Dolphins: Humans' Potential Companions

Pre-draft 2.1: Introduction and Thesis 

Purpose

You have previously written an introduction for your research proposal, which provided the first information about the project you intend to pursue. Whereas the research proposal introduced research that you were going to do, the introduction for the research essay introduces research you have already done (or will have done, when the essay is complete!).

It may be helpful to think of this as a re-write of your introduction from the research proposal. In what ways is the proposal introduction different from the essay introduction? What needs to change, and what might stay the same? (Hint: one major change is that your research question will need to become a thesis statement.) As was the case with the pre-draft for the lens essay, you should think of the introduction and thesis that you write for this assignment as drafts that will change as you develop the full essay. This is the first step towards figuring out how to transform what you wrote for the research proposal into the research essay.

Task

For this pre-draft, you will rewrite the introduction from your research proposal into a draft introduction for your research essay. Remember that in addition to the thesis statement, your introduction should contain 1) a hook to catch the reader’s attention, 2) background information/common ground to introduce the reader to the topic, and 3) a statement of motive to help the reader understand why you are writing this essay and why they should care.

Criteria

There is no minimum length, but your introduction should not be longer than 1 page, double spaced, in Times New Roman Font. Please submit this assignment as a Microsoft Word file on Latte by 12:00 pm EST on November 5. We will be doing peer review of these pre-drafts in class on Thursday, November 5, so please bring a copy of your introduction that you can easily share with your classmates (I recommend a Google Doc that you and your classmates can edit simultaneously). This assignment will be graded based on how well you address the task above: