ENG 200 ASSIGNMENTS
Joanne E. Jensen, Instructor

WEEK 6 Begin research in the library and/or on the Internet

The important thing is not to stop questioning. —Albert Einstein

Writer 's Notebook Assignments for Week 6:

Section I, Reading Responses: None this week.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit. (Due next Monday 2/22)

• Write an analysis of how your essay project is going. What problems are you having? What's going well? What questions do you have?
  
• Paraphrase a difficult passage from one or your sources. Include the original. (Choose a very short paragraph or one or two long and complex sentences.)

• Take any paragraph of your essay, and re-write it so that it consists mostly of long, complex sentences that are seventeen words or longer. Re-write the same paragraph with no sentence longer than 8-10 words. Write about how changing the sentence lengths affected the paragraph. Which way did it work better? Write it again the way you think it sounds best. Are your sentences mostly long or short?

• Prepare a brief discussion of your research process so far to present to the class beginning on 2/26. Survey and evaluate the research you have encountered about your topic. Prepare to turn this into a brief essay to be turned in on 3/5. A handout will follow.

Section III, Research Tasks (Due next Monday 2/22)

• From the library homepage, visit Search for Information page http://www.library.vcu.edu/resources.html

1. Become familiar with using the VCU Library Catalog (DCAT-Plus). Record in your Notebook the names of three databases that you think you might be interested in exploring. What did each one cover or include? Why did you pick those three? Write your reasons.
   
2. Visit the Electronic Reference Shelf. Look into some reference materials available online. Record in your Writer's Notebook the names of six reference sources that you can see as immediately useful to you.
   
3. Look at SearchBank. Record in your Notebook what it is and how you might use it.
   
4. Find out how to use FirstSearch. Record what it is and how you might use it. Visit US, Virginia and Local Government Information. Record what the database is and how you might use it. What are Research Guides? Record your answer.

2/15 DUE: Discussion of and Reading Response entry for Jake Page’s essay on Billy the Kid, downloaded http://www.has.vcu.edu/writing/eng200/read200.htm

2/17 Research possibilities and problems.

2/19 TENTATIVE: Meet in library! BRING A DISKETTE along with your Notebook. You will have the opportunity to do actual online research today. Be prepared also with possible keywords to try.

WEEK 7 Continue with research.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination. — Edmund Burke

Writer's Notebook Assignment for Week 7:

Section I, Reading Response.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit (Due next Monday 3/1):

• What are you doing these days to stay physically, mentally, spiritually, and academically healthy? You might spend some Writer’s Notebook time reflecting on one or more of those things, and on developing a couple of strategies if there’s something you want to change.
  
• Collect together and categorize all of the writing lessons and stylistic observations you've noted in your class readings to date. Explain your principle for categorizing.
  
• Describe some place using your sense of smell. Where might you use smell in your essay?
  
• Write down a point you are making in your essay. Now argue against it. What do you learn from this?
  
• Open topic.

Section III, Research Tasks (Due next Monday 3/1):

From the Help and Advice page, link to Internet Searching Tips and Advice http://www.library.vcu.edu/help/adv.html

1. Read the information about lnternet Search engines and when to use them. Read the information about Subject indexes and directories and when to use them.
   
2. Visit 8 different subject directories and surf your subject areas to see what is available. Look at the URLs in the "hits" that you get. Notice how the subject directories differ in terms of what they find and how they operate. Record your observations and findings.
   
3. Once you've gotten some clearer idea of what specific terms you might use to search for further information, search 8 different search engines, using the same key terms. Spend some time checking out the links that each search engine comes up with first. Notice how the search engines differ. Record your observations and findings in your journal. Write about the conclusions your draw from doing these two assignments.

2/22 Discussion: Field Research; Rhetorical strategies. Bring Hacker.

2/24 Discussion and Reading Response Due: Giving Good Weight by John McPhee (downloaded) http://www.has.vcu.edu/writing/eng200/read200.htm

2/26 Discussion of Research Essay Project – In class presentations begin

To keep the body in good health is a duty.... Otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. -Buddha

WEEK 8 MID-SEMESTER WEEK

Some men see things as they are and ask, ‘why?' I dream things that never were and ask, 'why not?' —Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy

Writer's Notebook assignments for Week 8:

Section 1, Reading Response.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit (Due Monday March 15 After Spring Break)

• Re-write a paragraph from your essay, trying to use only one-syllable words. To what extent is it possible? How does the change affect the diction your essay? Your voice?
  
• Write about a fear you are sometimes aware of having in connection with writing. In the past, how has that fear affected your written work or your writing process?
  
• What are you learning about your own writing process that might help your address or overcome the fear(s) you wrote about above.
  
