Final Exam Prompt

Exam Location, Date, & Time:   Tuesday, May 6^th at 10:10am in Lawson room 101
Grade Distribution:       10% of total class grade (100pts)

Essay Requirements:
3-4 single spaced pages in length, handwritten
Must be completed by 12:10pm

Overview:
In this essay you will reflect on your time as a writer and researcher throughout the course English 102. The primary goal of English 102 is to provide you with the tools that you need to successfully ask a relevant question about an issue, from that question research and synthesize credible sources, and by the knowledge gained through study of the issue create a debatable argument that objectively weighs all facets of the claim while persuading an audience of your overall stance. It is hoped that your ability to do this successfully in a composition classroom will transfer to your other scholarly work during your undergraduate career. In light of this, as you compose your reflection contemplate what it is that you take away from this course in terms of writing, research, or critical thinking that you were not familiar with or practiced in before the semester began. Also consider how you plan to or anticipate needing to use the skill of writing in your major at SIU and beyond in your projected career path. It is welcome that you take your time and consider pitfalls or shortcomings of the semester as well by asking yourself: where in my writing do I still need practice? What skills covered in 102 do I need to continue to build on as they are relevant to my work? Where were places in the semester that I could have done things differently in order to get more out of the material covered? And what do I need as a writer to be confident in my drafting?

For Wednesday & Friday

Wednesday we will be focusing on department surveys that cover the tablet program,  the rights to your writing generated this semester, MyCompLab, and instructor evaluations. Wednesday is also early turn in day if you are finished your final essay and ready to submit for 10 extra points. You will be free to leave early once these forms are completed, so please show up and be heard!

For Friday we will cover the rubric of the final exam as well as draft an outline to aid you during the exam. Most importantly, Friday is the final day to submit a printed copy of your Unit Four argumentative research essay. After class time Friday there will be no late submissions, so make sure to have a printed copy ready for submission and a soft copy uploaded to D2L!

Unit 4 Peer Review Questions

Is your partner’s essay in MLA format with 1” margins and proper spacing between the header and paragraphs?

Does your partner’s essay have a title that describes the subject matter of their essay in an intriguing or creative way?

Does your partner’s introduction adequately prepare you as a reader to follow the argument that is about to be made throughout the essay?

Is your partner’s thesis clear, concise, and debatable? If not, where in the thesis is there a lack of clarity or argument?

List two of your partner’s best topic sentences from anywhere throughout the essay. For each explain briefly what makes that sentence relate back to the thesis in a clear and progressive way.

List two of your partner’s weakest topic sentences from anywhere throughout the essay. For each explain briefly what makes that sentence unclear, unrelated to the argument, or static.

Does your partner meet the 8 page minimum requirement? If not, where are areas in the essay that you feel could be expanded on?

After reading your partner’s entire draft, which of their sources was most interesting for you to encounter? Was it used often enough or do you feel that more could be said from this source?

Were there any sources that your partner was too dependent on throughout the essay? If so, which source do you feel like dominated the argument?

Are there any paragraphs or claims in your partner’s essay that are not relevant or clearly related to the argument? List these.

Was an alternate point of view on the issue presented in an explicit, credible, and fair way?

Does your partner present a solution to their issue that matches their argument and is feasible?

List three primary suggestions you have for this writer as they continue to draft or revise.

Conferences on Wed 4/23 & Fri 4/25: No Class!

This Wednesday and Friday we will not meet for class and instead you are required to attend your scheduled conference. Each conference is 15 minutes long and will take place in Faner 2238. If you do not attend your conference you will be marked for having missed two class periods.

Avoiding Vague Paragraphs and Developing your Claims Fully

Negative assumptions about women with tattoos and the real reason why they get tattoos make a controversy in today’s society because tattoos for women have been an increasing trend that is still growing today. The topic of tattoos on women is very important because it goes back to the way women have been trapped by their freedom being limited. It’s more than the pain of a needle, and more than a piece of art on a body; tattoos are a nonverbal form of expression that speaks louder than words. They show who you are, and most of the time they also show what you have gone through. Despite the fact that there are negative stereotypes about tattoos, especially towards women, a lot of women are still not backing out from getting more visible tattoos.

