: schedule carefully the steps of your work, keeping some flexibility in time for particular problems that may arise.
The description should include:
* Title (straightforward and brief)
* Significance and aims of the project
* Conception and definition of the project (basic ideas or questions to be explored)
* Plan of work and methodology
If there are numerous sources on your subject, you may consider to narrow it by choosing a relevant aspect or topic characteristic, or, in the case of scarce material, you may conduct your bibliographical research on more than one subject.
The bibliography should be in alphabetical order, and you can divide it into sections such as general reference works, books and articles, or according to themes covered. The citations should comply with the MLA format.
Try to include in your bibliography only those titles that directly apply to your topic, for which you should have physical contact with the book or article, or possibly know of its contents by reading indexes or abstracts. You may proceed in your library work by first consulting general reference books that will lead you to more specialized material on the subject; in any case you should have first-hand knowledge of your sources.
You should have a minimum of 10 entries.