Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage
Composition 2 English 1102		Contact Form

The Abstracts

Objective Let's begin the writing process leading to our research paper by composing an abstract. In fact, over the next few weeks, we will compose ten of them. Abstracts are the most common form of summary in academic writing, and these ten abstracts we will compose on articles, books, or book chapters on our research topic are commonly called an annotated bibliography — a common tool in the writing process of researchers in every academic area. So now that you have identified your research topic, your mission is to go into the library — physically or electronically — and find the best sources for your research topic. This will take some reading. You will have to wade through a lot of titles that look promising but turn out in the end not to be very useful at all. Eventually, you will find the best sources for your topic. Write your abstracts on those sources. (Of course, you can — and should — do more; there is always more to learn. However, ten is the minimum number of abstracts for us.) Abstracts are a very specific form of a summary that demands very careful, analytical reading of the work under discussion. Abstracts are important to us as researchers and writers since abstracts form the foundation of the analyses we do as we prepare to compose our argument on any particular issue. Regardless of the issue we are researching, abstracts help us evaluate the range of ideas and evidence in our research area.		... the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them ... Henry David Thoreau, Walden (83)
Audience The audience is your classmates: think of how you want to share your ideas and beliefs with them — strangers though they may be. In fact, post your abstract on the 1102 eForum message board, as well as send them to me. By posting to eForum, others, who might have similar research interests, can benefit from the sources you are studying, and vice versa. Reading Using the COD library (and libraries near you), and the COD library databases, pick the sources that are relevant to your reseach project proposal that you prepared earlier. Instructions Abstracts are not long. You need only collect six bits of information about each source you are reading to compose an informative abstract. Thus, in practice abstracts rarely are more than a paragraph in length. Each abstract should be about 250 words long. Checklist and Rubric To send your abstracts to me, complete the assignment forms for NOTE: Those forms below have been superceded by the research tool I demonstrated in class. Go to research(dot)papyr(dot)com for more information. The forms below still work, if you would rather use them. The instructions for each abstract are the same as described in each link below. Abstract 1 on Eric Kozlowski's "The Use of the Media as an Influence on Patriotism" Abstracts 2 through 4 on three sources relevant to your reseach topic, in which one source is written for a general audience, a second for a non-specialist, college-educated audience, and a third for a specialist, professional audience Abstracts 5 through 7, and Abstracts 8 through 10, in which you identify and read six sources that match Ted E. Smith's description of scholarly sources Each of the abstract assignment pages includes instructions and a checklist of the information you should include in your abstracts. Support An eForum conference is available to help us share ideas and answer questions about this first essay: English 1102 — Online

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