Investigating Knowledge Deficit: A Research Paper Based on English 1100 Readings

Existing knowledge on the topic

This research paper is based on your last assignment – your research proposal. It asks you to investigate a big issue - an important topic – drawn from the readings we have covered in English 1100. You are expected to locate this issue in the existing knowledge, identify a knowledge deficit, and make a new knowledge claim (i.e., thesis statement) which will be supported by reasoned argument. You must draw on at least one of the articles we have studied in the course, to examine the existing knowledge, identify a knowledge deficit, and make a knowledge claim.

Your research proposal will roughly constitute the introduction of your research paper.  Your proposal should have sketched the typical rhetorical moves academic writers make as they find a position for themselves:

Ø Describe the existing knowledge on a topic by way of summary and reporting expressions

Ø Identify the knowledge deficit, i.e., something missing, inadequate, or hidden in the view expressed in the existing knowledge, something more complicated than that view, or questions that might arise from that view

Ø Make a knowledge claim/thesis statement that will address the gap (knowledge deficit) in the existing knowledge