Week 9

Wakulla Springs

Good evening, class.  Hope you are well!

Today we continue putting together the short research assignment, and finishing any outstanding assignments.  Our last two or three assignments have afforded some practice in the kind of sorting and summary you do when you are gathering background sources for a research study.  You must be able to read through and then summarize concisely an author's main point, key support and detail, strength of evidence, interest factors, and determine whether a particular source has anything of real merit to contribute to your research.  If it does, you selectively pull those elements into your work as support, including key reference words so that you can properly document the source in the Works Cited section of the essay.

Choose your research source materials carefully.  Sources should provide key information, context, illustrations, various perspectives, and counter- arguments or evidence.  The following source criteria will help you pull together comprehensive source material on your subject.

·                     1)   context and background material on the research subject

·           2)  explanations of key concepts

·           3)  examples or illustrations of claims

·           4)  authority for the claims you are making

·           5)  clear evidence to support your claims

·           6) counter-examples or evidence that your argument must take into account

Choose sources that address your research focus.  If a source does not have anything particularly useful to add to your piece, look for another. Consider the following questions as you sort through potential source material:

·                     How does this material address your research question?

·                     In what ways does it provide support for your claims or ideas?

·                     Does this source provide quotable support?

·                    Does the source provide counterarguments that your audience may require you to acknowledge and       answer?

Check the currency of your sources.  When was it published?  Is the information contained or the perspective held still valid?  Is the author or source a respected one or one whose legitimacy is clear?  How many cross-references or links to other authorities or source documents does the source contain?  Can you cross-check the accuracy of the claims made in the source?

Analyze the author’s stance as a means of understanding his or her potential biases or blind spots as regards the subject.  What informs the author’s tone and perspective:  respect for scientific study? a desire to advocate or oppose a particular position?  seriousness of purpose and desire to clarify facts and ideas, or angry, polarizing refutations of other perspectives, including perhaps personal attacks not relevant to the questions?

Assess the author’s argument and evidence, in so far as possible, by cross-checking references and sources relied upon or ignored in the source. 

·               What is the author’s main point?

·               How much and what kind of evidence supports his claims?

·                How persuasive is the evidence?

·                Does he offer or address counter-arguments or evidence?

·                Do you find any questionable logic or biases that may be skewing the argument?

You will need to know the point you want to make in the essay and to be able to frame it up front in opening paragraphs.  The body of the essay should develop context, evidence, examples, and expert  opinion and claims.  The conclusion should underscore the importance of the subject and the perspective on it you have attempted to create.  The essay title should be specific and engaging, and the works cited page accurate in reflecting the sources used directly in text, arranged alphabetically for ease of access.

Week 8

                                                       

        The groves were God's first temples.  ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn"

Good afternoon.  I hope that you are all well today, and feeling good about life and your place in the world.  Today's classwork involves followup on the interview work and essays written last week, and further work that involves use of skills essential in expository writing.  I have two options, from which you will choose one.

     The first involves exploring or defining at length the meaning of a word that has some significance in your life, in your behavior and in your thoughts and perhaps spiritual practice, or in the essay your intend to write as your final project.  I use the phrase spiritual practice in no particular religious sense but loosely to refer to the many ways we attempt to bring ourselves in to harmony with the world, the people we share our lives with, and, perhaps most importantly, with our own self.  The essay involves defining in an extended fashion the word you have chosen.  To begin you might employ a simple dictionary definition of the word's most common meaning in use, or the secondary or tertiary meaning, as listed in a dictionary entry.  The development of the essay will proceed with narration and description of what the word means to you; i.e. the meaning the word has come to have in more senses than a dictionary could possibly convey.  The following is a list of abstract words and phrases (i.e. they cannot be physically seen or touched as say an apple or a diamond or a tree can) that you might choose from:  

Attention

Beauty

Compassion

Devotion

Honor

Faith

Grace

Justice

Peace

Reverance

Wonder

Nature

Intelligence

.........Concrete and Abstract

climate change

peak oil

tar sands

the sun

the moon 

the stars

black holes

nuclear energy

celebrity

With abstract words or concepts, one must bring them to life by means of the specific, concrete, the tangible, the three-dimensional world we live in.  Our notions of beauty, for example, derive from the visible, the audible, the tactile–the world of the senses–even as we also comprehend abstract notions such as truth and peace as being, in a real sense, manifestations of beauty.  So the assignment requires you to define a word as you have come to understand its meaning.  I want you also to use one quotation, either as an epigraph (appearing just below the title of the essay) or somewhere in the text of the essay.  A simple google search of the word plus  key word "quotations" should provide you an array of choices.

