First, my apologies for holding everyone over while I handed out the papers--I hope no one was late as a result of my time-mismanagement!
Second, I didn't have time for an office-hours pitch, but by all means, come talk to me in office hours if you'd like more feedback, if you're puzzled about where to go next, or if you just couldn't read my handwriting. Mondays and Wednesdays, 3pm - 4pm, 321 English Bldg.; if you enter EB from the north quadside entrance, go directly up the staircase in front of you to the third floor, and turn left at the stop of the stairs, you'll come to 321 pretty easily without getting lost in the English Building labyrinth.
Third, obviously, we didn't get through the entire handout. A question: would you like me to devote more class time to issues like summarizing vs. interpreting and the effective use of quotations? Students often find it helpful, but I was detecting more restlessness than usual (people packing up early, squirming around) during the time we spent on the writing handout. You can let me know your thoughts on the matter by responding to this post or sending me e-mail.
Fourth, what further reflections, comments, questions does the handout provoke? Feel free to discuss the issues raised in the handout further here.
Deadline: Monday (2/21), start of class. (Posts before midnight Saturday will count towards Week 5; posts after midnight Saturday will count towards Week 6).
5 comments:
On the handout I like paragraph A for using quotes effectively. It points out something about the quote that I hadn't noticed before - the switch of "rival" and "succeeds" and persuasively interprets that as a Freudian slip to prove the thesis of the paragraph.
I thought summerizing more than analyzing was an issue while writting the paper. It was also an issue in some of the paragraphs we looked at in class today.
For the paper, I felt that since we were writing it in two parts, that concluding wasn't necessary yet.Also, I thought that as long as you bring up an issue or theme that you want to discuss and analyze that it was acceptable, it seems that we have to base it off of some of the class discussion. As for the handout from class, the first paragraph was very direct, which as said is how they should be. We should stay away from excessive lead-in sentences that attempt to set up the thesis.
I agree with Kim- it seems as though summarizing versus really making an analysis and a clear thesis were the issues. In some of the samples there were even disgretions about which sentence was the thesis- that shouldn't happen. I would definitely like to spend more time on these things in class, as although they are nitpickey topics and maybe not the most interesting (probably why people were packing up early), they really do make or break a paper.
I think I would be beneficial if we spent some time in class learning how to effectively use quotations for our part two of the paper. I would like a little more direction about your grading style for the next paper in order to meet your preferences. It was helpful to learn that we should not start out our papers with a broad, general, or common statement but instead we should jump into our arguments.
In response to the handout, the phrase ‘damsel in distress’ bothered me. In example one, the writer said that Fantomina’s behavior did not resemble that of a damsel in distress. I agree that it did not. However, I think the writer should have left that part of the sentence out. He or she could have simply said that Fantomina took matters into her own hands. Then, the writer could have supported this with evidence directly quoted from the text.
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