English

Item 3 of the Portfolio: Project Proposal (due in week 5)

You have already submitted two items for your final portfolio. You submitted a report on the discourse community of your discipline. After you conducted research on your topic, you submitted an annotated bibliography of sources about your topic.

Now you are going to submit a proposal about your portfolio project. This will be a persuasive piece, convincing readers that project should be supported. Think of this as a presentation to a board of people who would make a decision on whether or not your project should continue or receive funding. This proposal can be done as a speech presented as a transcript of what you would say to this board. There is no audio version of the speech, just the proposal in a Word document.

If you like, you can also do the proposal as a Power Point presentation. You would still need to include a Word document with the Power Point presentation. It would essentially be the same as the speech described above. Your Power Point would serve as a visual outline of your proposal.

Remember that you know who your audience is. You can determine how much knowledge your intended audience has about your topic. It’s a good idea, if your proposal is on a highly technical topic, that you assume some members may not have the same level of expertise that you do.

You also need to know what your purpose is. Your purpose is to persuade the audience to accept your idea and give you the green light to proceed with your project. While you may spend some time informing the audience about the topic, your main focus should be on persuasion.

Think about what kind of appeals will be most effective for you to use in this proposal. They are covered in the lesson and summarized here. You may end up using one or more of these appeals.

Ethos This appeal to credibility is known as “ethos.” How will you persuade your audience that you are trustworthy and credible to speak about and proceed to work on this topic?

Pathos Pathos offers a way for the audience to relate to the subject through commonly held emotions. How might you use emotions to gain your audience’s acceptance of your ideas?

Logos Logos is the appeal to logic. How will you ensure that your argument has consistency and clarity? How will you present reasonable logic and substantive evidence?

Your proposal should be between 350 – 500 words long. Not meeting or exceeding this length is not a good idea. Good writers learn to write pieces of specific lengths, based on the needs of the audience and, sometimes, detailed requirements.

Your proposal should include an introduction which identifies your main point, a body in which you provide support for your main point, and a conclusion that wraps up your presentation and says something about the significance of what you’ve presented, just as you would do in a paper. If you do add a Power Point presentation, think of it as a visual outline for the speech. It should have very little text on each slide.

Below you will find a sample for both the Power Point file and the Word file for this assignment. Feel free to use these to get started.

PURPOSE: To persuade
LENGTH: 350 – 500 words
AUDIENCE: A general audience of people who will grant you permission to proceed with your project (you can assume they are similar to those in this classroom)
SOURCES: Total of 3, all from the APUS Library
FORMAT: The citation style that is appropriate for your discipline