• Open topic.
  
• Open topic.

Section III, Research Tasks (Due Monday, March 15 After Spring Break)

• Donald Murray talks about different kinds of information, including facts, revealing details, statistics, direct quotations, anecdotes, firsthand observation or experience, attribution, authoritative citations or references. Which of those kinds of information are included in your essay so far?
  
• What kinds of sources are you using?
  
• Write about your information and your sources - their strengths as well as any gaps; and write about how you might fill in any gaps.

3/1 Presentations Continued

3/3 Presentations Continued

3/5 Presentations Continued Research Evaluation Essay due. Last day to withdraw without penalty

HURRAY!!!! Mid-Semester Break March 8-12

Weeks 9-11: Further research; framing, anticipating audience, clarifying goals.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. — Annie Dillard

WEEK 9

Writer's Notebook assignments for Week 9:

Section I, Reading Response: Respond to peer essays.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit (Due next Monday 3/22)

• Think about your audience as being made up of general readers. What kind of information and assumptions (true or not) is such an audience likely to have about your topic? What kinds of questions? Are you clearly defining terms? In what ways are you being considerate of your audience? Explore.
  
• Keeping your answer to the above in mind, develop three good questions that are relevant to your writing project. Ask eight people those three questions. Choose some relevant principle that will help you vary the people you choose to question — age, gender, occupation, experience, ethnicity, persons known to you versus persons unknown. Collect the answers carefully, catching as much verbatim as possible. Let your subject talk to you. Listen well. Then shape your notes into several pages that make some sense out of the answers you've gotten. If you want, divide this up and use it for several days...
  
• Continue with above, or open topic.
  
• Prepare to write your Annotated Bibliography, Due next Friday 3/26:

1. 1. Briefly summarize all of the sources you have chosen to use in your essay, making clear the main point(s). What has been the worst source you've found (and chosen not to use) to date? What was wrong with the source?
      
   2. Categorize and evaluate the sources you have chosen thus far to use in your essay. Why have you chosen them? How do they differ? Are all of them good sources? Why or why not? Which have you chosen to quote and which to paraphrase or summarize? What guided your choices to quote or not?

Section III, Research Tasks (Due next Monday 3/22)

Review the "Evaluate your sources" page from the VCU Library. http://www.library.vcu.edu/help/evaluate.html

• Record the four key evaluation questions from that page. Underline the key word in each question as a way to remember its significance. You'll do more with this part later.
  
• Read and become familiar with two other Evaluation Sites on that page. Read Distinguishing Scholarly from Non-Scholarly Periodicals. Record the name of one of each type listed: scholarly, substantive, popular, sensational. Think about how firm you think these categories are. How would you categorize the Richmond Times-Dispatch, for example, or another local hometown newspaper?

3/15 DUE: Draft 2 (10-15 pages now, with researched elements included). Don’t forget Writer’s Memo. Bring copies for self, peer group members, instructor. Meet in groups to hear drafts (or significant portion of them) read aloud. Peers take drafts home and comment. REMEMBER: If you don’t come to class on workshop day, you will receive a zero on your draft and no teacher comments. It is in your best interest to participate fully in workshop groups!

3/17 Workshop continued. Discuss balance between the writer's voice and the voice of research.

3/19 Return drafts; in-class written responses to comments and suggestions. Then reconvene in peer groups and discuss your responses to each other's papers, making sure that everyone understands comments. Include in your discussion comments about what kinds of information writers still want or need to find and where those sources might be.

WEEK 10

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning. — Carl Rogers

Note that although your drafts are now perhaps close to full length, you are still searching and researching! You may still need to get control of the sources you've found, and your drafts may grow even longer before they reach the crafting stage.

Writer's Notebook assignments for Week 10:

Section I, Reading Response: As above, Due on date on which it appears.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit (Due next Monday 3/29)

• Reflect on what you want from your essay topic/project for yourself. Are you getting out of it what you'd hoped to? Explain.
  
• What's the best thing you've done so far in this course this semester? Explain and reflect.
  
• Open topic.
  
• Open topic.
  
• Open topic

Section III, Research Tasks (Due next Monday 3/29)

• From a teacher or the department in which you intend to major, find out the name of the style manual or guide that specifies the conventions for documentation (footnotes, bibliography, etc.) in the field. Record the name of the manual in your journal; record the name of the person who told you about the manual and the date you were told. (That's a citation.) Then, locate the manual in the library. Look at the table of contents: Record in your journal an example of how to cite a periodical article by more than one author, and record an example of a book that has been edited by more than one author. Record them exactly as you find them in the manual. Does the manual have any references to citing sources from the Internet or the WWW? If so, record an example of a single-authored article on the WWW.
  
