For Class 11/18

Please remember to bring a sample of a writer (journalist, novelist, etc) whose STYLE (not content) you admire. Bring a few paragraphs, a page, something. It's fine (maybe even good) if you bring it hand-copied instead of printed. Start to formulate a response to WHY you like that writer's style.

For next week, 11/5

For class next week, be certain to read chapter 15 in the handbook. This material will be very important in preparing for next week's assignment and revising your 2.1.

Classical Argument Outline

REMEMBER, YOU MUST BRING A DRAFT OF YOUR 2.1 TO CLASS WEDNESDAY.

Please also look carefully at the instructions to the .6--they have been clarified. The assignment is now MUCH clearer and has been simplified.

Outline of an Argumentative Essay – Classical Pattern



I. Introduction

A. Background Information: basic information about the issue (i.e. euthanasia) and the position being argued (i.e. euthanasia should/should not be allowed).



B. Thesis Statement: states the position to be argued in the essay



II. Reasons that Support the Thesis Statement

A. Reason/Argument 1 (main point #1)

1. Supporting paragraph 1

2. Supporting paragraph 2



B. Reason/Argument 2 (main point #2)

1. Supporting paragraph 1

2. Supporting paragraph 2


C. Reason/Argument 3 (main point #3)

1. Supporting paragraph 1

2. Supporting paragraph 2, etc.



Notes about reasons/arguments section:



1. Since this is a longer paper, you will most likely have more than one paragraph per main point. This means that your discussion will be more detailed.



2. Think carefully about how you order your reasons/arguments. Possible ways to order your arguments include most familiar®least familiar or least important (weakest)®most important (strongest).


III. Counter Arguments and Responses to Them

A. Mention the arguments from the other side of the issue (i.e. if you’re arguing that euthanasia should be legal in the US, mention the arguments from the people who think that euthanasia should not be legal.)



B. Briefly refute the other side’s arguments

Plagiarism sources

Please be sure to look at:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/

http://www.plagiarism.org/

http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml

1.2: Literature Review

Remember the purpose of your review:
1. Show readers what has been written about a topic, so that they can understand a particular development of ideas concerning that topic
2. Explain to readers why certain ideas or theories concerning a topic should be challenged or reexamined
3.Help readers understand more about why a topic is being examined by a researcher in a particular way

A potential outline could be like this:
I. Introduction
a. Set up research topic within the context of you review.
b. You may need to clarify what you will or won’t address in terms of research (especially if your topic is broad)
c. Define your purpose for the review.
d. Thesis: Road map for your draft
i. For example: This research review will consider research in the last 20 years and will discuss the research in terms of recent and early evidence.
ii. OR: This review will cover the various subtopics within this field, including x, y, and z.

II, III, IV. Sub-Topic/Heading (A, B, C)
a. State how this research fits together. Why did you choose to group these sources together?
b. Summarize and synthesize the sources
c. Any conclusion you might draw at the end of this section that includes only this research

V. Conclusion
a. State how this research fits into the larger field or context.
b. You may need to again restate the purpose of your review, in order to show how you have accomplished that purpose.

Critiques

Tips for your critiques:
1. Be sure to answer the questions on Raider Writer. All of them.
2. Write in COMPLETE SENTENCES.
3. Write paragraphs, perhaps one each in response to the questions.
4. Be sure to be nice, but not dishonest.
5. Remember that both a grader and a fellow student will read your work.
6. Be sure you understand the essay (read it twice!) and the original instructions before you begin.
7. Don't tell me that the essay is "great." Tell me why it is great. And, tell me how it can still be improved. Everything, always, can be improved.