You might choose a concrete word, rather than an abstract.  Again, you have the dictionary to supply an essential definition but you provide description of appearance, constituent parts, function, historical and cultural and personal significance.  What is a tree?  Clearly, it is a living organism, with certain characteristic features (depending on species), an ecological role to play, an historical and cultural role in the life of humankind, and so on.  Trees are also symbols of strength and shelter and wonder and beauty and mystery.  We've all admired trees, played among them, climbed them, photographed them, too, perhaps.  What is it about trees that makes us love them so?

The second option is to select from the cartoons featured at slate.com (or elsewhere) a cartoon that addresses an issue about which you would like to speak.  Or you may choose to  describe another sort of image, a photograph or video clip or film scene, discussing the contents of the piece precisely  to articulate the apparent point of view of the author.  Cartoons are one form of journalistic commentary, along with writings and photography and video and film.  Key to this piece will be providing context, that is the news or event to which the author has responded.  You may have to do a bit of research in presenting this context and you should to respond to the issue yourself.  Your essay will build on the work of others, the cartoonist, photographer, and news writers, scholars, scientists or pundits.  Source materials will be referenced accordingly, by type, title, author, and place of publication.

Whether you choose the first or second option, you should write from 450-600 words.

Note:  the final essay exam is set for week ten.  You should have all outstanding work in by that day.  If you miss class week ten, you must come week 11 to take the exam.

Week 7

Today I will collect from those of you who have not yet submitted it, the field essay(#5), and last week's news response (#6).  We can share with the class the material you have put together and any difficulties or discoveries met along the way.  Bear in mind that the final project, described at the bottom of this page, may well be a field report informed not only be your eye witness observations but also the reports and historical accounts put together by others.
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One form of primary research is the profile.  People are a source of fascination and interest as well as repositories of information, perspective, and sometimes wisdom.  Some of the most popular essays and articles address themselves to the lives of significant or "newsworthy" individuals who by design or luck have been participants in or witnesses to events that live in the collective imagination.  We may learn from their example, benefit from their expertise, or simply live vicariously through them events that it would otherwise be impossible for us to experience just so.  

Some essays are written from an "as told to" perspective, by a writer who has interviewed at length some individual or been privy to the thoughts and storied events of the individual's life, and then made an effort to preserve them; likewise, some of us have learned of  events–historical, social, cultural– through the accounts our parents or others have given us.  Suffice it to say, how others live and think and what they have been witness to interests us greatly, as a form of escape, inspiration, and practical information.  People are also characters, types even, lovable, admirable, despicable, maddening, intelligent, or not so very, outgoing or quiet, modest or vain or a little bit of both, and we can write to convey the ordinary and extraordinary qualities we find  in a certain individual, quite apart from that individual's expertise or knowledge of some secondary matter. 

Autobiographical and biographical writings, personality profiles, Q&A interviews, and self-help articles offer a steady stream of writings about people and events large and small.  The Internet, social media and blogs, have become a ready means of documenting the life around us, the experiences of people from all walks of life, and of generating a forum for the sharing of ideas and opinions.

The profile requires the writer interview the subject, and present what is learned by means of  decription and narration.  The subject's story or expertise and perspective on some matter has to be conveyed of course.  The important questions and responses, edited for fluency and ordered to meet the particular focus and purpose of the interview, can be presented in either the Q&A format, or the essay format.   Today we discuss matters of topical interest that can be developed by means of the personal interview and/or informal survey of a community's response.  You will have to identify a story or subject matter whose development depends or proceeds at least in part on the response you get from the individual or individuals you speak with.  You might, for example, survey student response to a given issue, whether local, national, global, etcetera:  climate change, the sky-rocketing cost of education, the Occupy Wall Street movement, money and work, health matters, technology, food– whatever socio/cultural, economic, or ecological topic interests you.  Obviously, the degree to which your respondents have something pertinent to say will be of some import, but you must shape the inquiry to discover what people know, think, or feel.  

Importantly, you must be well informed and capable of presenting clearly the subject/issue that interests you, enough to provide questions and follow up that will elicit from your respondents usable information.  In class we will discuss further ways you can fulfill assignment #7, and review some examples.  The first can be found at the following URL and in class handouts:  http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/oliver_stone_on_occupy_wall_street_grab_the_power_20111028/

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  Final Project  (#8) :  A short research project  (1000 words minimum with a documented source list, i.e. a "Work Cited" list) is due week 10 or 11.  This essay should address some subject about which you can make an arguable claim or assert an opinion supported by your research.  You should have a least two- three secondary sources (published articles or book material) and one or more primary sources such as your personal experience, documentary photographs available on the web or elsewhere, cartoon journalism, eye-witness accounts gathered through interviews, etcetera.  You should provide clear summary of context and important details, and direct quotation of experts or authorities whose reports of fact and opinion matter to your argument.  Title and double space the essay.