01 Oct Essay #3 Instructions
- This is a Gordon Rule Writing/UCC course, and so the writing-aspect, regardless of what is being written upon, is taken quite seriously. Improvement is expected over the previous papers—I read my previous comments and assess your final paper accordingly. Also, especially when the total course grade is hovering between two grades (an “A-“ and a “B+” say), my sense of your improvement can be a buoyant factor.
- This is strictly an analytical paper that DOES NOT depend on personal reflection “I believe…” stuff or phrasing. Obviously, interpretation involves personal judgment, but the reader will not “buy” your interpretation if you do not present your analysis as factual and objective, based on evidence. I don’t want to harp on too much, but a lot of Paper#1’s and #2’s suffered from this sort of phrasing….
“We, as humans, have emotions that make us think that some things about ruins are negative. When I look at the British ruin of Stonehenge, however, I see a ruin that is really interesting because it shows how Druids worshipped in the past.”
Note:
–the writer (I’m making up the example, not from an actual student) wants to be profound and so uses phrases such as “we, as humans, …”
–the writer wants to personalize or fears just stating his/her ideas and so owns the ideas in addition to just stating them “When I look…”
–the writer persists in using self-reflective phrasing about the act of analyzing “I see a ruin…”.Now: extract the filters of above and BE FORCED TO WRITE WITH MORE PRECISION, and you can reduce but intensify the core ideas to: “Ruins evoke antiquated life-ways long gone and impractical for 20th-century citizens of the world; and yet some ruins, such as Stonehenge, can conjure up an earthy spiritualism that might, though old, be new to us.”
- To achieve such forceful/impactful revision, you must write a draft and let it sit for a day or two, and then go back adding more pertinent, more nuanced reflections, and seeing where your phrasing seems to say something, but is actually wordy, overly abstract, or imprecise. You must approach essay writing not as if you are just letting the professor know that you’ve read the assignments and lecture notes and more or less understand them, but as if you are sculpting a work of art in which the superfluous or the slip of the artistic pen will be visible and obvious and distracting. (Yes: I know … you are perhaps taking lots of classes; it’s difficult to linger on writing and revising. Still, I ask you to do this to the best of your ability within the semester calendar limitations.) Please note: although Paper#1 and Paper#2 were not NOT analytical, with both there was a fair amount of latitude for description and somewhat personal reflection/anecdote–this paper should be firmly and robustly analytical; description should always serve as evidence for analytical points!
- All the general instructions for Paper#1 and #2 apply, except that this essay should be about 1500 words long or longer (again quality, not quantity), and it must incorporate research/secondary materials as requested in the topic options below.
- Use whatever citation method that you have been taught in your Composition classes here at FIU or elsewhere or which you typically use in your own discipline/major. If you do not include a proper Bibliography page at the end, your essay will not be read or it will be lowered a grade or more.
Read the last two sentences again.
- Do not consult more secondary sources than provided in the options below. Exceptions: yes, if you need to cite some fact or observation from an additional source, that is o.k.: but you have to be careful here—I occasionally get papers which were written for another class, or draw substantially upon such, or which come from the internet and so on. These are quite easy for me to detect, and the penalties for plagiarism (even self-plagiarism) are severe.
- Incorporate the supplied (linked) secondary materials by paraphrasing their arguments or part of their arguments, or by quoting a section of their arguments/key points. Do this in the main body of your essay (not your introduction or conclusion). Your goal is not to show that you’ve read the secondary materials per se, but that, having read the materials, your own argument/points have become more sophisticated and developed, because you have consulted authoritative wisdom about the topic you are working on. It is, of course, possible to dispute such “authoritative wisdom.”
- Definitely note that I have not quantified how many times you should quote or paraphrase or refer to a secondary source’s argument. I’m asking you to develop your own analytical ideas and then judiciously incorporate outside ideas/sources. That said, no more than 20% of your paper should be quoted material, whether from the main texts or secondary sources.
- You have to know what your argument is and you have to know the arguments/main points of the secondary material. Only then can you integrate secondary research. Half-hearted tossing in of information from a secondary source–as if it’s some strange vegetable you don’t have a taste for–is not appropriate. Research typically requires reading a lot of material that ends up not being useful: that’s part of the discipline of doing research, ferreting out the useful from the non-useful. For this third paper, I’m not asking you to do elaborate research; I’m asking you to integrate the research sources I’ve provided.
- If you do not incorporate secondary materials in the fashion reviewed above (in a qualitative, not quantitative sense), your essay will automatically be dropped at least a letter grade. Get it? Pay attention to these instructions! That said, every semester several students approach one of the topics/options in a unique way, in which my provided secondary materials just don’t fit. If you find yourself in this unique position, reach out to me to “ok” what alternative secondary materials you have in mind to use.
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