Crafting a Compelling Research Paper Draft: Synthesis and Transitions

Week Three Assignment: Rough Draft of the Final Research Project Overview This is the assignment that is going to take you from a collection of write-ups on individual sources to an actual draft. It might be helpful to think of the writing you’ve done thus far in the class as a set of research-project construction materials. For example, the Project Introduction, end of Week One, represents a foundation for the final project. In Week Two, you’ll work on source write-ups: these are your building materials. Now you are going to prepare some binding agents (transitions! synthesis! see below…) to bring everything together in the form of an actual draft of your research essay. Be aware, though, that you are likely to find you also need more, or different, materials. It is at the drafting stage that we often notice significant gaps or unanswered questions in our research. We realize that more research is required—and possibly also refinement of the original research question. This kind of looping back is not a sign of trouble. Rather, it is a natural part of the research writing process, which almost never follows a tidy straight line from idea formation to source gathering to drafting. Two of our Week Three readings are of particular importance for the draft.: Week Three assigned reading on Synthesis (https://info260.hcommons.org/synthesizing/) Week Three Lecture on Transitions (http://info260.hcommons.org/?p=112 ). The Synthesis lecture will help you begin thinking about how your ideas fit together, and how best to arrange them. The Transitions lecture will help you think about how to signal these relationships to readers. For a reminder of what the finished product w