Unit 1: Narrative/Exploratory Essay
This activity will be your opportunity to exhibit all the brainstorming and investigative work
you’ve conducted up to this point. Throughout the course of this Unit, you will have considered
and discarded several potential subjects of investigation. In this essay, you will establish your
final research topic and provide your audience with an account of how you have selected this
topic.
Assignment Requirements
For this assignment, you will choose between a narrative essay, an exploratory essay, or a hybrid
of both. Whichever type of essay you choose, be sure to satisfy the following requirements:
1) Establish your research topic.
State what topic you have decided to investigate and why. Be sure to discuss what about
this topic appealed to your personal interest and why it should be of interest to others.
Specify who you think would be interested in this topic.
2) Summarize your preliminary investigations.
Discuss what you have learned up to this point. Your summary should address both how
you engaged with the existing discourse as well as what that discourse looks like.
Consider the resources you used to initiate your investigation and what you found during
this cursory research. Be specific and make direct references to your information sources.
You should also address any information gaps and disputes that you have noticed along
the way. What are some unexplored niches within this topic? What disagreements exist
within the ongoing discourse?
3) Outline plans for future research.
Provide at least three research questions that you will focus on as you continue your
investigation. Discuss how your research questions fit in the larger conversation. Based
on the brief research you have already done, describe how you plan on finding more
specialized information. Include some key words that will assist in your search. Given the
sources have you used up to this point, what other types of sources will you be looking
for? How will you identify the reliability of those sources?
How you write your essay will depend on the genre you choose. Narrative essays make use of
literary and narrative elements to question the writer’s preconceptions of a subject. Exploratory
essays recount the thought process during research. Both essays ask the writer to engage in
dialectical thinking. Your essay should be at least 1,200 words.
If you would like to review either of these genres, refer to your textbook, specifically Chapter 7
(narrative essay) & Chapter 8 (exploratory essay). You will also find samples of each in the
textbook.