How to Approach This Lesson
Welcome to a deep dive into one of the most important skills in academic writing: the annotated bibliography. This isn’t just a list of sources; it’s a conversation with your research. In this lesson, we’ll demystify the process. We’re going to build one entry, step by step, focusing on the three key parts of any good annotation. Follow along closely, as mastering this skill will make you a more critical reader and a much stronger research writer.
The Challenge: More Than Just a Works Cited
Our task is to: Draft an academic annotated-bibliography entry for a sociology text.
So, what is an annotated bibliography? It’s a list of citations for books, articles, and other documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150-200 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation.
The purpose is to prove you have not just found sources, but have also read them, understood them, and thought critically about how they fit into your research. It’s a foundational skill for any research paper, thesis, or major academic project, and it demonstrates a high level of critical thinking.
A strong annotation typically has three parts. This will be our plan:
- Summarize: What is the author’s main argument? What are the key points?
- Assess (or Evaluate): How credible is the source? Is the argument convincing? What are its strengths and weaknesses?
- Reflect (or Apply): How is this source useful for your specific research project? How does it connect to other sources?
Let’s apply this three-part structure to a sample sociology text. For our example, let’s pretend our research project is about the impact of social media on community engagement.
The source we’re annotating is a fictional book:
Book: The Digital Town Square: Social Media and the Decline of Public Space by Dr. Eleanor Vance (2022).
Your Step-by-Step Guide to a Flawless Annotation
Step 1: The Citation – Getting it Right
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