Fluent Essays

Contexts Project: Developing a Topic (entry: 1200 word minimum; each peer response: 200 word minimum, I will upload peers text later.) The Topic must relate to the book: Beyond words : what animals think and feel Carl Safina. (Link for preview: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Beyond_Words/6WfhBQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1 or you can see the file I uploaded named pp7-24.doc)From the Formal Guidelines (The file I uploaded named Contexts Project.pdf)The CP, asks you to do four things: (1) present and analyze a significant political/social/cultural problem; (2) frame this problem with motives or warrants, which are current examples, incidents, or arguments that convince your audience that the problem youre addressing and the questions youre asking are alive and relevant right now; (3) summarize and critically evaluate various conversations and debates made by credible scholars and organizations about your topic; and (4) decipher the historical contexts of the problem at hand by locating at least 2 pieces of evidence, at least one from the past and one from the present, that tie the problem as we see it today to its past.Before you can begin to think about critical evaluation, you must work, as all professional researchers do, to acquire a broad understanding of the topic as a contemporary problem.Your first task is simply to develop a basic vocabulary for defining the problem. Begin to articulate the key terms and key players of your first amendment issue; what is the vocabulary used by the experts to describe the issue; who or what occasioned the controversy and what are its effects.Since we have not yet begun to look at scholarly sources, youll begin by locating, reading, finding key terms, summarizing, and evaluating some credible sources from animal conservation related sites or Think Tank reports, etc. To insure that your source is credible, you might initially avoid a broad Google search, and just use the search engines within the sites offered to you below along with well-established magazines that focus on investigative journalism or Think Tank reports. Wildlife Conservation and Humane Animal Treatment Related Sites:The Wildlife Conservation Society - https://www.wcs.org/ (Links to an external site.)World Wildlife Foundation - https://www.worldwildlife.org/ (Links to an external site.)Wildlife Conservation Network - https://wildnet.org/ (Links to an external site.)National Wildlife Federation - http://nwf.org/ (Links to an external site.)The Humane Society of the United States - https://www.humanesociety.org/ (Links to an external site.)The National Humane Education Society - https://nhes.org/ (Links to an external site.)Friends of Animals - https://friendsofanimals.org/ (Links to an external site.)The Humane Farming Association - https://www.hfa.org/ (Links to an external site.)Association of Zoos & Aquariums - https://www.aza.org/ (Links to an external site.)Cruelty Free International - https://www.crueltyfreeinternational.org/ (Links to an external site.)Google Advanced Search: Google is fine, but use the settings tool on the far right hand corner, click Advanced Search, and see what you can find when you narrow your results to a specific site or domain (.edu, .gov). You will often get really credible popular sources that way and Google Scholar is going to give you only scholarly material much of which you cant access unless you find it through the librarys search engine (more on that later). Think Tank: From Wikipedia: A think tank, policy institute or research institute is an organization that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology and culture. Most policy institutes are non-profit organizations, which some countries provide with a tax exempt status. Other think tanks are funded by governments, advocacy groups, or corporations and derive revenue from consulting or research work related to their projects. In other words, think tanks are the work of researchers who do not go through a formal peer-review process before their work is published, which is why you should always read and evaluate a Think Tanks About section to determine the organizations agenda. Having an agenda does not necessarily qualify your work as suspect; having an agenda simply means that the work evolves from a set of values. When a source is reliable, those values are made transparent; when it isnt, those values are concealed.Once you find an assortment of sources, do the following while reading: Look for problems as you read. Make a Document that allows you to cut and paste key passages and to make notes on the source as you read. You should do this sort of organized note-taking for every source so that you dont have to waste time trying to find information you read and remember, but later forgot where to find it.Complete the assignment below: 1. Once you read the CP Prompt, please record any questions you have about the assignment.If you do not have any questions, please write: I HAVE READ THE FORMAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CP AND I DO NOT HAVE ANY QUESTIONS AT THIS TIME. 2. Describe the current animal conservation topic that you decided to investigate. Try to characterize the type or types of problems associated with the topic (economic? social? political?), providing what evidence you can. 3. In addition to the animal group you are investigating, what communities or groups of people have you found so far that are the most affected by this issue? Describe at least TWO significant effects that have resulted from the problem you intend to further investigate. Describe at least ONE policy, law and/or common misperceptions that have caused or contributed to one or more of these effects. Be specific. 