Suggested Topics

prison vs. rehab. Centers

cell phone addiction

curriculum issues [what should/should not be required and WHY]

pharmaceuticals [advertising for Lunesta, etc, encouraging people to ask doctors to prescribe] and other issues such as high cost

marketing ploys [giving physicians perks if they prescribe] intelligent design

health issues [specific diseases, research into cures, controversial treatments]

body language [meaning non-verbal communication] animal communication

amusement park safety

the insanity plea

open adoption records

banned books

airline safety

false advertising

infomercials

frivolous lawsuits

emotional intelligence

psychic research

poverty issues

plea bargaining

surrogate motherhood

hormones in meat

credit card abuse/debt reduction

investigative journalism [does it create unnecessary panic?]

sales taxes

property taxes

minority student issues

handwriting analysis as part of hiring process

pass/fail grading instead of letter grades in public schools

effect of birth order on personality/prediction of success

art forgery

bias in history textbooks

government tax subsidized arts such as opera/symphonies/ballet [other countries do this]

plagiarism

income tax reform

Annotations!

Hello everyone,

For your annotations, keep in mind the banned topics list:

euthanasia, abortion, gun control, dry/wet Lubbock county, parking at Tech, lack of rain drainage at Tech, steroids, immigration, childhood obesity, anorexia [thin models], school funding, homosexual marriage and/or adoption, standardized testing, hazing, capital punishment, smoking, marijuana and other recreational drugs, ADD/ADHD and evils of Ritalin, paying college athletes, affirmative action, the 10 Percent Rule [college admission], television violence, prayer in schools.

Start thinking about your topic for your 1.2 literature review. Make your research for this week count twice!

Here is a sample annotation:

Gardner, Philip, ed. E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
This book contains nearly 200 reviews of Forster’s various novels. Each of the reviews collected in this edition were published within 15 years of each novel’s publication. The vast majority were published within the year of the initial publication. For A Passage to India, Gardner has collected 39 different book reviews. Of these, 35 were written or published (as one is a letter that was not published until after the author’s death) in 1924, the year A Passage to India was first published. This book is meant for students and scholars of literature who are investigating the contemporary reception of Forster. Keywords: Contemporary Review.

This is an annotation that I did for a class. It isn't necessarily perfect. Be sure that your annotation includes an explanation of the author's thesis/argument, a brief summary, an analysis of the accuracy and quality of the source, the relevance for your paper, and the intended audience. ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE NECESSARY!

Remember to use the Bedford Bibliographer to put together your annotated bibliography. You can do all of your work here! It will organize for you! Also, take a look at the "citation help" link on the right.

1.1 Directions

When you start writing your 1.1, it would be helpful to think about it as three sections:
1. In Martin Alexander's essay (in your textbook), how is the argument structured? By this, I want you to consider how Alexander structures his argument. Also think back to our last several assignments. Think about the theoretical frameworks (or warrants) of the article. Think about the types of evidence that Alexander uses. Why does he include the articles he includes? These are the sorts of issues you should tackle here. Also, look at the first link on the handout. There is a checklist there of things that a literature review should have. Does your review have all of these parts? What is missing and why?
2. In the literature review article of your choosing (look down a few posts for some suggestions), look for the same types of things that you did for the Alexander article. The only difference here is that you should compare the things you find in the article of your choosing to the things you find in the Alexander article. Why do you think the articles are structured differently? Why are they similar?
3. Create a guide for yourself on how to write a literature review. The handout and links I gave out in class will be particularly helpful. Write this in academic prose--do not be informal. Even though this will serve as a sort of "how-to" for your 1.2, you should be writing every assignment for this class in academic prose (meaning, you should avoid all slang and first person).


I don't want you to focus on content for this week--STRUCTURE is what is important here.

A less scary way to think about this assignment is to break it down: each section should be approximately 500 words.

Be sure to include the Works Cited information for the articles you choose. The lit reviews I've suggested to you below are not yet in correct MLA format, although all of the necessary information is there. You will need to put the Alexander article into the same format if you cite from it. The "Citation Help" link on the side of this page will take you to the OWL at Purdue website, which has entries on how to cite almost anything. Use this resource!!

Don't hesitate to see me in my office or email me. I'm MORE than happy to help with this assignment--I know it is difficult!

CLASS MEETING 9/24

On Wednesday, September 24th, 1302-28 and 1302-29 will meet in the library, room 309 at our normal class time. To get to this room, you will have to take the silver elevators up. The research librarian, Donell Callender, will be showing us how to make our best use of the library and its facilities for our next brief assignment (#5) and our 1.2, 2.1, and 2.2 drafts. Please be sure to come. I will be taking attendance as normal.

