Course Recap for Tuesday, November 29, 2016

First Draft of Research Paper

Make sure that your draft attempts to do the following things: 

1. Prove your community has a problem.  What is the issue?  Why should people care? Where's the proof that this is happening in your community? 
2. Provides solutions.  What can we do to fix this issue?  How do we know this solution will work?  Is there any research to back up the effectiveness of the solution?  Remember for those of you exploring issues that deal with issues of public policy and law to give at least one solution that YOU as a member of your community could do to help the issue.  Let's say your issue is poor sex education in the school system.  Getting a better curriculum implemented in the schools is a solution but what can the students do to help the issue.  Maybe they could form some sort of anonymous online group where students can safely ask questions and receive answers from professionals.  We want to call everyone in your community to action on this issue not just the people in charge.
3. What are the counterarguments? What are the potential obstacles that could prevent you from implementing your solutions?  What reasons might people give for why your issue shouldn't be addressed?  Looking again at poor sex education, you might have people who argue that the current curriculum is fine or that the curriculum you are proposing will promote promiscuity.  How can you handle these objections?  This does not necessarily have to be a section of its own.  Many of you will address these issues when you answer questions 1 and 2 but you want to keep it in mind as you write.
4. Try and have at least one source for each of the 3 questions above. What tends to happen with this paper is people pack all of their sources in one section of the paper (usually the one addressing the problems).  If your solution is to form a smoking support group, find a source that talks about the effectiveness of support groups.  If the issue is the wrestling team is underfunded, what are the benefits of funding the wrestling team?  What does being on the wrestling team do for students?

Second Genre

While I want your research paper to be the main focus over the next couple of days, it is time for you to think about your secondary genre.  Your secondary genre piece's goal is to complement your research paper.  It's purpose is to help your audience see your issue through a different form of writing.  Under Class Documents there is a list of Genres of Writing. Look it over and think about what other genre of writing best fits your topic and will help you further prove your point.  Your genre might focus primarily on illustrating the problem, for instance, a powerful magazine ad that talks about the effects of domestic violence or a play that illustrates gender fluidity, a poem expressing what it's like to have anxiety and depression as a college student, or it might look at the solution: greeting cards to give to students who are suffering from homesickness, a month long menu of healthier cafeteria options, an illustrated how-to guide on proper running form.  All the examples, I gave are things students have done in the past.  Come to class Thursday with some ideas of what you want to do that you can bounce off of me.

Homework

• Read Letter from Birmingham Jail page 121 in Readings for Writers Due Thursday December 1
• Think about what second genre you want to do. Due Thursday December 1 
• First Draft of Research Paper Due Friday December 2 via Google Docs and ELI Review

Course Recap for Thursday, November 17, 2016

Annotated Bibliography 

You are creating an annotated bibliography of 10 sources.  For each source you will include an APA reference entry and then an annotation, a paragraph where you summarize and evaluate the source.  Check the example below.

Burden of tobacco use in the U.S.  (2016, May 20).  Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention.  Retrieved from

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/resources/data/cigarette-smoking-in-un

ited-states.html?gclid=Cj0KEQiAx7XBBRCdyNOw6PLHrYABEiQAJtyEQ-HLy

eWOIcGYnGqQelBcqGp5wEY6l2GxA5nctMaJ40YaAttP8P8HAQ

This site provides statistics about smoking. It talks about the prevalence of smoking amongst different demographics and the number of deaths caused by smoking. This article helps to show that smoking affects a large number of people from many different backgrounds. It also shows how many are negatively affected by smoking, providing statistics that show the number of smoker who have developed and/or died from smoking-related illnesses like lung cancer or emphysema. A large number of people who are killed by smoking aren't even smokers "...with more than 41,000 of these deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke" ("Burden of Tobacco," 2016). According to “Burden of Tobacco Use in the US” (2016) There is a higher rate of smoking (26.3%) in people below the poverty line than those above it.  

You are going to do this for 10 different sources. Here are some tips for creating a good annotated bibliography.

• Start your search with the WMU library website. You have to have 2 scholarly articles but it won't hurt to have a few more. Once you've exhausted this resource, check out Google. This is a good way to ensure that the majority of your sources are valid.
• Check out the questions on page 37 of your EasyWriter book under the Analysis section to determine what types of things you should discuss in your annotation.
• Use your annotation to help yourself gather all of that source's useful information in one spot. Include any useful quotes or statistics so that you don't have to go searching for them later.
• Make sure when you quote from a source that you use proper APA formatting.
• If you use a citation creator like EasyBib or KnightCite, make sure that what that site generates is the same as the formatting provided in the APA Formatting Guide I created or the APA Formatting Guide located in your Easy Writer book (starts on pg 263).
• If at anytime you feel confused, referring to your EasyWriter book about APA formatting will be really helpful. It's what I use to determine how to format sources in APA. It has a very detailed guide on APA from how to quote sources to how they should appear on your reference page. If you weren't here, or if you forgot what I taught on Thursday or if you find my guide a bit confusing (I added a lot of notes in there), this could be the next best route.
• Please put in effort. I will know when you haven't done so and you will be graded accordingly.

Homework

• Create the annotations (description of sources) for the two sources we added to your bibliography on Thursday. (Due Sunday Nov 20 at midnight via Google Docs)
• Completed Annotated Bibiliography (Due Tuesday Nov 22 at midnight via Google Docs)
• Enjoy your break!!!

The formatting of this post is wonky because I was trying to show you how to format the bibliography. It should still be easy to read though.

Course Recap for Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Conferences are over, and I hope that they were helpful.  This Tuesday we had peer review.  I hope that peer review gives you all a good idea of what I will be looking for in your final drafts.  The place where many of you lost points in the first project was your failure to actually revise your papers.  Please use the feedback your classmates gave you to help you make actual changes to your paper (correcting grammatical errors are a good start but I also want revision in your content).  If you feel like you didn't receive good feedback from your classmates, look over the peer review  sheet and ask yourself if you're missing any of the things mentioned there.  Maybe you don't need to include historical context to make your point, but you know it would make your analysis stronger.  Revision isn't just about fixing what's wrong.  It's about taking what you have and making it better.  There is no such thing as a perfect paper.

Also I'm including in the Class Documents the Works Cited Page we worked on together in class to help you when formatting your Works Cited Page.  It includes the entries for the 3 short stories.

Homework

• Analysis Paper #2 via ELI Review and Google Docs Thurs Nov 3 11:45pm
• Peer Review of Analysis Paper #2 in ELI Review Due Sunday Nov 6 11:45pm
• Final Draft of BOTH Analysis Papers Due Friday Nov 11th 11:45pm