 

The paragraph above is an example of the type of writing from Unit Three that would be in need of revision. Some issues present in this paragraph are that the writer has constructed a vague claim, there is more than one claim present, there is no supporting evidence, and the argument is lacking developed context.

Drafting Your Solution Paragraph

Towards the end of your argumentative research essay you should dedicate a paragraph to discussing a proposed solution. Ideally you began to think about this in Unit 2b during your topic proposal. Your solution paragraph should be assembled in the same way your other body paragraphs are: claim, context, evidence, transition. 

The claim of your solution paragraph is a proposed change that offers a feasible, logical, and worthwhile “fix” to your issue. This “fix” should be do-able, not radical–it should be a plan that could actually be put into action. Look to affect as many people as possible, but realize that solutions seeking to change an entire group often fail. Keep concentration on those that you would be able to most directly and effectively reach. 

All solutions need to backed by evidence, especially in your essay. Use source evidence and what you have learned about this issue to prove to the reader that your proposal is worth pursuing and is credible. Solutions are often derived by considering how others have attempted to address your issue and what their shortcomings were. Try examining what has and hasn’t worked in the past and how those failed attempts could be changed to create a better, effective change for the issue and the people involved with it. You are allowed to draft a completely new solution to your issue, but try to remember that it must logically relate to your thesis and all of the information that you have researched on your issue–it also still requires that you have some type of supporting evidence to back your idea. 

Writing Your Conclusion

Conclusions wrap up what you have been discussing in your paper. After moving from general to specific information in the introduction and body paragraphs, your conclusion should begin pulling back into more general information that restates the main points of your argument. Conclusions may also call for action or overview future possible research.

The following outline may help you conclude your paper:

Remember that once you accomplish these tasks, you are finished. Don’t try to bring in new points or end with a whiz bang(!) conclusion or try to solve world hunger in the final sentence of your conclusion. Simplicity is best for a clear, convincing message.

Defending Your Thesis and Opposing Viewpoints

When arguing a claim you must always remember to state your argument’s opposition. If you do not acknowledge alternate perspectives of your issue you are committing a fallacy by either stacking the deck (showing only the side of an argument that you agree with so that your thesis is continually endorsed) or employing dogmatism (assuming that your particular position is the only relevant perspective on the issue discussed).

To avoid this we made room for a source in our annotated bibliographies that served as an opposing viewpoint to counter the sources supporting our thesis statement.  For the remaining five pages of your argumentative research essay you need to incorporate that source so that your argument is challenged by credible evidence. Your opposing source should not be a Straw Man (an attack on an argument that is much weaker or extreme than your own) as that practice is also a fallacy and hurts your argument by proving that there are no true opponents to your claim, which ultimately discredits your thesis as it become undebatable. In providing a credible, strong counter argument you are strengthening your own argument by showing that your stance can be held and remain relevant in the face of opposition.

There should be at least one paragraph of your final essay dedicated to exploring opposing ideas .

Unit 4: Argumentative Research Essay Final Draft

Early Turn In Date:     Wednesday, April 30^th 2014
Final Draft Submission Date:    Friday, May 2^nd 2014      

Grade Distribution
Working Folder:     5% of total class grade (50pts)
Final Draft Submission:  25% of total class grade (250pts)

Essay Requirements
-Thesis is fully developed as a debatable, explicit, specific, and source-driven argument
-Introductory paragraph includes a reader’s hook, supporting exposition of the issue, and warrant that with clarity prepares the reader for the coming argument
-All body paragraphs include a claim that relates back to the thesis
-All claims are supported by source material
-Argument throughout the essay is clear, organized, and objective
-Attempts to offer a feasible, researched solution to the issue
-Is a full ten pages and makes use of ten sources from the student’s annotated bibliography
-Essay is free of surface errors, grammar or syntax issues, and is in correct MLA format
-Proper in text citations and works cited page

Quote Blending

Consider this section of an argumentative research essay that is concerned with the presence of gender norms throughout the toy industry. You are shown the ending of paragraph 1, the entirety of paragraph 2 where the writer has not blended their quote, and  the beginning of paragraph 3. This writer has not transitioned by idea from concluding sentence to topic sentence and has failed to fully develop paragraph 2. For this example the sentences in blue act as transition from one paragraph to the next, the sentences in red are topic sentences/the main claim of the paragraph, orange is supporting material or exposition, and green is source material that acts as evidence to support the claim of the paragraph.

