Lasseigne

Haleigh Lasseigne
English 1001
Ms. Coco
November 20, 2015
Exploring Child Abuse
When assigned the inquiry proposal project, I contemplated my two options on
which essay to expand on. My personal literacy project was a narrative of myself
overcoming my fear of speaking in front of large crowds. With this topic, my option for
an inquiry paper was to research peoples fears and how they are overcome. It did not
seem like it would make for a very appealing topic. My genre analysis project was an
analysis of Martina McBrides country song Concrete Angel. The song reflects a young
girl, who is abused by her mother, but nobody notices and one night her mother beats her
to death. If I expanded on this topic, I would research child abuse and how it negatively
affects children in a physical, emotional, and also long-term way.
One of the first activities we were given to decide on our topic was to state the
potential for each as an inquiry paper and ten questions for each topic that were
possibilities to research. When listing questions for the expansion of my personal literacy
paper, I found myself struggling. I just could not seem to come up with anything
interesting enough to expand on and the questions I was coming up with were not very
useful. They were boring and I felt like nobody would be interested enough in the topic to
have any desire to read it. When I began to list questions that were related to child abuse,
however, I was on a roll. How many children are abused per year? How does it affect
these children both short-term and long-term? What are things people can do to recognize

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child abuse and prevent it from continuing? There were so many different things that
interested me on this topic and I knew that if the right person read it, it might actually
make a difference in some childs life. As I have previously stated in many of my papers
and assignments, I have a strong love for children. I have worked at a daycare and I plan
on pursuing a career in education. With that in mind, an inquiry on child abuse seemed
perfect.
The next step that I needed to work on for my inquiry proposal was coming up
with a line of inquiry. Honestly, I still do not have one that is set in stone. The one that I
first wanted to go with is What are ways to prevent child abuse from continuing?
However, the more that I looked into it the more I realized that it was not much of an
inquiry and there would not be enough information to write a full paper based on that
question. The one that I am leaning towards now and will most probably stick with is
What are the long-term effects on a child who was abused? After doing some research,
I think that this line of inquiry holds the most potential for an interesting paper that shows
people why it is so important to prevent child abuse from continuing.
After determining a probable line of inquiry, I began my research. It started with a
library-research class that was held by a librarian at LSU. She showed us an entire
database of credible sources that we could use for our papers. I had no idea that LSU
even offered these resources, so it was cool to have millions of sources that I could
choose to use in my inquiry paper. The librarian taught us the most effective way to find
a good source for each paper to help narrow down the results. I searched for long-term
effects and child abuse. After going through quite a few different articles, I found two
peer-reviewed journals that were focused solely on the long-term affects of child abuse

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and were extremely informative. They listed the psychological, emotional, and physical
effects that are left on the child. Another thing that I want to include in my paper is the
number of children that are abused each year and what happens to the adults that do the
abusing. I search on Google and credited websites that provided each of these things.
Www.childwelfare.gov not only provided an article with the number of fatalities from
child abuse in a certain year, but there was also another article that included the signs to
look for in both the parent and the child that may suggest abuse. With a little more
research on Google, I also found a website, www.ndaa.org, that stated the laws in each
state in relation to the cruelty of juveniles. My last source that I will include in my
inquiry proposal is from www.kidshealth.org. It is an article on one of the most serious
effects of child abuseshaken baby syndrome. It is head trauma that results from an
adult dropping or hitting a child in the head that will affect the child for the rest of his or
her life.
Now that I have a line of inquiry and all of my resources, I am able to begin
drafting my inquiry proposal. I am hopeful that my paper will come along smoothly with
the help of the resources that I have found. I am satisfied with the way that my ideas are
developing. They are everything that I expected them to be whenever we were assigned
this project. It would be amazing if I could make a difference in at least one childs life in
a way that can change their life forever. I am extremely eager to begin my inquiry
proposal.