Reflective Annotated Bibliography

Project Overview

As we read the Declaration of Independence and think about it as an example of a document written in protest, we can think more about what stances these protesters took and what they were standing up for (or against). That’s a starting point for us to think about you might have to or want to take a position on in your work as a hospitality student or professional, or in your dream job in hospitality. What are choices you would need to make, for example, running your own kitchen, working as a concierge in your dream hotel, planning events, etc.

Project #2 is a research project, which means that you’ll use information you discover from sources you find through our library and the internet (or possibly elsewhere) to learn more about your topic. In this project, you will be writing something called an annotated bibliography. You might be familiar with a bibliography, which is a list of the information that tells other people what sources you used (articles, interviews, etc…). An annotated bibliography is useful when researching because in addition to including a list of sources, it also includes a summary of each source as well as other important notes.  Annotated bibliographies are helpful tools for research because they help us keep track of multiple sources and ideas so we can use them later in larger projects. They also help us get a broad understanding of the topic or question we are researching, and help us share that information with our collaborators (in this case, your classmates). Here is a useful site explaining what an annotated bibliography is and how to create one.

This is not a traditional research essay.  It does not begin with a thesis. Real research requires us to ask questions that we don’t already have the answers to. Doing research to support a position you already have is a persuasive essay, but more often we don’t already know the end-goal, so we do inquiry-based research in which we develop questions and follow what interests us to learn more and answer our questions.

Students throughout ENG 1101 at City Tech are working on similar projects, to develop reflective annotated bibliographies. That means, for each of your sources, you will write entries that include the citation, plus a summary of what the author said, how they said it, why they said it, and who you think they want to read their writing, as well as your reactions to and reflections about the source. We’ll work on this together so you get comfortable working this way.

For our Project #3, you’ll use the research from Project #2 to produce a text in a genre you or your classmates discovered through research to teach someone who needs to know what you learned in a way that is effective for them to learn it. More on Project #3 later, but keep in mind that the topic you choose for Project #2 will stay with you for Project #3 as well.

Brief Project #2 Outline

Your Project #2 reflective annotated bibliography will include:

  • An introduction
  • An entry for each of the FOUR SOURCES. Each entry will include
    • the bibliographic entry
    •  a summary
    • a reflection
    • an analysis of the writing
    • important quotations
  • a conclusion.

Refer to the Reflective Annotated Bibliography Details for more information and guidance.

What’s due when?

We’ll have discussions and posts due according to instructions in the weekly agendas.

The draft of Project #2 will be due on Sunday, 11/14. The finished version will be due the following week.

What you’ll be graded on:

  • Content: Is it readable and informative? Does it teach us about the topic?
  • Research: Did you look for sources that don’t just agree with what you thought you would find? Were you open to being surprised and contradicted? Did you look further than the first three results on Google?
  • Genre: Remember that your four sources must be different genres.
  • Presentation: Can someone else understand what you’ve written? Did you use formatting to help a reader make sense of your writing?
  • Citation: If you quote something in your introduction or conclusion that’s from any of your sources or one of our readings, did you cite it? Do your citations include enough information for someone else to find that resource?