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Assignment: "the Extended Answers" to "the Five Questions"

Revisions Due: Thursday, October 31

Bring two hardcopies of your revised documents (Assignment 3) to class on Monday, November 4 after emailing us the text by Thursday, October 31 at 5 PM. As always, we encourage you to email your assignments to your advisors.

The objective of this writing assignment is to help you build up to the final thesis proposal. As you revise your evolving pre-proposal, keep building arguments for the following: "what is the problem", "why should we care", and "how will you know when you're done."

Write 2-3 pages about the work that you'll be doing for your thesis research. Consider this your best attempt at refining your pre-proposal. Remember to provide a research context for your proposed work and consider how the scope of your research is worthy of a thesis. As these ideas evolve, you will become more able to present your work more succinctly.

As a guide, continue to think about the following five questions during the proposal process. Use these questions to structure your class assignments and also focus on critical answers that you'll need to address in the proposal.

    Here are "the Five Questions":

    1. What problem are you addressing?
    2. What is the contribution to your field of research/inquiry?
    3. Why is this problem important (e.g., why would this work be meaningful to someone not committed to your field?)
    4. How are you going to attack the problem? (i.e., how will you subdivide the main task into manageable chunks?)
    5. What resources will you need to reach your goal?
In the current assignment, "the Extended Answers" to "the Five Questions" above, use the feedback from your advisors and insights from class to refine the written document. This is also the time to add in the relevant references and illustrations you may have.

Also, when you email your assignments to us before the meeting on Monday, November 4, it will give us a chance to read them before class and better help you in the discussions. These discussions will continue to focus on "what is the problem", "why should we care", and increasingly, "how will you know when you're done." As always, if you have questions about the task, please send us a message. We're happy to answer questions and look at drafts.

Keep on writing...