• The Electronic Reference Shelf in the VCU Library has several style guides or style manuals that you may use for citing the electronic sources that you use. Record what is available there you might use. Visit the following site (and, if possible, bookmark it) so that you can use this important reference source as you are searching and finding information you might want to use. Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet. By Andrew Harnack and Gene Kleppinger. http://falcon.eku.edu/honors/beyond-mla/#citing_sites

         Copy an example for how to cite an email message.

3/22 Returned from instructor: Draft 2. Review critical thinking strategies. Discussion and Reading Response entry for, "Introduction" and "Handicapped by History" excerpted from Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James Loewen downloaded. http://www.has.vcu.edu/writing/eng200/read200.htm

3/24 Quoting, Summarizing, Paraphrasing. Bring Hacker and a copy of at least one source with you to class to work with.

3/26 DUE: Annotated Bibliography. Discussion: Research. Discussion: The Craft of Research 201-258. DUE: 1-2 pages discussing what you think you need in the way of information and where you intend to start your search for that information.

WEEK 11

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — Andre Gide

Writer's Notebook assignments for Week 11:

Section I, Reading Response.

Section II, Writing Habit (Due next Monday 4/5):

• What scene does your essay as written so far imply but not yet describe? Review handout and then write that scene. You may or may not decide to use it, but give it a shot.
  
• Writer Donald Murray has suggested that every essay must answer 4-6 basic questions in order for the reader to feel satisfied. Assuming for the moment that he's right, write about the four to six basic questions relevant to your essay. What are they? How are you answering them?
  
• Take a walk and concentrate on your sense of hearing. What does the environment where you're walking sound like? How do the sounds change from block to block street to street? Is there someplace in your essay to use images of sound?
  
• Sit down in a crowded place – a restaurant or coffee shop, the mall, the VCU Commons, just for example – and record what you see. Record what you observe. Write down any sensory details that occur to you (things you see, smell, hear, taste, feel). Record snippets of conversations and anything that interests you. Later read what you’ve recorded. What do your notes tell you about yourself? About others? Do your notes help you to "relive" the experience? Do they make you think of other things that you did not record?
  
• Open topic.

Section III, Research Tasks (Due next Monday 4/5): Information and Knowledge

• Look up the definitions of information and knowledge until you think you understand the distinction between them. Record your findings and cite the sources for your definitions.
  
• Explore various resources/sites with a goal of expanding and refining your definitions of information and knowledge. Define facts, inferences, and judgments. What’s an opinion? Record your findings. Cite your sources.

3/29 Peer group: discuss data collection and interpretation.

4/1 In class discussion: Revision.

4/3 Rhetorical Strategies.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. - Albert Einstein

Weeks 12-15: Crafting Writing

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. —Duke Ellington and Irving Mills

WEEK 12

Writer's Notebook assignments for Week 12:

Section I, Reading Response: Peer Comments.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit (Due next Monday 4/12):

• Write about the peer response experience. What has been useful so far from it? What hasn't been? What specific questions would you like peer readers to address?
  
• Review handout on using dialogue and then write about using dialogue in your essay. Have you done so? why or why not? If you have, explain why you chose to do so, how you decided where to place that section, and how you want it to affect your reader. If you haven't yet used any in your draft, spend this 15-20 minutes trying to write it in.
  
• Review the list of critical thinking skills found on your syllabus. List three that you are using in your essay, and describe what makes each one an example of critical thinking (i.e., prove your claim by citing evidence from your text).
  
• Has your essay got "that swing" (see quotation above)? If yes, what is responsible for it? If no, how might the essay get it? (Consider rhetorical strategies....)
  
• Open topic.

Section III, Research Tasks (Due next Monday 4/12):

• Visit the following websites on copyright and law, and write definitions of intellectual property, cyber-property, acceptable or fair use, and copyright.

• Copyright, Intellectual Property, and Publishing on the WWW

• Stanford University Libraries: Copyright & Fair Use

• Copyright and the World Wide Web at UNC-Chapel Hill

4/5 Due: Draft 3 This draft should be full-length and striving to be well-framed, with clear goals, a credibly authoritative writer's voice, an anticipated audience, and a reaching for closure (however unresolved or speculative that closure might be. Bring enough copies for peer group and instructor. On instructor's copy, highlight changes (additions, revisions) from last draft. Turn in draft 2 along with draft 3.

PEER GROUP Meeting: Read drafts aloud. Discuss where your research has taken you since the second draft (some of this discussion should be in the Writer's Memo as well). Take peer copies home, comment on them, and reconvene at the next class meeting to discuss the drafts further. Bring one-page written response to each peer essay.

4/7 PEER GROUP, continued.

