Dr Anand Mahanand
Dept. of Materials Development
EFL University, Hyderabad-500007
Selecting a topic
 How do you get a topic?
 How do you select?
 How do you narrow it down?
 What are the criteria of your selection?
Collection of Materials
 Preparing a working bibliography including
 Books, articles, abstracts, dissertations
 Follow MLA style of documentation from the
beginning
Survey of materials
 First reading(go through all but select whatever is
relevant to your topic.
 Choose your primary texts and read them closely.
Prepare an outline of your paper. It
may include:










Topic
Objective
Review of Literature
Your focus
Approach/theoretical framework
Texts to be used
Introduction
Argument
Conclusion
References
Reading and making notes
 Read the primary texts again closely and
 Identify important points and make notes
 Don’t forget to write the page no below
 If possible key in your notes on your computer
 See how notes have been made from the novel Heart of
Darkness
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness.
London: Vintage,2007.
Notes from the Primary Text.
Note 1
“ I had then, as you remember, just returned to London
after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas- a
regular close of the East-six years or so I was loafing
about, hindering your homes, just as though I had got
a heavenly mission to civilize you.”(9).
Note 2
“The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to
look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster
but these you could look at a thing monstrous and
free. It was unearthly, and the men were- No, they
were not inhuman. Well you know that was the worst
of it- this suspicion of their not being in human.” (50).
Note 3
“They howled and leaped, and spun and made horrid
faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of
their humanity-like yours” (50).
Notes 4&5
“Mind,” he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the
palm of the hand outwords, so that, with his legs folded
before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in
European clothes and without a lotus flower-“ ( 8).
Marlow ceased and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the
pose of a meditating Buddha.” (110).
Notes from critical texts
Note 1
 Harold Bloom’s Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
 “Conrad like many novelists today, was both drawn to
idealism repelled by its hypocritical abuse.”(6).
Note 2
In Under Western Eyes. Sophia Antonova makes a
distinction between those who burn and those who
rot, and remarks that it is some times preferable to
burn. The Kurtz who had made himself literally one
of the devils of the land, and who in solitude had
kicked himself loose on the earth, burns while others
rot.” ( qtd. In Guerard 7).
“ Before the Congo I was just a mere animal”
Note 3
Marlow says“ Going up was like travelling back to the
easiest beginnings of the world, when vegetation
rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An
empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.
The air was warm, thick , heavy and sluggish. There
was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long
stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted , into the
gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sand
backs hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by
side.” (Guerard 15).
Note 4
 “ Heart of Darkness nevertheless remains one of the
great dark meditations in literature, and one of the
purest expressions of a melancholy temperament.(16).
Writing the Paper
Now we can go back to the outline expand it using the
notes we have from the primary text and the critical
materials.
Let us write the first draft starting with the abstract.
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902): A Story of Inner
Journey
Abstract
Ingredients in an abstract
 Objective
 Methodology
 Specification of texts
 Approach
Introduction
Background
 Author, historical context (e.g. colonialism)
 Thematic
Argument
 Supported by evidence from texts
Conclusion
 To be drawn from your argument
 Linked to your objective statement
Works Cited
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. London: Vintage
Books, 2007.
Guerard, Albert J. “The Journey Within.” Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness. Ed. Harold Bloom.
Delhi: Viva Books, 2007.
Writing an Assignment in ELT area
 Selecting a topic
 Survey of Materials
 First Reading
 Preparing an outline
 Data Collection
 Preparing a questionnaire
 Interpretation of data
 Second Reading (for theory+Review, etc.)
Writing the Assignment
 Make a draft of your assignment
 Follow APA style of documentation
 Tone, Style and academic conventions
 Editing- Macro and Micro
Sample of a questionnaire





This survey is done for a research paper to know about difficulties of students in understanding university lectures. Please feel free to give your responses. Your identity will not be disclosed.
Name…………………………..
Can you decode/understand fully what has been said in the lectures.








Can you identify the main and the subsidiary points in a lecture?
a. Yes_______
b. No_______
c. To some extend______.
Can you distinguish between important points and less important points?




Yes______
No______
To some extend_____
Do you face problem in understanding the British accent?
a.Yes____
b.No_____
c.Not sure_____
Do you face problem in understanding Indian (intelligible)accent ?














Yes______
No______
So some extend_____
Can you identify the topic of the lecture and follow the topic development?








Yes______
No______
To some extend_____
Yes_____
No_____
Not sure____
Do you face problem in understanding regional varieties of English ?
a.Yes______
b. No_____
c. Not sure_____
Are the lectures structured?
a.Yes_____
b. No_____
c. Not sure____
Any suggestions you would like to give to your professor on lectures?
Data Interpretation
 The responses that we got from our questionnaire reveal that out of twenty
students, 12 are able to comprehend lectures completely. There are 8 who
cannot comprehend fully. 15 students are able to identify important points
and less-important points and 5 students face difficulties in identifying the
main and subsidiary points. 15 students can identify the topic of the lecture
successfully where as few can do it sometimes depending on the particular
lecturer. But we can not say that no students has any difficulty, because there
are very few (2 of them) who cannot identify the topic at all.
 We can say that probably almost all (20) students can understand the British
accent as well as Indian (intelligible) accent with out much difficulty. But they
say that it takes some time to be familiar with it. When it comes to the regional
varieties of English , many are not comfortable with it. About the organization
of the lecture, 13 students are not sure. They say some lectures are wellorganized where as some other lead to digressions. Students suggest that they
need more examples to understand the content clearly. They don’t like long
lectures and suggest for breaks in between. Perhaps some kind of interaction
in between will be better.
Anand Mahanand
amahanand991@gmail.com