End of the Semester: Final Assignment(s)

 

Revision Portfolio: Due no later than Friday, December 10th at 11:59 pm. This assignment is worth 10 points.

Revise and edit these five pieces:

a)  "First short essay" (due Sep 9)

b) "The Last Leaf" & Genre (due Sep 23)

c) "Literary Analysis" Hughes or Gilman (Oct 21)

d) "The Future of Reading" MLA (due Nov 16)

e) "500 Words, Anything Goes (due Nov 23)

Rename your files as follows: 

yourlastname_last leaf.docx

Bring your laptops for the next two class periods. We'll be working in class on this. 

Questions?   csmith@dcad.edu

Language Unleashed, Unbridled, Free

This is a really straightforward assignment: Write anything (new) that you please. Make it something that you want to share with the class. This text should be around 500 words. If you need more words, go for it. If you're short of 450 words, keep writing. HAVE FUN. Tell jokes, be serious, speak the truth, get political, get apolitical. It's all your choice. We're going to share our writing with the entire class as a treat for our Thanksgiving class next Tuesday.  This assignment is worth ten points. Make sure you proofread carefully.  Questions? csmith@dcad.edu.

Upload to Populi no later than Tuesday, Nov 30, at 3:00 pm. 

New Cell Phone and Laptop Policy

 

No cell phones, no laptops.

For our remaining seven (!) classes, we're going to try something different. Patrick Winston is right. Cell phones and laptops from now until the end of the semester are prohibited in this class. This is the new default position. If we are doing some kind of exercise that requires your phone or computer, then I will let you know. 

If you break this rule and I see you on your phone or computer, then I'll ask you to leave the class and go to the Writers Studio for the remainder of the class. At the conclusion of class, around 4:35-4:45, meet me in my office to explain the situation. OK?

Thanks, Casey

PS: If there is some kind of dire emergency that requires you to use your phone or computer, please excuse yourself and do your business in the hall. Come back when you're finished. 

MLA Works Cited Page: Casey's Guide

 

Check out my brand-new guide for a no-tears MLA "Works Cited" page.

 This document can also be found on the "Files" tab on our Populi page.

Homework for Thursday, November 11: Finished, complete, and accurate MLA Works Cited Page

 For Thursday's class, upload your Works Cited page to Populi. It should have at least three citations. Send questions to csmith@dcad.edu 

Do You Agree? Why or Why Not?

 

This article was written and illustrated by Alex Manley for a student newspaper in the early 2010s at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.  What is its thesis or controlling idea?

It's a good example of a source that you can learn a lot from, but is not at all scholarly. One way you can tell is the brevity of paragraphs. If you're reading a text in which almost every paragraph is three or fewer sentences, you are likely in the presence of journalism. This is not a bad thing, it's just not scholarship. Scholarly articles and essays will have longer paragraphs and their sources will be accurately cited. That said, they might be dated. Reading an article about the early internet in the 1980s could be interesting if you are taking a historical approach, but it will tell you next to nothing about the internet in the 2020s. 

Technically, if a source text doesn't have footnotes and acknowledged secondary sources, then it isn't considered scholarly. However, if you wanted to highlight the subject position of the author (the fact that he or she was a college student in 2012), then it might be acceptable, as long as you explained why. The same is true for other sources that I call "gray research". For instance, if you find a source on JSTOR it is de facto scholarly. Essentially this means that it has been vetted by authorities (house readers and editors). If you find a source on an anonymous website that also has lots of pictures of cute cats and fail videos, then, umm, you are definitely not in the world of either "gray research" or scholarly research.

However, that leaves a lot in the middle. That's where your judgment comes in. Examine what kind of evidence is provided. Is it all logos (reason & argument) or all pathos (emotion & feeling)? There should be a balance. For a very long time our collective culture has valued logos more than pathos, but this might be changing. 

Checklist for FINAL Submission, November 16

If you can answer "yes" to the following questions, your essay is probably in good shape. And if you can answer "yes" to all of these questions for your required draft (Due Tuesday, November 9), you probably won't have a lot of work to do for the final submission on Tuesday, November 16. 

Questions: csmith@dcad.edu.

1. (Y/N) My essay has a lively and meaningful title.

2. (Y/N) My essay is laid out in MLA format: name, course name, professor name, and date double-spaced in the top left. The body of text should be double-spaced, using a 10-12 point serifed typeface such as Times New Roman, Georgia, or Garamond. Indent new paragraphs, do not skip a line between paragraphs. Insert page numbers in the top right.

3. (Y/N) My main idea is clearly stated toward the start of my essay, and my main idea is genuinely arguable. Can you imagine an intelligent person making solid objections to your position? The answer to this should always be "yes". 

4. (Y/N) My essay is not overly saturated with first-person (I, me, my) perspective. A little dose, usually toward the end of the essay, is the best place for explicit "I" voice and "I" experience. 

5. (Y/N) Each of my body paragraphs logically follow each other with clear transitions.

6. (Y/N) My essay incorporates at least three reliable and legitimate secondary sources using MLA form.

7. (Y/N) I have shown my essay to other people (a tutor for instance) and listened to their genuine advice.

8. (Y/N) I genuinely feel proud of the position I've taken and the evidence and style I've used to make my position persuasive.

9. (Y/N) I have read it out loud, listening carefully for potential minor mistakes in grammar, syntax, etc.

10. (Y/N) My essay reflects me and my thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

More No-Nonsense Advice about MLA Citations

 

Here's a little secret about getting MLA style correct: Try to"turn off" your brain and simply follow along. Be like a robot. This is not intellectual work. Using an automated citation generator can actually introduce new problems if you don't what information to enter in the fields. This is almost always the case. 

Since you will be using mostly online sources, you can essentially repeat the step-by-step directions that this video gives. The video talks about the "Works Cited" page and also in-text citation. They work together, hand-in-hand. 

Remember to alphabetize your sources by the last name of the author who wrote the piece. Start your "Works Cited" page on a fresh page. Double-space the entire list and don't forget the hanging indents.  You got this, right?

Despite giving thorough directions over several weeks and six class sessions, many of you in this class will not get it right. Several of you will probably get it drastically wrong. Why is that? I'm basing this on my experience of teaching research papers to college students for more than 30 years. 

I'm not being negative, just realistic. I genuinely want to know why so many students are so resistant to taking the extra steps to getting it right.