After reading this example, what are some ways that the writer could revise this section of their paper so that the claim in paragraph 2 is fully expressed and supported, and the transitions from paragraph to paragraph are logical as well as clear?

To answer this question first we must consider why a writer must blend their source material.

Imagine reading two essays on the same issue.

Which essay is stronger? Why?
The second essay is more effective, as the author blends the quotation with their own text. By doing so, readers know who says the quote and why we should trust them—without interrupting the reading to scan the Works Cited (which would just give publication data, not author ethos). Also, readers can see how the quote is relevant to the writer’s own essay.

How to Blend: Within the Essay
Three-Step/Three-Sentence Method:
1. introduce quote
2. give quote with signal phrase (According to X, “quote quote” (72).
3. connect/comment on quote

For Example:
In “Allies in the Struggle,” her 2002 article, researcher Tricia Draughn describes the surprisingly negative state of affairs for LGBTQ college students. Draughn argues that universities “are uninviting at best and treacherous at worst for LGBTQ students” (10). Discrimination, though, rarely is limited just to one group, so we must realize such prevalent discrimination against LGBTQ students affects the safety of all members of the campus community.

Now that you are aware how source material can be blended by using attributive tags and signal phrases to introduce the source’s author and title as well as connecting the ideas that the quoted or paraphrased material is presenting to the main claim of the paragraph let’s look at a section of a paper that does this successfully.  As with the last example, the sentences in blue act as transitions from one paragraph to the next, the sentences in red are topic sentences/the main claim of the paragraph, orange is supporting material or exposition, and green is source material that acts as evidence to support the claim of the paragraph.

Ways to announce a quote:

Direct Quote:
Lincoln forewarned, “A house divided against itself shall not stand” (212).

• Notice that the signal phrase is followed by a comma and the first letter of the quote is capitalized because it is capitalized in the original.

Direct quote introduced with a colon after an independent clause:
Lincoln expressed this sentiment in a clear statement: “A house divided against itself shall not stand” (212).

• Here the quote is introduced by a complete sentence that sets up the idea in the reader’s mind.
• Again, the first letter of the quote is capitalized since it is capitalized in the original.

Indirect quote with a signal phrase:
Lincoln forewarned that “a house divided against itself shall not stand” (212).

• Notice that here there is no comma and no capital letter with the opening of the quote. These are not necessary with an indirect or blended quote.
• Notice that the word “that” connects the signal phrase to the quoted material in an indirect quote.

Fully blended quote (no signal phrase):
A nation in the middle of the civil war is “a house divided against itself” (Lincoln 212).

• Notice that the quote is completely blended into the writer’s sentence structure, and no signal phrase is used.

Block Quote:
In his latest book, Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous, an account of his “second career” as a literary sleuth, Foster explains one of the fundamental warrants for his analyses:

I venture to say that no two individuals write exactly the same way, using the same words in the same combinations, or with the same patterns of spelling and punctuation. No two adults in the same family (or corporation or motorcycle gang) have read the same books. No one writes consistently fluent sentences. It is that pattern of difference in each writer’s use of language, and the repetition of distinguishing traits, that make it possible for a text analyst to discover the authorship of anonymous, pseudonymous, or forged documents. (5)

As Foster explains throughout Author Unknown, we are what we read when we write. Foster’s innovation was to test this claim by generating statistical representations of Shakespeare’s language use, and then to compare the Elegy to those representations.

• The block quote means that you separate out and indent a quote.
• Any quote of more than four lines should be incorporated into the essay in block form.
• Remember to indent the whole block.
• No quotation marks are required around the quote.
• The block quote should be introduced, not just inserted in the paper.

Other reminders:

Essays and book chapters are put in quotation marks (“A Real Meritocracy”), not italicized or underlined.

Books, newspapers, magazines, periodicals, plays, novels, and other titles of works are italicized or underlined (e.g. MLA Handbook).

Once you have given the title of an essay or chapter in your summary, you do not need to mention it again. You DO need to continue to provide the author’s last name.

*Refer to Purdue OWL for more notes and examples of quote blending