The Persuasive Research Project In this 2000 word project, you will prepare and present your

The Persuasive Research Project
In this 2000 word project, you will prepare and present your overall research
project to an audience that has the ability to do something about the problem or
issue you have been researching throughout the course.
Writing Project 4: The Persuasive Research Project
Background
Once a researcher has completed their research, it is time to present that research to an
audience. Researchers, however, never simply present their research; they never let their work
“speak for itself.” Instead, they seek to persuade their readers that their research should lead
their readers to some sort of action.
In the Project Proposal, you identified a problem or issue in your community that needs
attention, and you proposed to research that problem or issue. In the Primary and Secondary
Research Projects, you conducted research on your Central Research Question (CRQ), and
you made that research more usable and understandable. In the Persuasive Research Project,
you will draw upon your writing and thinking to recommend a course of action based on your
research.
Purpose
In this assignment, you will prepare and present your overall research project to an audience
that has the ability to do something about the problem or issue you have been confronting. To
do this, you will need to decide who that audience is and how you can best address and
persuade them in this project.
Skills and Outcomes
● Explain the background and need for the research that you conducted (Rhetorical
Knowledge; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Processes)
● Summarize a controlling purpose early in the project (Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical
Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Knowledge of Conventions)
● Organize and explain research done for the project (Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical
Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Processes; Knowledge of Conventions)
● Differentiate research from original contributions (Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical
Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Knowledge of Conventions)
● Explain any quotations, paraphrases, and key terms used (Rhetorical Knowledge;
Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Knowledge of Conventions)
● Summarize any limitations in the project (Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical Thinking,
Reading, and Composing; Knowledge of Conventions)
● Plan the initial steps for continuation of the project and explain who should complete it
(Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Knowledge of
Conventions)
● Produce a finished text that meaningfully integrates at least two multimodal elements
(Rhetorical Knowledge; Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing; Knowledge of
Conventions)
● Produce a text that abides by MLA citation conventions (Processes; Knowledge of
Conventions)
● Produce a finished text that meets length and grammatical expectations (Processes;
Knowledge of Conventions)
Tasks
1. You should describe both the background and need for the overall research project. You
can draw from your Project Proposal to discuss the larger research project’s exigency,
kairos, audience, and stakeholders.
2. You should articulate a controlling purpose early in the project. In other words, your
readers need to understand what you are trying to accomplish in the project (and they
should understand this early in their reading). Are you trying to convince a group of
people to take a particular action based on your research? Are you trying to identify gaps
or oversights in knowledge and lead others to continue researching and thinking about
these gaps?
3. You should present your research to your audience in a way that both makes it
intelligible to them and supports your controlling purpose.
4. It should be clear to your readers which ideas and data come from your own thinking
and/or data collection and which ideas and data come from others’ work.
5. Your research must be integrated and intelligible. Quotations, paraphrases, and key
terms should be explained in ways easily-understandable to readers.
6. Your Persuasive Research Project must acknowledge and try to address any limitations
in the project. What does the project not address or not address enough? What other
data might be useful? What might be done with more time?
7. Since all research is part of a conversation, you should describe the next steps in that
conversation. Who should act on your research or continue the work you have done?
8. Your project needs to include and meaningfully integrate at least two multimodal
elements. You could include pictures, sounds, or even hyperlinks to other resources, but
you must make sure that your reader understands why you are including these elements
and why including them enriches your piece of writing. Consider what media beyond text
might reinforce your main idea to readers, convey in another way the significance of your
Persuasive Research Project, and/or appeal to your readers from a different register.
9. All sources should be cited according to MLA conventions, and you should include a
“Works Cited” section at the end of your project.
10. Your project should be about 2,000 words in length and be consistently grammatical to
an extent that syntax does not obscure semantics (a reader who is proficient in English
can read your paper without confusion due to grammatical issues).