Essays for Crit Thursday, Nov. 12th

Here are the essays for Thursday!

On Tuesday, we’ll be discussing the writing of conclusions. Your rewrite of the introduction for Soon Jae’s essay will be due on Tuesday, and so will your expanded personal essay using indirect expression of emotion and one of our “disagreement” templates.

For Crit

Here are the essay for critique on Thursday, November 6th…

Here’s The Owl

Your assignment for next week (Thursday morning) is to create a Works Cited page using the MLA format, for at least 15 “sources” at your place. Try to use as many different sources as possible: books, articles-in-books, a CD, a DVD film, an article from a journal, a newspaper article, etc.

Pay attention to punctuation and formatting: in MLA format, they all mean something.

Here’s the MLA format page at The Owl at Purdue, where a lot of examples for many formats are available. If you can’t find an example for what you’re looking for, try one of the many other MLA format pages available online.

This assignment is due on Thursday, Nov. 5th.

To sum up, your homework is as follows:

  1. Read the essays for critique next Thursday, Nov. 4th.
  2. For next Tuesday (Nov. 2nd), write a personal essay using the “indirect mood” technique we explored earlier.
  3. Post on the discussion board about what you want to discuss on our Tuesday classes for the rest of semester. Eon Joo started the discussion here.
  4. Today’s new assignment, write Works Cited page in MLA format for fifteen different “sources” found around your home, for Thursday, Nov. 4th.
  5. Of course, keep working on your essay. It will be critiqued soon, but that’s no reason to stop working on it for now!

Next Week’s Speech Contest

There’s some confusion about the Speech Contest and what students are expected to do. I explained it at the beginning of semester, but I’ll clear it up once more for you:

  1.  All students in English Language & Culture Department courses are expected to attend the two main Department events: Mosaic (in late November) and one day during the The Speech Contest event (which is on November 3rd, 4th, and 5th.)
  2. Attendance will be taken at these events and will affect your grade in English Language & Culture Department courses. Even if you are not a member of the English Language & Culture Department, if you are taking a course in our department, you are required to attend these events.
  3. You only need to attend ONE of the speech contest days: ie. Monday OR Tuesday OR Wednesday — it’s your choice. But you must attend at least one. The information about times and places (and who is speaking) is posted outside the Department Office, at 205 Dasol Gwan.
  4. Attendance at these events is in addition to, and not instead of, regular course meetings. It’s extra, and I’m not canceling classes for it. You’re expected to attend class as usual, in addition to attending these events.
  5. No, you cannot come for only one hour. You are required to attend for the full event if you want your grade to reflect attendance.
  6. Everyone is busy! (Even your professors!) So please don’t complain or feel frustrated, just try to have fun or learn something. I’m pretty sure you can do both if you try.

See you at the Speech Contest!

Essay for Crit

Here’s the essay for critique for Thursday’s class.

So Young’s Midterm Essay (for Crit, PDF)

By the way, sorry for the delay but I’ve been trying to figure out how to make the file work for everyone. There was an update in Adobe and now older PDFs don’t always work. If you’re having trouble seeing this file, try one of the following things:

Good luck!

Resumes

Some students have discussed the upcoming job seminar that will come after exams. If you’re looking for a guide to writing resumes, there are a few online. I recommend most students use a Skills-Based resume, because it lets you highlight your strengths (abilities) and deemphasize your weaknesses (lack of experience).

I can’t find the model resumes I have on file — they’re on a hard drive in a box somewhere, and I’m still moving from one apartment to another — but there are some good guides online.

Remember, the #1 rule for resumes is putting yourself in a good light. It’s your tool for selling yourself, so always find a positive way to express everything on it.

Essays for Thursday

Sorry for the delay: I got sick over the weekend (sneeze, sneeze) and forgot to upload the essays for this Thursday’s critique session. Here they are:

That should do it. Tomorrow, we’ll be discussing your essay-writing process and I’ll be discussing formatting, since it seems (from what you’ve been emailing me) that many of you still don’t have a good handle on formatting. We’ll also discuss structure, and I’ll take questions on areas that are troubling you.

By The Way…

Time flies when you have a deadline coming.

It was suggested today that I had posted your essay topics last week. In fact, they were posted on September 25th, which is 12 days ago today — much closer to two weeks ago than “last week,” and certainly a reasonable amount of time in which to have begun your research.

Now, I’m not pointing that out for any reason other than to note that time really moves faster than you think, especially when you have a deadline coming. This is one reason I bugged you so much last week to start researching, and also why I’m bugging you to start drafting now.  Essays that are written at the last minute are no fun for anyone, and when I’m not having no fun reading your essay, the grades I will hand out might be somewhat lower that it would otherwise be.

Just something to think about. If you want a good grade, you must hand in quality writing, and quality writing just takes time.

Your homework as of today is as follows:

  1. Submit an annotated bibliography including at least five sources. Here is an example of what I’m looking for:

    Annotated Bibliography (PDF)

    Your first annotated bibliography is due Thursday, with five sources. I expect an updated version a week from Thursday with a few more sources as well.

