TextsINConversation
Moving Toward Research-Based Analysis
Due Dates
Working Draft 10/13
Final Draft 10/23
5-7 Pages
What is the TiC?
The Text in Conversation assignment is designed to help you begin to explore your RBA
topic/question. The goal of this assignment is to examine how various disciplines—through their
arguments, media, organizations, laws, methodological approaches, etc.—frame that issue, which in
turns provides the context for discussion. Generally, the process of framing an argument via the
ideas of others is called a literature review. Typically, a literature review takes place at the
beginning of a researched essay and helps demonstrate for your readers what you believe is at
stake in your project. Our Texts in Conversation essay will function similarly to a literature review
insofar as it frames the discussion you are entering with your RBA, but it will differ in that you will
compose this essay as a stand-alone piece. It should be noted that in order to successfully complete
the TiC, you will first undertake a fair amount of research to educate yourself about the topic, and
then select just a few (5-7) sources from this research in order to best frame your argument.
Learning Goals
The TiC requires you to make the following intellectual moves, all of which are valuable for your
development as an academic writer. First, this project requires that you “read around” your topic
and develop a clear sense of how people within a particular discipline discuss these issues in their
writing. Second, this assignment will require you to make thoughtful choices regarding sources. You
will have to develop a strategy, or methodology, for selecting the sources you feel are most
effective for helping you compose your argument in the RBA. Third, and finally, you need to
demonstrate how these sources are in conversation with each other. That is to say, you need to
demonstrate how these sources create the context into which your RBA will interject. This
assignment is more than simply listing sources that tangentially touch upon a topic; rather, this
assignment asks you to identify the ways in which sources are influencing each other and thereby
creating an arena for your particular discussion.
Organizing your Essay
You will want to present your topic as an issue or problem by a) using a concrete, engaging hook to
bring the reader into the world of the issue; b) setting it out for your audience as a problem in an
extended introduction; c) summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting from sources in body
paragraphs to demonstrate how the issue is part of a larger conversation that frames a context for
understanding the problem; d) synthesizing the developing complications in the topic in an
extended concluding section to demonstrate how the sources can be moving the issue forward as
a conversation with each other. This scholarly conversation will be evident in sources that offer
explicit discussion of the issue, sources that provide background information with implicit and
explicit connections with the issue, and sources that act as primary evidence – such as images,
video, and ways that people act and talk – that illustrates the issue at work in the larger
conversation.
Essay Format
The final version of your essay should be formatted according to MLA style. All drafts will be
submitted as PDFs via email to me. You will also need to email a copy of your essay to each
member of your collaborative by the due date. Please use the following titles as the file name
when you save your work as a PDF. For the working draft: “Working TiC Last Name”. For the final
draft: “Final TiC Last Name”.
TextsINConversation