Brief Assignment 4

Objective: To demonstrate your ability to analyze the effectiveness of support in an argument.

Description: In a 300-500 word essay, answer one of the following prompts:

o Describe and give examples of the different types of evidence James Baldwin marshals in support of his argument in “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?” (339 – 342). Comment on how convincing you find his argument for recognizing black English as a language.
o How successful is Jonathon Kozol in building his argument about the costs of illiteracy in “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society” (383-90)? What specific characteristics of the essay contribute to your evaluation? Be sure to explain fully what types of evidence Kozol uses.
o Martin Alexander’s thesis (556-63) is “that current analytical methods, because they measure total and not bioavailable concentrations, may overestimate the magnitude of the environmental and societal problem from these pollutants.” How does this thesis fit with the research he summarizes in his essay? Relying on Alexander’s summary of the research, count up the number of studies he cites for two topics: the bioavailability of aging chemicals and the effectiveness of analytical procedures. Compare your counts with Alexander’s thesis, and evaluate Alexander’s focus. Does all the research he cites support his thesis? If so, how does it do so? If not, what would you eliminate?

I recommend that you focus on one of the first two choices for this assignment. You can do the third if it interests you, however.

Literature Review for 1.1

Below is a list of potential literature reviews. The reviews on this list are all available on JSTOR. Search for them by entering the article title or author into the search field. These articles are all from different disciplines, and hopefully one will be interesting to you. If not, you can use JSTOR (or any of the techniques we will learn about in the library next week) to search for more literature reviews. Just be sure that they are comparable to these. They should be approximately 7-10 pages. Let me know if you need any help finding literature reviews! I am here to help.

To access JSTOR, you should go to our library's webpage. From there, click "Find Articles" and under the letter "J", you will find JSTOR. You will have to log in with your e-raider if you access JSTOR from off campus.

This assignment will be due by midnight at 9/29.

Best,

Ms. Armstrong

Literature Reviews:

• Fearing Fat: A Literature Review of Family Systems Understandings and Treatments of Anorexia and Bulimia

Kyle D. Killian

Family Relations, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 311-318

• The Costs and Benefits of Sentencing: A Systematic Review

Cynthia McDougall, Mark A. Cohen, Raymond Swaray and Amanda Perry

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 587, Assessing Systematic Evidence in Crime and Justice: Methodological Concerns and Empirical Outcomes (May, 2003), pp. 160-177

• Thirty Years of Black American Literature and Literary Studies: A Review

Farah Jasmine Griffin

Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2, Special Issue: Back to the Future of Civilization: Celebrating 30 Years of African American Studies (Nov., 2004), pp. 165-174

• Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature

Wendy Griswold

Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 19, (1993), pp. 455-467

• Lung Cancer Risk after Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons: A Review and Meta-Analysis

Ben Armstrong, Emma Hutchinson, John Unwin and Tony Fletcher

Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 112, No. 9, 2004 Annual Review (Jun., 2004), pp. 970-978

• Lead Exposure and Cardiovascular Disease: A Systematic Review

Ana Navas-Acien, Eliseo Guallar, Ellen K. Silbergeld and Stephen J. Rothenberg

Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 115, No. 3 (Mar., 2007), pp. 472-482

Brief Assignment 3

As we discussed in class, this week our assignment is about theoretical frameworks of a text. Another word we used to describe this concept is warrants. Keep our discussions about the movie review, commonplaces, and the two sociology articles discussed in class in mind when you work on this assignment.

Objective: demonstrate your ability to determine the theoretical framework/network of interpretation of a text.

Description: Because of the complexity of human relationships, sociologists are careful to detail the theoretical framework of their research. By doing so, they articulate the underlying premises and assumptions that shape their claims. Not all researchers make this theoretical framework as obvious as sociologists do, nor do they label it as a “theoretical framework.” You may hear the terms “commonplaces,” “ideology,” “underlying assumptions,” or “warrants,” all of which refer to similar concepts or beliefs that underlie a writer’s work.