4. Under your paragraph-length explanations, please record a minimum of FIVE sources you found for the topic in 8th edition MLA formatting.5. Under each citation, include a paragraph length annotation that does that following: provides an account of the articles context; its main argument; the primary evidence its author uses to substantiate his or her main claim; the purpose of the article; its primary audience. Please refer to the document (the file I uploaded named Annotated_Bibliography_How-To.doc) to write your annotations. After your annotation, provide a brief explanation of how the source gave you a more specific understanding of the problem concerning any of the following: new terms, key players, effects, causes, solutions, key pieces of legislation, policy, events.6. Include a list of key research terms: Good keywords are specific: they involve legislation, policy, organizations, names of important figures, events, places. Keywords should always help you to find relevant, related sources. Also, keep a separate file for key terms, dates, policies, events, people, etc that you find in the articles you read that will help you to develop a vocabulary for discussing the specific policies, legislation, and/or other key players and related issues. Example:From HFA, Intro: Good key research terms: factory farm confinement National Veal Boycott Suwanna Ranch Poor key research terms: animal cruelty hormones antibiotics7. Include at least THREE specific fact-based questions that you want for your CP research to answer for you.When you are finished, respond to TWO other posts with USEFUL AND SPECIFIC suggestions or comments (I will give you the posts later. This part doesnt count within the time limit. Note that while it is nice to be positive, simply pointing out that you like a topic without offering clear, specific guidelines or suggestions can be misleading).Constructive criticism means just that: criticism followed by some suggestions for construction--picking up the pieces of the authors shattered world! (e.g., You need more sources in this paragraph. A great source for the claim you have here can actually be found on page 1, where you talk about... Or Have you thought about using...? Note, too, that offering other source suggestions the author hasnt yet found is always a bonus! annotated_bibliography_how_to.doc contexts_project.pdf pp7_24.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview Annotated Bibliography How-To The Annotated Bibliography assignment is essentially about practicing the analytical task of discerning and concisely yet fully articulating essential components of an argument— thesis and evidence—as well as key rhetorical elements—purpose and audience. The AB helps you (and me) quickly evaluate how accurately and comprehensively you have grasped the main argument and rhetorical situation of the assigned readings. The AB consists of two elements. Part One: Bibliographic Entry The first part of your entry will tell the reader what kind of publication the text is in (book, article in an anthology, weekly publication, etc.), as well as all the publication information for the reader to find and verify it as a source. You can find further instructions on any of these websites. • http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c08_s2.html (detailed instructions on constructing a works cited page, and on particular entries. FYI: Hacker has a textbook and everything in it is on this site. • http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/10/ (also gives detailed instructions for constructing works cited and clear instructions for in-text citations—if you are not happy navigating Hacker’s site) • http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citmla.htm (general, provides the most common works cited entries in one page using snappy color-coding to explain each part of the entry). Part Two: Four-Sentence Annotation The second part—a four-sentence annotation—is where you will do the real work. You will probably have trouble at first limiting yourself to four sentences, especially in the second sentence in which you are asked to provide evidence. If you find that you simply cannot stick to the four sentences, go ahead and add one or two, but try to limit yourself. The purpose of this exercise is to be succinct, focused, articulate and to the point. FIRST SENTENCE: Express the author’s thesis in the form of a signal verb (avoid “states”) and “that” clause (for example, “Carl Safina argues/claims/contends/asserts that…”) SECOND SENTENCE: Express