4/9 PEER GROUP, continued. This discussion seeks to bring closure to the researching, should focus on the reader's needs, and should continue focusing on the balance between the writer and the research. Writers determine and ask questions of peers. DUE: peer comments.

WEEK 13

Vigorous writing is concise. — William Strunk

Writer's Notebook assignments for Week 13:

Section 1, Reading Response: As above.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit (Due next Monday 4/19): Reflecting on Your Own Research Processes.

• As you search for interesting information that is useful to the essays you are working on, you can recursively question or hypothesize, search and gather information, evaluate, compose, reflect, document, refine your question or hypothesis, research, skim and dive into sources, read deeply, ponder, take notes, photocopy, paste sticky notes as markers, bookmark, interview, scribble, re-search, refine, compose, develop, change your mind about the importance of your research to the points of your writing, read your drafts to your peers and then re-search again, and so on. Write about the research writing processes you have been using as you have worked on your essay for this English 200 class. Write specifically enough so that your classmates can get a clear idea of what processes you have been using, especially those you've found productive and those that have not proved so fruitful.
  
• Think back to where you started— "high enjoyment, zest, and wonder" Are those qualities apparent in your essay? Write about how you have imbued your essay with those qualities. What specific diction or other rhetorical strategies have you used to convey your interest to your reader?
  
• Author and Professor Lee Gutkind talks about the importance of what he calls "a personal voice." Write about your own voice in the essay—how you want it to sound, how you think it sounds, and the words, phrases, or comments that make a difference. What makes it a personal voice—or not?
  
• Open topic.
  
• Open topic.

Section III, Research Tasks (Due next Monday 4/19):

• Visit this site on the web: http://www.ozemail.com.au/~caveman/Creative/

From that site, check out any three links. Record what you find. Use any one idea you find to help you rethink some aspect of your essay more creatively. Write about that.

4/12 Returned: Draft 3 with suggestions for revisions that have to do with framing, audience, writer's goals, and authority (credibility).

4/14 Discussion and Reading Response DUE: Books As Furniture by Nicholson Baker (downloaded) http://www.has.vcu.edu/writing/eng200/read200.htm

4/16 Adding your voice to the conversation.

WEEK 14

For constructing any work of art you need some principle of repetition or recurrence; that's what gives you rhythm in music and pattern in painting. —Northrup Frye

4/19 DUE: Draft 4 with enough copies.... Again, on instructor's copy, highlight revisions, turning in draft 3 along with draft 4. Writers: be clear and specific in your Writer's Memo if there are things you want your peer readers to look for or to respond to. Peers: In addition to any comments you write on the draft and/or in response to the writer's questions, write for each peer draft a reading response entry (omit Q. 5).

4/20 Reconvene in Peer Groups. Editing workshop.

4/22 Reconvene in Peer Groups. Editing workshop

Writer's Notebook Assignments for Week 14

Section I, Reading Response: Two, as above, responding this time to peer drafts.

Section II, Daily Writing Habit (Due next Monday 4/26):

• Using a computer can make your research writing processes significantly more productive, but probably not less messy than your former methods of using researched information in your writing. The computer allows easy access to more information and more different kinds of information than ever before, some offending your aesthetic sensibilities, some offending your integrity, some challenging your understanding, more and more trying to sell you something, diverting you to your favorite pastimes, or otherwise wasting your energy. Write about your experiences with using the computer for research. Write specifically about your experiences with several different search engines, with electronic references sources, etc. Cite specific sites that you have found particularly useful and tell why they have proved so fruitful.
  
• Begin reflecting in your Notebook on Ultimate Writer's Memo questions, beginning with thinking about yourself as a writer. How have you changed as a writer this semester? What more do you know about writing? Do you think what you have learned will stay with you? What more do you want to learn or feel you need to learn. See also Guide, 71-72.
  
• Open topic, or continue above, reflecting about yourself as a reader.
  
• Open topic, or continue as above, reflecting about yourself as a peer responder.
  
• Open topic, or continue as above, reflecting about yourself as a researcher.

Section III: Research Tasks (Due next Monday 4/26):

• What else do you need? Have you got the form straight for attributions? Do you have lead-in or signal phrases for both quoted and paraphrased material? Is it clear to your reader which ideas and comments are your own and which you have gotten from sources? Check Hacker for specifics. If you have needs she doesn't cover, where can you go to find out what to do? Go and do.... Make notes about your thinking here, what you've checked off' what you need, what questions you have, what answers you get, your process....

WEEK 15

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. —Somerset Maugham

4/26 Continue editing.

4/28 LAST CLASS: FINAL PORTFOLIO DUE

No Writer's Notebook assignments for this week! (Ahhhhh!)

Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world. — Ralph Waldo Emerson