Today’s Plan:
- Syllabus Change
- Characters and Actions
- Homework
Syllabus Change
As I mentioned Wednesday, I want to make a slight change to the syllabus. We are not going to do a second worknet. Instead, we are going to do a bit more research, build the annotated bibliography a bit more, and start the proposal process a few weeks early. I have not updated the course syllabus yet, but I will do that soon.
Characters and Actions
Today I want to introduce an approach to syntax advocated by Williams and Bizup. We want to avoid the passive voice and try to construct sentences that have clear characters (instead of subjects) and actions (as verbs). It is both easier and harder than it sounds.
Homework
There will be no class on Monday. There’s three things I need you to do in preparation for Wednesday’s class:
- Read the Wayne Booth .pdf I emailed with the class notes. We will use this in Wednesday’s class.
- Read one article that a writing group member has annotated on the group bibliography. Revise and expand their original annotation. Start thinking of annotations as a three paragraph process: the first paragraph covers the purpose, findings, and recommendations of the article, the second paragraph details the methods, and the third paragraph does some thinking by connecting the article to other research (this thinking can compare or contrast).
- Finally, read and annotate one new article (an article that no one has annotated yet) for the group annotated bibliography. Submit a copy/paste of the text of that article to Canvas.
