To: Zainab Rauf Tramboo, ENGL 301 Student
From: Joanna Yu, ENGL 301 Student
Date: June 24, 2020
Subject: Review of Your Proposal for Increasing Student Voter Turnout for UBC AMS general elections
I have reviewed your proposal for increasing student voter turnout for UBC AMS general elections. Thank you for your good work! You have done a great job organizing the material and getting started. I would like to offer the following suggestions regarding your proposal:
Introduction: Your introduction explains the nature and the scope of the problem in a clear way. However, there are minor grammatical corrections in this and other sections of the proposal. In the first sentence, “The University of British Columbia (UBC) pertaining to…” would sound more concise with “The University of British Columbia’s (UBC) high university ranking…”. In the third sentence, any of the capitalized words in “…University Administration and the Provincial and Federal governments.” do not need to be capitalized.
Statement of Problem: Your stated problem is clear and easy to understand. You have done an excellent job at following the guidelines for describing the main issue and what the causes are that have led to the problem. A recommendation I have is to mention why the problem you identified is a concern to your reader. Explicitly mentioning this would help explain why this issue is of importance and should be seriously considered by the reader. Additionally, there are minor typos in this section. In the first sentence, “…students to come out the vote…” should be “… students to come out to vote…”. Also, there is a missing “,” before “etc.”. Lastly, “E.g.” can be used in the beginning of the examples you mentioned inside the parenthesis.
Proposed Solution: This is a well-thought proposition to try to increase student voter turnout. There are a few grammatical issues in this section.
• In the second sentence, “The UBC & AMS administration has already…” should be “The UBC & AMS administration have already…”
• In the third sentence, “need to further backed” should be “need to be further backed”.
• In the fourth sentence, “…allocate ending five minutes…” would sound better with “…allocate the last five minutes…”.
• In the last sentence, the “;” should be a “:”. Additionally, using “E.g.” would be more appropriate than “i.e.” while also using a parenthesis to detail the different examples.
Scope: The fourteen questions you have chosen are excellent choices for your research proposal. They should be more than enough to help you with the issues you plan to cover in your proposal. However, the word/page count may limit you in discussing each question more in-depth in your report. Narrowing down the most important question to address may help you address the page limit. Additionally, the grammatical issues in this section are:
• In the first sentence, “etc.” can be omitted.
• In the sixth and seventh bullet points, instead of “Where (what venue)…”, “Which venue(s)…” can be used.
• In the eighth bullet point, “Would having multiple ballots encourage students/to remind students to vote?” would sound better with “Would having multiple ballots encourage or remind students to vote?”
• In the ninth bullet point, specifying what the previous campaigners lacked would help clarify the idea.
• In the second to the last bullet point, “What are the demographics of the students that are most/least likely to vote (E.g. university year, major, etc.)?” would sound more on point.
Methods: Both your primary and secondary sources of data are appropriate and well-thought of for your topic. I have no suggestions for this section of your proposal. However, these are some of the grammatical issues I found. In the third and fourth sentences, the words “via” and “i.e.” can be replaced with “E.g.” while a “,” should be used before “etc.”. In the second to the last sentence, “In order to conduct a more in-depth research,” would be clearer than “In order to conduct more in-depth,”.
Qualifications: Being a member and vice-president of Analytics of UBC Red Cross will be relevant in your research to help support your claims to the reader. In this section, below are some of the grammatical adjustments you can make.
• In the first sentence, “three-year” would be more appropriate than “three year”. Additionally, you could split your first sentence into two by describing what the Analytics of UBC Red Cross means in the first and detailing your routine as the vice-president in the second sentence.
• In the second to the last sentence, you may omit “and” before “so”.
• In the last sentence, instead of “with AMS elections and other student elections.”, eliminating the first “elections” by writing it like “…with AMS and other student elections.” will help address repetitiveness.
Conclusion: Your conclusion is clear. It is an exceptional way to wrap up your concluding paragraph. Reasons are provided why increasing voter turnout is important. There is also a clear call for action that makes a strong and persuasive closing. I only have one suggestion in this section. In the fourth sentence, “This being said,” can be omitted.
I hope my recommendations are helpful as you complete your research proposal. Your research proposal report is well on the way. It offers compelling reasons that would persuade Dr. Erika Paterson to allow you to conduct your research. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Joanna Yu
Link to Zainab Rauf Tramboo’s Research Proposal
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