For this second project, you will go beyond preparing to write a report (as you did in Project #1). This time, you will prepare to write—and then actually write—a Social Science Research Report. The focus of this project will be your own use of language. As such, you will first investigate your relationship to language and literacy by collecting primary research data on yourself (specifically, you will document the languages you use and encounter in your daily life). Then, you will work with secondary sources, using them to analyze your primary data in relation to specific key terms and language theories. The purpose of this project is to reveal something interesting about your language use and to relate that finding to the larger issues of language, discourse, and literacy.
This is a revised version of an assignment created by Dr. Timothy McCormack; it has been used with his permission. Dr. McCormack is a Composition and Rhetoric scholar and an Associate Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.