MY COUNTRY IS SAUDI ARABIA

major writing assignment is a research paper with a contentious thesis/claim in which you will need to demonstrate your ability to carry out a scholarly investigation of a research question associated with racism in your home country which is Saudi Arabia. This assignment will begin with developing a research proposal in which you begin with a research question that leads to a claim for an argument, which will be the thesis statement for your paper. Your paper will provide evidence to support the claim of your argument.

I. Brainstorming and Predrafting – Your Research Proposal:
Your research proposal will provide the following components (please number each of your responses):

1. In one sentence, your Research Question beginning with a “Wh-“ word (who, what, where, when, why – but NOT How)

2. In one sentence, state a contentious thesis statement that answers your research question, makes a claim about racism in your country, and clearly states the topic you are discussing and what you want your audience to believe about that topic. You are creating a contestable argumentative research paper, so you are making a claim about a racism issue in your country.

3. A 450-650 word discussion of the topic in which you provide several paragraphs that: (1) introduce and explain the claim to your argument and why you believe the problem is important to you and others in your nation; (2) a detailed discussion of the purpose of your research, including questions you have about the topic, and the specific issues you will focus on in your paper; (3) a project plan in which you discuss where you expect to find answers to your questions, how you plan to carry out your research on your topic, and the kinds of primary and secondary sources you plan to use; 4) a timetable or schedule of the activities you need to do and the deadlines you have for this assignment. (please provide specific dates and amounts of time you expect to need for carrying out each step for investigating and writing your paper).

II. Drafting/Composing & Using Citations

Your paper must use the following types of sources.

· Four (4) Scholarly, Peer Reviewed Journal articles from the WSU Library’s journal databases.

· One (1) primary source: You may use a video from The Filmmaker’s Library Online (http://ntserver1.wsulibs.wsu.edu:2757/flon); a video from 1st Search on the library website (www.wsulibs.wsu.edu, after you search, use the left side menu and limit your search to only “video”); or a TED Talk video (http://www.ted.com/)

· Two or three (2 or 3) primary or secondary sources of your choice (books, magazines, web sites, YouTube videos, movies, speeches, interviews, CDs DVDs, journal articles, newspaper articles, etc.).

Your paper must appropriately introduce and reintroduce sources using MLA style

• The first time you mention a source, you must use a signal phrase to introduce the source (MLA requires the authors’ first and last names, the full publication date of the source [year for a book, month day and year for articles, the title of the source—both article title in quotation marks and the journal title in italics).

• Use an attributive tag to reintroduce the author when you discuss other sources and then return to a source previously introduced with a signal phrase (i.e., author’s last name and a verb to describe what they are doing – Glasser argues, Glasser contends, for Glasser, the problem is, etc.)

• You research paper will also include an alphabetized Works Cited page.