submit a well-developed research proposal of your own. For your proposal, you are to choose a topic that is covered in class (e.g., age, gender, race, education, etc.) and form one or two research questions within the chosen topic. Your research questions must be original; your questions must yet be unanswered in the scholarly world. Your research questions must be framed in a sociolinguistic way.
The paper should contain the following parts:
Introduction (5 pages)
an introduction of your topic
critical summary and synthesis of at least five sources (apart from the class readings and also apart from the article you use for your article presentation) that directly address your research question(s)
identification of the knowledge gap, left unaddressed by your five sources (= your research questions)
Proposed methodology (1 – 1.5 page)
Data collection (where, who, how)
Data analysis (procedures and methods – justification of these methods)
Hypothesized results (0.5 page)
Foreseeable limitations in conducting the study (0.5 page)
Your five sources must be academic. Specifically, they must either be peer-reviewed journal articles or book chapters. Ideally, the sources should be relatively recent (e.g., published within the last two decades), though this is not a requirement. No more than two sources can be from the same author(s).
The final paper should be approximately 7-8 pages in length, excluding the references list. The paper must be double-spaced, 12-point font-sized, with 1-inch margins.
Your final paper should also have a title, page numbers, and a list of references. A cover page is not needed.
Every student must meet with me at least once during the research question formation process. A sign-up sheet will be circulated.
Criteria for assessment will include the following:
Appropriately narrow topic with a well-defined research question
Quality of information gathered, sufficiency of sources
Clarity of writing and structure
Accuracy, substance, and depth of understanding of the topic investigated
Lack of misconceptions or glossing over of important distinctions you could be expected to know from the course
Evidence of critical thinking (insightfulness in interpreting the existing research)
Conclusions that go beyond summarizing
Proofreading (evidenced by lack of typo, grammatical errors, formatting errors, etc.)