Reflections Project

This essay will allow you to circle back to the type of writing you did at the beginning of the semester, but it asks you to draw on knowledge you have gained this semester about yourself, your writing, and your role as a University student and scholar. You will begin, as you did with Essay One, by writing an in-class essay in response to one of the following prompts.

English 100 and Beyond:

Reflect on your idea of writing after one semester of university schooling. This essay can take various forms. You can connect the writing you’ve done in English 100 to writing you’ve done in other classes – did something you learned in 100 come up in other classes? Alternatively, you can compare what you’ve learned about writing in English 100 with what you’ve learned about writing in high school (or in other college-level courses you are currently taking). If you decide to incorporate both ideas into your reflections project, please make sure that they fit together under one thesis statement.

More Than Words:

If you choose this option, your project will have two components. First, you will reflect on some aspect of writing (or making a logical argument) through a visual medium, such as a website, a video, a photographic essay or collage. These visual “texts” can be found in other sources, like the internet, magazines, or newspapers; or, they can be “texts” that you create yourself. And second, you will turn in a 2-page paper in which you explain the role of some aspect of writing in your project. As you write your essay, you might take the following into consideration: how do you distinguish between “writing” and “text,” and have these terms changed for you at some point throughout the semester? What are the differences or challenges that you face in making an argument in both written and visual forms? Feel free to be as creative as you like.

Propose Your Own Assignment:

Imagine yourself a few years down the line as a teacher of freshman composition. In planning your course calendar, you intend to give your students the opportunity to write several different kinds of essays, including autobiographical, analytical essays, as well as a major research project. Yet there are many other kinds of writing that are missing from the syllabus – including interviews and interview write-ups, analyses of literary works and cultural objects, weekly diaries, responses to specific questions or statistics, etc. For this essay, develop an original idea for a writing assignment that you think your students will benefit from and enjoy. In your paper, explain what kind of writing your assignment is meant to develop – personal, academic, technical, creative, etc. Which specific skill is your assignment designed to strengthen? What kind of source material, if any, will you be distributing to your students to help them do the assignment? For additional ideas, page through Easy Access.

Guidelines:

Your final draft should be at minimum 2 full pages in length.

In class writing –Monday, November 26th

Draft 1 – Monday, December 3rd for peer review

Draft 2 – Friday, December 7^th due to me

If you would like feedback from me before submitting it in your Final Portfolio, please come see me in office hours.

Oral Presentation Schedule

Monday 11-5
Peer Review of Oral Presentation

Wednesday 11-7
Peter
Marie
Justin
Royce
JD

Friday 11-9
Cate
Ozair
Danielle
Liz
Breann

Monday 11-12
Tom
Kelsey
Max
Dan
Chelsea

Wednesday 11-14
Abby
Kalyn
Shalissa
Lauren

Friday 11-16
First draft of Research Paper due.
Peer Review of Research Paper.

Research Paper

Research Paper

In this essay, you will begin to think about your role as a member of the university community. As you see yourself moving towards a position on the topic, you should try to document that movement. What arguments or positions are convincing, and why? Your ultimate goal, though, is not to win a debate but to join a scholarly conversation and to use writing as a way of coming to know.

In your paper, you should do the following:

· Clearly articulate a research question (which may or may not be the initial question you posed in the “Research Question” Assignment);

· Show how you have responded to or answered this question through a thesis statement that communicates your position;

· Support your position with evidence that you have gathered and synthesized;

· Introduce and respond to positions that are different from yours, and include rebuttal when necessary;

· Show a constant concern for clear and cohesive organization, which includes writing paragraphs with identifiable topic sentences and transitional sentences;

· Display a solid grasp of MLA citation style and include a Works Cited page; and

· Begin to develop a consistent voice and style.

Guidelines

The final paper must be 8 pages, though you are free to write a longer paper. Please follow the formatting guidelines outlined on your syllabus in the section titled "Guidelines for Typewritten Work." Refer to Easy Access MLA citation and formatting styles. Be sure to include a writer's memo with this assignment.

