Assignment 19: Starting to fill in the blanks
Finally, turn to your outline and begin the process of shaping it into an essay. Remember that the end goal of this unit is to produce a scholarly essay that articulates a research interest, summarizes and critically-engages sources in response to that interest, and draws on that engagement in support of making an argument in relation to those sources and your research interest. In service of that goal:
1) First, begin by re-evaluating your outline. What other ways might you organize the draft? How might you better structure it so each section builds upon the work of previous ones? Make changes to your outline accordingly
2) Next, think about how you’d like to frame and/or introduce your draft, and think about the various things your introduction must do, including introducing the topic, providing relevant background information (though/and/or an additional section providing background may be necessary), clearly-articulating your line of inquiry, forecasting the structure of the paper and its argument, and anything else you think might improve your essay, such as including an anecdote, experience, example, or some other framing device. Drawing on the discussion above, compose your introduction. Depending on how you approach it, your introduction may only be a paragraph long, or it might exceed a page.
3) Then, work your way through the rest of the outline, writing to-do notes for the work that needs to be done—note like “Introduce source number 1 here,” or “Make connections between sources here,” or “Apply sources’ perspectives to some example or personal experience here.”
4) Finally, as time allows, begin the process of filling in the blanks by following your instructions to yourself or otherwise shaping the outline into cohesive piece of writing
You do not need to turn in this draft, but to maintain a pace that will allow you to complete the full draft in time, you should shoot for having a reasonably complete introduction, a rough but detailed outline, lots of notes on what needs to be done to shape that outline into a final draft, with maybe a third of the draft actually written.
Answer Preview-Assignment 19: Starting to fill in the blanks-ENGL-121-N201
