Week 3
DO NOT comment on grammar, punctuation, or spelling during peer review. It's not particularly useful to your partner.
You may notice that the Narration paragraph assignment in the Dropbox has reopened. The change has to do with my face-to-face class. I've already begun reading and grading your papers; please do not resubmit your paper or do anything else in response to the new deadline.
For more information about the errors that I mark on your paper, please see the Proofreading marks & error correction guide.
Updates. I've downloaded the class' Narration paragraphs and I've begun to grade them. I should have them done by mid-week. Look for your graded paper with my comments in the Dropbox - I make comments so that you will know what to work on while you write the next paper. To learn how to download my comments, read these instructions: http://workbench.webct.com/web-ct/help/en/student/assignments/s_assign.html#graded
Quick list. Here's a quick list of the things you need to do this week. Keep reading to find out more about each item:
- Read:
- Patterns Chapter 4 introduction
- Oberg, "The Internet Instills Family Values-Really"
- Smith-Yackel, "My Mother Never Worked"
- QA Chapter 9 and Chapter 10
- Write a rough draft of your Examples paragraph
- Send your rough draft to your partner for review and review your partner's paper
- Revise and submit your Description paragraph by the deadline, Friday 14 September 2007 at 11:55pm MST
About the reading. This week's reading in the Examples chapter is comprised of two longer selections. Both selections provide quality models of this mode of development.
An examples paragraph, like an examples essay, provides a number of supporting details (facts, personal observations, bits of testimony, and examples) that illustrate the writer's point. Typically, a successful paper provides a variety of kinds of details supporting its thesis (if it's an essay) or topic sentence (if it's a paragraph). All observation or all fact doesn't make a good paper; however, a balance of fact and observation can help the reader understand the writer's point of view by providing multiple points of entry into the writer's perspective. Unlike narratives, which are often organized chronologically, and descriptions, which are often organized spatially, example papers are often organized emphatically. That is, the details appear in order of importance - either least important to most important or most important to least important.
Pay particular attention to the development of each essay. If you had to make an outline, where would the introduction begin and end? What is the thesis? What points supporting the thesis are made in the body? Where does the body end and the conclusion begin? If it's really hard to tell how a point relates to the writer's point of view, maybe you haven't identified the thesis correctly. While Smith-Yackel's essay works as a kind of narrative, it does more than just tell the story of her mom's life. The body of the essay develops by providing a kind of chronological resume of her mother's work. In this case, the points the writer makes aren't emphatically ordered, but the essay is successful. In the other paper, Oberg provides a more typically organized body section - the details are emphatically ordered - but it may be difficult to identify the thesis of the paper. Look closely - maybe even read through to the end and then try to identify the central focus of the paper.
Again, the chapters from QA provide useful information, and it's necessary that you be familiar with the terminology so that you can use the book effectively and efficiently as a reference. Skim the chapters and see if you have any burning questions about the topics in them. If you do, post a question to the Questions thread in the Discussion area and we can work through it. One student asked if there would be any way to practice for the upcoming quizzes. At this point, make sure that you are skimming the QA chapters. Then, when the quizzes get closer, I'll give you a practice set of questions or some web resources to consult about specific topics.
About the writing. This week, you are working on a variety of writing-related things:
- Examples
- Write a rough draft of the Examples paragraph. See the course packet for more information about the assignment, including approved topics.
- Use WebCT's Email tool to send your rough draft of the Examples paragraph to a partner BY FRIDAY NIGHT. To find out who your partner is, consult the list below.
- Review your partner's paper and email it back to him or her BY SUNDAY NIGHT. To begin, review the handout How to talk about writing. When working with your partner, be honest but not brutal - your function is to give your partner ideas about what he or she could improve. DO NOT comment on grammar, punctuation, or spelling - that's not particularly useful to your partner, and since you're not a grammar expert, it may even be damaging. Spend adequate time reading and thinking about your partner's paper so that you come up with some good suggestions for improvement. Then, read your partner's paper carefully. Look at how he or she sequences the details. Comment on the detail sentences - how effective are the examples? What other examples can you think of that might help support the topic sentence? Provide your overall impression of the paragraph - how effective is the topic sentence? How effectively organized are the examples? What might you add or change?
- Description
- Revise your Description paragraph in preparation for submitting a final draft to the Dropbox. You can also meet with me or with a Learning Center tutor to get additional suggestions about how to improve. If you're out of town or can't make it to campus to meet with me, give me a call at 771.4363.
- Double-check your formatting. Do you have a proper heading? Header? Margin size? Font size? See the Formatting, layout, and documentation page for more information.
- Turn in your paper at any time before the deadline passes. Do not ask me to take your paper after the deadline passes; late or missing work gets a zero, end of story.
Bolender, Heather & Vandenbos, Kelly
Clark, Jennifer & Bronec, Christa
Dowdell, Dee Ann & Elder, Bettina
Holstein, Kayla & Dusek, Michelle
Miller, Stacey & Gettel, Patti
Paine, Angel & Lowe, Cooper
Tordale-Gilbert, Charla & Osborne, Curtis
Corcoran, Alanna & Campbell, Cassie
Burckhard, Finley & Austad, Tamara
Aldrich, Michael &Ringdahl, Donya