WRA 150: EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN THOUGHT

TUESDAY, OCT. 22, 2013

AGENDA

Housekeeping Discuss “A Forest Unseen” More on research A little bit about citation What’s next

GOALS FOR TODAY

To discuss the role of genre and how that can be used to gain a deeper understanding of how experts in your discipline communicate

Learn more about research… Briefly discuss citation styles, how they

function and the values attached to each

REMINDERS

10/25: Annotated bibliography due 10/31: Rough draft of Project 3 due/PEER

REVIEW DAY. Bring in 2 printed copies of your paper to class

11/11: Final drafts of Project 3 due by 11:59 pm

EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY? Remember that there is still a chance to get

extra credit "From Iraq with Hip Hop,” TODAY, Oct. 22 at

5:30 p.m. in the Erickson Hall Kiva. It’s free! To reiterate: If you choose to go, you must do

a write up of the event. Only needs to be around 200-300 words,

describing the event and something that you learned/liked/whatever.

Deadline TBD 

INDIVIDUAL CONFERENCES

Will be held the next two class periods (10/24 and 10/29).

Sign up for these conferences today in class. Meetings will be no longer than ten minutes. Again, these meetings are a chance for us to

talk about progress on your papers, any questions you have about grades, or class concerns in general.

They will be held in the common area in Brody, right around the corner of the classroom…

Questions?

PAPER 2

By now you should have received my feedback for the cultural artifact analysis paper.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask or see me during office hours to discuss your papers.

Overall, everyone did a good job. But, remember that this paper is meant to be an analysis, not a report about an object.

Because of this, we will be talking more about how research should function later in class.

REVISION POLICY

Remember that you can always revise. The tentative date for when these

revisions need to get to me is 11/15. Questions?

PAPER 3: PROGRESS SO FAR? I will continue to ask: how is everyone

doing with paper 3? What are you guys finding? What’s been frustrating so far? Any questions about anything? Anything??

A FOREST UNSEEN

Get into groups and discuss the following questions:1. Firstly, as always, what did you think of it?

General impressions…2. What kind of writing is this? What genre does

this belong to? 3. What characterizes that genre? Given this small

sample, what would you say are some of the conventions of that genre?

4. Who do you think is the intended audience for this piece of writing? What makes you think this?

A FOREST UNSEEN

Some context: Biologist David Haskell visits a one-square-meter patch of old-growth in a Tennessee forest for a year and writes about it as a window into the entire natural world.

I assigned this because I wanted to show you an example of how one genre of writing: nature writing can be transformed into a new kind by combining poetics and scientific language.

Haskill’s use of “flowery” prose is something you would never see in a scholarly article, yet the impact is just the same—the conclusions he was able to draw, the methods that he used, and the terminology that he used were still firmly rooted within science and biology.

Also a good example of how to weave interpretation throughout observation—arrangement.

A LIIIIITLE MORE ABOUT RESEARCH So, we’ve talked about research a lot, but I want to talk

about it today in a more nuanced way. Typically, it’s thought of in fairly limiting ways and

often gets conflated with “reporting” or “finding” This is technically research and can build a good

foundation of inquiry, but I want your research to do much more than that.

That being said, I think research has loftier goals, like: Creating new knowledge Representing new perspectives Starting a conversation or raising questions Combining multiple sources

WHAT CAN RESEARCH LOOK LIKE? To me, there are two types of research1. The fill-in-the-cracks method.

You know what you’re going to say and you’re just using sources—typically secondary—to cherry-pick quotes to use in your paper.

2. The genuine question method—inquiry. You’ve got a real question you want answered.

For this paper, it’s about how literacy functions in your field.

One is typically far more interesting productive than the other…

THEORETICAL TIMELINE

Idea/Topic Genesis

Context Building

Question Asking

More Targeted Research

ANNOTATING AND DOCUMENTING

Thesis forming

Composing, revising

Recursive | No beginning, or end

RESEARCH TIMELINE CONT’D Hopefully you’ve already got your topic and

started to build context for your paper. We’ve already started this process in class

when we looked at department websites and by rhetorically analyzing different kinds of writings about/within disciplines.

Any preliminary research you’ve done before writing is building context—you’re basically taking stock of what’s out there.

RESEARCH TIMELINE CONT’D But, it’s when you get to the “question asking” stage, or

the inquiry stage, where, instead of simply “reporting” facts or findings, you let your curiosity or intuition take over. Take what you find and make sense of it.

Pinpoint what ‘part’ of the topic you’d like to pursue. What perspective are you interested in analyzing?

