Dr. Zenovich 1
Final Paper Outline Assignment:
You will be required to write an outline detailing your final research project. This assignment is
as much about you being able to see how your argument will come together as it is about
showing me that you have and begun to develop your argument and can support it. The outline
format allows you to see where arguments are thin and where arguments might need trimming.
I. INTRODUCTION: You will be required to write an introduction that provides a brief
contextualization of your project by introducing the relevant issues, the history of the
issue, and you position on the issue.
a. Relevant information to introduce reader to the topic and the issues at hand.
b. You will be required to provide your thesis.
c. You will be required to provide a purpose for your essay as well as a justification
for your essay. The justification must be more than, “There is not much written on
this.”
II. “LITERATURE REVIEW” You will be required to provide a general overview of the
literature review. This means that you will group your readings into themes, explain
what themes you will be addressing in your essay (while providing citations for these
ideas), and then explaining why this theoretical theme is useful for analyzing your
research object.
a. It is useful to limit this to only a few themes, it will be impossible to address
everything that there is to say about your topic.
b. Group the articles that address a certain theme and explain how they talk to each
other or against each other.
III. METHOD: Next you will be required to explain your method. This means that you
will need to explain the specifics of your approach to gathering data.
a. How did you get your information?
Dr. Zenovich 2
i. When? Who? How? Where?
b. Then you need to explain how this method addresses the theoretical concerns you
outlined in the brief overview of the literature. Tell me how this method actually
gets at the analysis you want to conduct.
c. ETHICAL CONCERNS? You might want to provide a section detailing your
group’s approach to the ethics of this project. How do you get to write about this
topic? By what means are you able to write about this? How does your research
give back to the community that you are researching?
IV. MAIN POINTS: you will be required to provide evidence for your claims supported
by credible sources.
a. Explain your object and the claim that follows.
b. Provide your claim, backed by theory, and the evidence.
c. Explain what your interpretation of all this is.
V. CONCLUSION: Summarize and point to implications by concluding with some
potential implications of this research.
a. What does it all mean?
b. Why does it matter?
c. What good does this do for the larger society?
d. Does this contribute to theory?
Format: This outline must be a formal outline, double spaced, 12pt. Times New Roman font,
and written in a formal academic voice. This is a draft of your final paper, so while you may
make changes to the final draft, attempt to lay out all your arguments here so that you can get
feedback. Since this assignment will also be in APA, you will need a cover and a reference page
for your citations. You may use section headers if that helps you to imagine how this all comes
together.
Sample Solution