the significant kinds of evidence used to support and illustrate the thesis THIRD SENTENCE: Express the author’s purpose (this is not the thesis, but the effect the author desires to create by arguing the thesis. For example, we said that Safina argues that animals like elephants have human-like brains—that is his thesis; his purpose would be to convince people that their attitude toward animals as inferior should change). While the thesis is what the author argues, the purpose is why the author argues it. Note: Purpose is essentially about locating the implicit and/or explicit values held by the author. FOURTH SENTENCE Express the intended audience or ideal reader for the text, and explain your reasons including textual clues you notice about the kind of audience the author had in mind. Research Project Part One: Contexts Two major assignments comprise the research project: Part One: Contexts (CP) and Part Two: Advocacy (AP). This first assignment, the CP, asks you to ​(1) research and deploy various types of sources to describe, contextualize, and analyze a significant contemporary political/social/cultural problem; (2)​ ​summarize and evaluate conversations and debates happening between credible scholars, thinkers, and organizations about your topic. Together, the actions above comprise expository writing—the guiding method of this project—which means simply that with this first composition you are attempting to describe your projects central problem and explain its relevance by contextualizing it. Why “contexts”? An informed, authoritative writer understands their topic in context. ​Context can be historical.​ Analyzing the past means grappling not simply with events, but with the issues and concerns of the time. It’s not enough to read a contemporary account of the past; we must also look at the work produced in the past—its political speeches, court decisions, and media. Therefore, one goal of this assignment is to learn about the historical contexts of your problem: the laws, legal precedents, and institutional practices that underlie its current form, and economic, social, political, and/or environmental trends that have shaped its development. Context can also be rhetorical.​ We want to present the stakes that a given community has in the topic of our research, but we also want to interrogate the way those stakes get articulated by journalists, researchers, and politicians. Even within “scholarly writing,” you should become aware of how various communities (called disciplines) frame the same topic quite differently from one another. Identifying these relevant communities of thinkers and writers, analyzing their perspectives, and bringing their views together will help you gain a comprehensive understanding of your problem, and the authority that understanding entails. As you research for your CP, you will concurrently develop a Working​ ​Annotated Bibliography​ for your entire project that involves summarizing and analyzing individual sources (your instructor will provide you with separate instructions for this portion of the assignment). By the time you complete the CP, you should be able to: ● Develop effective research note-taking habits through source annotations. ● Practice information literacy in the research process by locating and critically evaluating relevant and credible evidence from a variety of sources and genres. ● Understand research as a part of the larger composition process of prewriting, drafting, and revision. ● Collaborate with fellow researchers to give and receive constructive feedback on the work in progress. ● Plan, draft and revise an essay with organization and style appropriate for addressing a general academic audience. ● Arrange and integrate evidence—primary-source, secondary-source, and multimodal—intentionally, with particular attention to its argumentative purpose and rhetorical effect. ● Integrate and cite evidence in a transparent and ethical manner, using a standard citation system. Learn how and why to avoid plagiarism and patch-writing. Assignment Requirements Process work​ is required to be eligible to submit a final draft for a grade. This may include but is not limited to topic development exercises, a proposal or prospectus, and multiple essay drafts. Late or incomplete process work may result in a grade penalty on the final draft. The contextualizing in the CP must be supported by a broad and varied selection of ​research​, including primary and secondary sources, scholarship, journalism, policy papers, reports, case law, and other sources as appropriate for your topic. While both you and your instructor will work to determine an appropriate scope and variety of research for your essay, at a minimum it should draw evidence from ​6-8 sources, including TWO scholars in conversation. ​Keep in mind that the total number of sources for the entire project’s bibliography is 15-20 sources. Your final submission for Part One should be a ​1500-2000 word​ ​multimodal​ composition​. It should be formatted in ​MLA style​, with parenthetical citations, a Works Cited page, and a descriptive academic title. ... Purchase answer to see full attachment