Your task for this assignment is to identify the theoretical framework of a piece of academic scholarship (see below for selections).

1. Read the piece carefully and describe as specifically as possible what it is that the researcher is curious about. You may find it helpful to formulate this as a research question or a hypothesis.
2. Once you have identified the question(s) that the writer is trying to answer, you will need to determine the theoretical framework: how the writer views the world and what kind of knowledge the writer values. (You might want to review the discussion of ideology and commonplaces beginning on page 191 of the text since a theoretical framework will be based on an ideology and commonplaces.) You may need to do some careful analysis here since the researcher may have left the theoretical framework somewhat or nearly completely unstated.

Your essay should be 300-500 words. For this assignment, use one of the following texts:
• Psychology: “Focused Expressive Writing as Self-Help for Stress and Trauma” (457- 465)
• Political Science: “Iraq and the Democratic Peace: Who Says Democracies Don’t Fight?” (505 – 509)
• Chemistry: “Realms of the Spring” (573 – 576)


REMEMBER TO READ FOR THIS WEEK:
Chapter 7 (pages 207-35)

BA 2 Tips

Here are some tips for BA #2:
-Read the article more than once! Each time you read, you will get a better understanding of the author's meaning. Both articles are short, so this shouldn't be a problem.
-Look at the grading rubric in the book. Be sure that your work fulfills the parameters of the grade you want.
-Read the prompt here and on Raider Writer several times. Be sure to answer EVERY part of the question. Not addressing one part of the prompt will affect your grade.
-Ask me questions! Don't hesitate to ask questions about the assignment (provided that your question can't be answered with information on this blog or that I stated in class!)
-Reread your work before submitting! Carefully read for grammatical errors.
-Use correctly formatted MLA citations anytime you cite in your paper.

Brief Assignment 2

Hello Everyone,
Just a brief reminder that BA #2 is due, turned in to RaiderWriter, by midnight Monday night.

The instructions for this assignment are :
Description: In a 300-500 word essay, address one of the following prompts:
o In “The Holocaust” (363-365), Bruno Bettelheim confronts terminology that has become part of our vocabulary, part of recent history. Why does Bettelheim object to the use of the term holocaust? Do you agree or disagree with his objection? Why, or why not? In addition, review the “Language as Power” section in the text (194-199). What view(s) of language does Bettelheim’s essay reflect?
o In “Learning the Language” (367-369), Perri Klass states that in learning this new language she is also absorbing “the logic, the attitudes.” Give some examples of doctors’ attitudes and explain how these attitudes are revealed in their use of language. In addition, review the “Language as Power” section in the text (194-199). What view(s) of language does Klass’s essay reflect?

Please respond to one of the above prompts, ensuring that you have answered EACH part of the question. It should take at least 300 words to completely fulfill these requirements.

For our next class, please be sure to have read Chapter 11 (pages 391-433) in our textbook, and Chapter 3 (pages 36-48) in our handbook.

Brief Assignment One, Reading for Class 9/3

Brief Assignment One:
Objective: To identify potential weaknesses in grammar and mechanics for further study this semester

Purpose: Often, students realize that they have trouble with grammar and mechanics, but find it hard to learn to avoid those errors because they aren’t even sure what they are. This assignment requires you to take the pre-semester diagnostic at http://courses.bfwpub.com/smhandbook6e.php and then to write a brief reflection about your score.

Description: To receive full credit for this assignment, you must take the pre-semester diagnostic, and then answer the following:
• What was your score?
• Was it higher or lower than you expected?
• Did you experience any technical difficulties during the diagnostic? If so, what were they?
• After reviewing your results, and based on your previous writing experiences, including your experience in ENGL 1301, if applicable, which particular grammar elements would you like to focus on this semester?

Be sure to answer each of these questions completely to receive full credit! This assignment is due Tuesday, September 2.

Before our next class (Wednesday, September 3), please be sure to read chapter 6 (pages 173-204) in our textbook. We will discuss this reading in class.