Friday, 7 February 2014

Week 5: Topic Refinement


I found that the podcast pitch exercise helped me to refine and decide upon my topic. The process of explaining my research topic to my tutorial class in a four minute pitch forced me to think about whether my idea was clear enough to be understood in such a short window of time. The pitch also helped me be more direct in the delivery of my research question and watching my peers present their pitches was a learning experience. The preliminary research that was also involved in preparing the pitch provided me with the opportunity to discover whether my topic was feasible. These are all important steps in beginning a research assignment and can therefore be useful as a pre-writing exercise for other writing assignments.
 
In a social science class I am enrolled in, we completed a similar exercise for our final essay called an essay proposal which I found helped me to identify my thesis and in-turn my research plan, essay outline and first draft so I see this "pitch" process as very helpful.

My refined show idea is to cover the knowns and to reveal the unknowns of the spelling rule ‘I before e except after c’. As part of the Grammar Girl podcast show I plan to explain the rule, discuss things we have come to know about the rule and aspects most of us overlook in terms of the rule. I was primarily thinking of covering a variety of grammar rules that many of us we were taught throughout our years in English class and which we still recall today. However, I realized that focusing on only one grammar rule was not only more specific but would also fill the 15 minute requirement for the final podcast episode.

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