Tips on the Writing Process

Although the purpose of this paper is to gain some facility with the research process, that process is always unstable. Do not be surprised if you find your position on the topic shifting as you write, or if—when you are close to the end of your paper—you feel more in the middle regarding your topic.

Many writers find it helpful to write the body of the paper before they write the introduction and thesis, so that they are not so committed to a position in the beginning that they have trouble moving away from it later when they find new evidence or shift away from their original position. You might want to draft your paper with a loose introduction and working thesis (or wait to develop a thesis until later in the drafting process), and keep an open mind to your evidence as you work through it.

A final tip: a great way to organize a paper is to write a solid draft first and then construct a "reverse outline," which is a fancy way of saying that you make an outline after your write the paper. This outline need not be extensive. Jot down your working thesis, write a number for each paragraph in your paper, and then next to each number, either write out your topic sentences/main points or briefly sketch them. This method helps you to see whether your paragraphs are ordered logically. Can you explain why you've put each paragraph next to the one that comes before and after it, for instance? This process also helps you to make sure that each paragraph has a main point that the sentences in that paragraph support. In your final draft, each paragraph should have a topic sentence that a) announces the paragraph's main point, and b) relates back to your working thesis and helps your paper along in some way. Your topic sentences will generally be the first sentence of each paragraph and will often function as transitional sentences as well. This may seem like a big role for one sentence, but in time, the process of writing topic sentences will seem more natural. Whether you decide to create a reverse outline or not, be sure that your paper has a clear focus, and that it persuades the reader of its main point in an organized manner.

Oral Presentation: Research Narrative

The Research Narrative is the next-to-last step in English 100’s research sequence. It is the only step that takes the form of an Oral Presentation. The purpose of the assignment is to share your experience as a researcher with your classmates and with me and to tell the story of your search so far. The goal is to practice thinking and talking, not only about the topic of your paper but also about the process of research itself.

You will now move beyond the questions you posed in your Research Question, Proposal and Annotated Bibliography and begin to think about where you are in the research process and what you need to do next. This assignment, in other words, should help you establish what you have learned in your research and what is still unknown or unclear to you. It should help you answer the question: where are you heading as you begin the last part of this process? It is therefore an opportunity for you to honor not only your progress but also the complexity, uncertainty, and even frustration of research.

Your narrative should take the form of a well-planned and well-rehearsed oral presentation to your class. It will still require a good bit of writing, however, especially in the form of notes and outline. You may use these written documents in delivering your presentation, but please do not simply read from a prepared speech. The presentation should be about 8 minutes long: no less than 6 minutes, and no more than 10. Other students will be presenting on the same day you do, and I will keep close track of time, so please rehearse your presentation and keep to these time limits. (Just to give you an idea of length, an 8-minute oral presentation usually corresponds to about 4 pages of writing, typed and double-spaced.) Be prepared to answer questions after you speak.

Even though this assignment is an oral presentation, it will still be considered part of your final writing portfolio. For that reason, I may ask you to turn in your notes, outline, or some other piece of writing (a self-evaluation, for example) from this assignment.

Guidelines: PowerPoint is not permitted for the oral presentation; however, you can use the dry erase board in the classroom and print handouts for any information you want to convey to the class. Please be sure to make your presentation clear and concise. Make sure that the main purpose of your research is clear.

General Tips:

· Use eye contact with your classmates.

· Have verbal flags or markers so your classmates and I know where you’re headed in your presentation.

· Feel free to repeat ideas in order to convey them clearly. In other words, the repetition you avoid in your written drafts can now be used effectively and sparingly in your presentations.

· Essentially, we want to know what you’ve been up to in your research these past weeks. We want to know how your project has transformed from a few ideas to a focused topic. Don’t forget to convey this in an organized and polished manner.

· Practice before you present. I will take note of presentations that are too long or too short. It’s my personal pet peeve, and many professionals consider going over time as disrespectful to your fellow classmates.