  2. You should have the two essays we will be critiquing read, marked-up, and ready to discuss at the beginning of tomorrow’s class. I will also discuss editing marks briefly during the class.
  3. You should write a response to the two authors whose work you are relying to using a template (as outlined here) for next Thursday’s class.
  4. You should be making a strong effort to either begin drafting your essay or begin researching immediately. You currently have twenty days, not including today, to produce an essay. Five of those days (or more, depending on your exam schedule) are midterm exam weekdays.

Don’t forget the essay-writing process I mentioned. You will seat a daily wordcount deadline of between 250-500 words, revise your work as you go along, and post your daily expansions to the Discussion Board. Please start a new discussion for your essay, titled: MIDTERM EXAM: CHULSOO LEE. (But use your own name.) You are free to read and comment on others’ essays as usual, but you must work daily (or post a reason why it was not possible, and make up the missing words on subsequent postings).

Have a nice day, and see you Thursday morning.

Disagreeing (and Agreeing), Part 2

As I said, the academic culture — and the world of essay-writing — is a great big discussion between many, many people. You don’t always have to disagree. Disagreeing is a way of adding something to a discussion, but not the only way. As Paul Fortunato points out (on page 171 of the same book by Gerald Graff that I cited last time), there are a number of ways to respond to your sources:

For the following exercise, you will use almost the same template as last time — but paraphrase the two authors in your own words — and then you will agree or disagree with their argument.

Here’s the main template:

TITLE: ________________________

The general argument made by AUTHOR X in his or her essay, ____________________________, is that _____________________________________. More specifically, X argues that ________________________________________________________________________. She/He writes, “__________________.” In this passage, X is suggesting that ____________________________. In conclusion, X’s belief is that ______________________.

In AUTHOR Y’s view, X is wrong/right, because___________________. More specifically, Y seems to believe that ___________________________________. For example, Y writes that ” ____________________________.” Y seems to disagree with X on the issue of _____________. X thinks that ___________________________, while Y maintain that ___________________________________. Therefore, Y concludes that __________________________________________.

Then you can add your own opinion!

Here are some templates add-ons for those moves, which you can append to the previous template:

disagree with some key statement

In fact, I disagree with X [or Y]’s claim that ___________________. I think that _____________________. X [and/or Y]’s claim that, “___________________,” is wrong because _____________________. In fact, _________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

agree with something the [author] says, and then say even more about it than he or she did

In fact, I strongly agree with X [or Y]’s claim that ___________________. I think that _____________________. X [and/or Y]’s claim that, “___________________,” is correct because _____________________. In addition, it is worth considering  _________________________. For example, ________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

point to something the critic says that seems to go contrary to something else he or she says

In fact, I think there are problems with  X [or Y]’s argument that ___________________. X [and/or Y]’s claim that, “___________________,” but then he [or she] contradicts himself [or herself] by arguing that ____________________. In fact, _________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

point to something the critic says and give a counter example…

In fact, there are problems with X [or Y]’s argument that ___________________. X [and/or Y]’s claim that, “___________________,” is not absolutely true. For example, ________________________. In fact, _________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

argue with the critic by showing that he or she is leaving out some key aspect of the [issue] or some key issue of the argument

In fact, I think there are problems with  X [or Y]’s argument that ___________________. When X [and/or Y] claims that, “___________________,” he [or she] ignores the fact that ____________________. For example,  _________________________. Because of this, we must agree that _______________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

blow [the author] out of the water by showing that he or she is totally wrong

However, X [or Y]’s argument that ___________________ is wrong. When X [and/or Y] claims that, “___________________,” he [or she] doesn’t have the facts straight. In fact, _________________. For example,  _________________________. Therefore, because X [or Y] has based an argument on false information, I must conclude that _______________________.

praise [the author] for making an extremely important point, and then add something important to that point.

In fact, I strongly agree with X [or Y]’s claim that ___________________. I think that _____________________. X [and/or Y]’s claim that, “___________________,” is correct because _____________________. But that’s not all! It is important to consider aspects of SUBJECT that X [and/or Y] did not address, such as _____________ and ______________________. For example, ________________________. Therefore, I must conclude that _______________________.

Your newest template response paper is due a week from today, but more importantly, you should start thinking about how to use these kind of rhetorical patterns in your midterm essay. Think about whether you agree or disagree with the sources you’ve found so far, and consider how you might amplify or counter the arguments used in those sources!

Next Week’s Crits

Here are the essays for next week’s critique session:

You will critique these essays on the morning of October 9th. Please have your comments written up, and your copy of the essay (with editing marks, if any) on hand so you can give them to the authors. If you are working from a computer in class (Sunjun!) that’s fine, but make sure you have printed any comments you have for the authors before class. (You can add newer comments or thoughts using a pen.)

See you on Tuesday morning.

← Previous Page — Next Page →