Today’s plan:
- Attendance
- Index Card Questions
- Conference Sign Up [Google Doc]
- Proposal Assignment Review
- MLA and APA Checklist
- Survey and Interview Review
- Booth exercise
- Reading Scholarship
- Homework
Conference Sign Up
Hi all. I’ve put up a Google Doc with meeting times. Sign up for one!
MLA and APA Checklist
So my feeling is that you have likely had exposure to MLA or APA paper formatting at some time. After the Thanksgiving Break, we will spend Tuesday working with the format. But I wanted you to format your proposals and drafts in MLA and APA format. To help with that, and to see what you already know, I’ve put together a checklist of primary concerns with MLA and APA. After you are done writing your proposal and your draft, please consult this and look up the formatting specifics (again, try Googling OWL MLA or APA).
Proposal Assignment
I was a bit off my game in the library Tuesday, so let me go over the proposal assignment one more time.
Proposal Project
The proposal for the final paper is a more focused than the proposal you wrote at the beginning of the semester. This time around I will ask you to hone in on a research question and provide me with an annotated list of sources that you will use in the final paper. On Thursday, I stipulated two requirements for the proposal:
- That the paper pose a question that you do not already know the answer to (and you shouldn’t have a deep emotional investment in knowing the answer to–ask a question that might surprise you)
- That the paper uses at least 8 sources. 2 of these sources should be academic, 3 of these sources must be academic if you want to qualify for an A
I have created a template for the proposal that I would like you all to use.
But before I share that with you, I want to explain something. I mentioned last week that you might conduct primary research: a questionnaire/survey, an interview, and experiment or observation, in place of some sources. You’ll notice an area in the template marked “primary research.” If you want to do primary research, then here is where you describe to me what you think you want to do. Essentially, I would like you to write up a methodology. If you want to do an interview, then find an interview on a similar subject, cite it, and use it to help develop the interview questions. I want to see those questions up front. Same thing with a survey–there’s readings for next class regarding surveys listed below.
If you develop and conduct a survey, then I will count it as two to three non-academic sources in your final paper (and I will specify the amount after I’ve read the proposal and during our conference).
Finally, you will notice that the proposal calls for an annotated bibliography of at least 5 sources. This means that by the time you turn in your annotated bibliography on Monday, I expect you to have read, summarized, and analyzed 5 sources. This might sound like a lot, but you should have already most of this work: you are drawing on an article you have already written that should have contained three sources (you should re-read those, but they are hopefully fresh), you read one source for homework in preparation for today’s class, and you are reading another source for homework tonight in preparation for Tuesday’s class.
Since I am asking you for an annotated bibliography, I want to clarify what I consider an annotation. I consider an annotation as a 150-250 word, two paragraph, thing. The first paragraph of an annotation provides the reader a summary of the piece. This summary should clarify when the piece was written, why the piece was written (what is its purpose, its thesis), the method or evidence the author of the piece uses to prove her point, and (possibly) what the author hopes the point will lead us to do differently (sometimes this is different than the thesis, sometimes it is the same thing).
The second paragraph of an annotation is more of a reflection on the significance of the piece to your project. Why is this source important to you? Does it help show that there is a problem? Does it critique a popular solution to the problem that you don’t think will work? Does it provide some meaningful statistics regarding what people think about the problem, or what people think about a proposed solution? Does it offer a unique perspective on why something is good? Or bad? Does it lay out survey questions that you would like to ask (maybe to see if you get the same answers, or different answers?)? In other words, the second paragraph is where you start thinking about the source and telling me how it fits into your project.
Survey and Interview Questions
Quick quiz on Canvas.
Booth Exercise
Quicker quiz on Canvas
Reading Scholarship
I’ve put together a handout that goes with the video. You are welcome to print more copies to use for your research or in other classes!
Homework
The next time we are going to meet as a group is on November 28th! Holy crap! There’s a lot to do between now and then, when we will work on MLA and APA format and do our course evaluations (the university requires you do them online, the English department provides paper forms). Let’s review:
- November 13th, Proposal due
- November 21st, Drafts of papers due for Peer Review (I will ask you to sumbit a link to a Google Doc, then I will email people and tell them which Google Doc to review–I will send out more information about this after conferences next week)
- November 22nd, Drafts of papers due for Santos comments
- November 28th, Meet in computer lab (Ross Hall) for MLA and APA workshop [DON’T MISS THIS CLASS]
- November 30th, Meet in computer lab for MLA / APA and second peer review
- December 3rd, Final papers due to be eligible for resubmission [note: resubmission is only possible if a draft was turned in on Nov 22nd]
- December 8th, Absolute final day to turn in a paper