Be sure, when you’re finding/analyzing these sources that you break down how authors use language or other rhetorical methods—ethos, pathos, logos for example—to attempt to persuade or inform their audiences. Find out why they’ve made these choices and why these

choices are important to the field you’re situating them in.

SAY ONE THING

This paper may seem like it’s asking a lot of you and talking about disciplinary literacy is a large undertaking.

People do innumerable things everyday in their work lives. That’s why it’s imperative you whittle your essay down so that it says, in the most effective way, ONE THING!

That one thing can be something pretty big, something like: “Nonverbal communication is a crucial literacy in clinical psychology” or something specific like “End of life care in veterinary medicine requires the clinician to communicate effectively and directly, understand their client’s situation clearly, and execute the procedure professionally.”

So, try to take everything that you learn and say one thing—what is the ultimate takeaway that your reader should know about how literacy works in this field? And whatever it is that you want to say, say it clearly.

CITATION: THE GENERAL IDEA Primary reason we cite is to allow other people

access into the source of our ideas To leave a trail of breadcrumbs so that others

can follow us The citations inside the text reflect work/ideas

that are not our own We only cite when what is being said is not

common knowledge. Think of it this way: if you can find it in an Encyclopedia (Wikipedia not withstanding) it’s probably common knowledge.

If you’re not sure, just cite

CITATION: THE TWO MAIN PLAYERS

MLA: Modern Language Association (citation style of the Arts & Humanities)

APA: American Psychological Association (citation and publication style of the Social Sciences)

More specialized: Chicago, Turabian Which ones are you most familiar with?

Which ones have you been taught?

CITATION CONT’D

Another important thing to note, but something that I won’t discuss in depth, is that each citation style has its own associated writing conventions This might go without saying…

But, this is why paying attention to which citation style your field uses is so important Because it dictates how you write

For example, you cannot, typically, use direct quotes in APA. You must paraphrase. Whereas with MLA, you must integrate quotations into your prose. Other things to consider: past vs present tense, direct

vs. expository writing.

SOME OF THE BASICS

MLA

CITATION: MLA IN-TEXT

MLA format follows the author-page method of in-text citation. This means that the author's last name and the page number(s) from which the quotation or paraphrase is taken must appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear on your Works Cited page.

The author's name may appear either in the sentence itself or in parentheses following the quotation or paraphrase, but the page number(s) should always appear in the parentheses, not in the text of your sentence.

CITATION: MLA IN-TEXT

For example:

Wordsworth stated that Romantic poetry was marked by a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (263).

Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).

Wordsworth extensively explored the role of emotion in the creative process (263).

Both citations in the examples above, (263) and (Wordsworth 263), tell readers that the information in the sentence can be located on page 263 of a work by an author named Wordsworth. If readers want more information about this source, they can turn to the Works Cited page, where, under the name of Wordsworth, they would find the following information:

Wordsworth, William. Lyrical Ballads. London: Oxford U.P., 1967. Print.

CITATION: MLA IN-TEXT, NO AUTHOR

When a source has no known author, use a shortened title of the work instead of an author name. Place the title in quotation marks if it's a short work (e.g. articles) or italicize it if it's a longer work (e.g. plays, books, television shows, entire websites) and provide a page number.

We see so many global warming hotspots in North America likely because this region has "more readily accessible climatic data and more comprehensive programs to monitor and study

environmental change . . ." ("Impact of Global Warming" 6).

CITATION: MLA OTHER GOODIESIt makes little sense to me to try to teach you something that doesn’t warrant really being taught.

For a great, printable resource about MLA Citation, please go here.

THE BASICS

APA STYLE

CITATION: APA IN-TEXT

Unlike MLA, APA uses the author-date method of in-text citation.

Example: This is an example (Nguyen, 2013). The discrepancy between MLA and APA in

what gets included in in-text citations only goes to show you what APA values: time—when things are published. In comparison, MLA values close readings, with

page numbers.

APA

Again, it makes little sense to me to try to teach you something that doesn’t warrant really being taught.

So, click here for another printable resource.

TO SUM UP

Use of language and genre conventions can transform a piece of writing and transport it from an audience of few: experts, to an audience of many: the general public.

Try not to report findings in this paper, instead generate knowledge about your discipline’s literacy practices.

Citation seems like an unnecessary and archaic writing convention, but it helps signal

Synthesize everything you research into one, not necessarily small or insignificant, thing.

FOR NEXT CLASS

Remember if you signed up for conferences next class…

Continue to research, interview, outline, annotate for this paper…

READ “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading

Scholarly Sources” (on course website) This will help guide you as you begin to

parse through the scholarly articles you’re finding.