Thursday, November 18, 2010

Blog #8 & Blog #9

Take your time on these and I'll look at both of them after Thanksgiving break.

Blog #8

How is your research paper going? What trouble are you having? What is going well? Be as detailed as you can as this will help you to "think out" any issues in your paper.

Blog #9

This blog should be a free write. I would like you to write a really, really long (4-5 paragraph) blog about this.

In the syllabus, I listed a few goals for this course. They follow, here:

1. Comprehend, analyze, and articulate a well-reasoned response to a variety of texts,
from student writing to published writing to academic discourse;
2. Evidence an understanding of how topic, audience, purpose, voice, and levels of
formality interact and vary in different rhetorical situations, in academic
disciplines, and discourse communities;
3. Utilize various invention, drafting, and revising/editing strategies to meet the
purposes of different writing situations, materials available to the student, and
length of time available for the task;
4. Engage a topic in which the student explores writing as a means of self-discovery,
establishes a voice appropriate to the topic selected and rhetorical context, and
produces a text that is designed to persuade the reader of the student’s
commitment;
5. Clarify major aims, arrange material to support aims, and provide sufficient
materials to satisfy expectations of readers;
6. Understand the process of research, both in the library and through electronic
media, and develop effective research strategies;
7. Select, evaluate, and interact effectively with sources, subordinating them to the
student’s purpose and creating confidence that the sources have been fairly
represented and acknowledged with academic integrity, particularly in
summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting statements or reproducing audio-visual
materials;
8. Demonstrate a satisfactory control over the conventions of edited American
English and competently attend to the elements of presentation (including layout,
visual elements, format, printing, and consistent style of documentation)
appropriate to the academic discipline or discourse community;
9. Ethically employ appropriate computer-generated technology to the production of
a writing project;
10. Recognize the importance of writing as essential to inquiry, learning, thinking,
communicating, life-long learning, and as a career skill.

How did you meet or are you meeting these goals? In which papers? What revisions are you still working on? Why?

If you are having problems writing this, I suggest that you take a look at Michelle's example. Here's a link to her electronic portfolio.

http://www.students.niu.edu/~z111902/teachport/MICHELLE/index.html

Remember that her "guiding reflection" is focused on other course goals, but they are similar to ours. Follow through the whole portfolio to get a good idea of what I want you to do -- only you lucked out and you needn't compose an electronic portfolio.

This course was equivalent to English 101 at WCC. Keep that in mind. Also, the links contained in Michelle's guiding reflection, itself, are different than those in the bar at the top of the page. For example, the link to Essay 1 at the top of the page takes you to a final copy of that paper. In the guiding reflection, there is a copy of the paper that has "reflection" as an actual part of the document. There are additional links there, too. It's just a really good portfolio -- she was also an adult, returning student with a "unique" past.

PLEASE CALL ME WITH ANY PROBLEMS OR QUESTIONS. THIS IS VERY, VERY IMPORTANT!

2 comments:

beths102blog said...

Blog #8
The hardest thing about the research paper was being able to incorporate what I have learned in English 102. It was also difficult to get the paper moving in one direction. Once I was able to get the flow going, I felt that it became easier to go back and incorporate what I needed to do with the paper to make it a fairly good paper. I was able to incorporate the TS/CD/CM format into most of my paragraphs. I was still confused about the citation weather I was to put in the date or the page number. I am hoping that the time that I took to write this paper that I have been successful in writing a good paper the first time around.

beths102blog said...

Blog #9
With the variety of texts presented for the first several assignments, I found the papers to be interesting as well as challenging. The papers were interesting in that I was not anticipating this type of English class. Challenging because I became the critic and analyst of some interesting texts. This also directed me to see how levels of communication(Peters,2) vary and are executed. An example of this was in the Evaluative Summary. Analyzing this writing I was able to see the use of voice without the use of specific words.
With how many papers I have re-written for this class I have defiantly a few things. I have learned how to write a draft first and then move through the formal layout of the expected paper. Although somehow I did not get that the TS/CD paragraph has to have two CD/CM in it to be correct.
The research paper has definitely helped me engage in creating a writing style based on the formats of the other papers that I have written in this class. I also became engaged in the research process, (Peters,2)using various medias to support my topic. With modern technology, the computer has been very handy in allowing us to view various avenues in obtaining research material.
This class has been somewhat helpful with my writing skills. I've learned a few things to help me in the future.