Writing 3 Class Notes -- September 27

Greetings!

We had a productive day today. This is a thoughtful group of students, and I'm enjoying walking them through the process of writing their research papers.

We've been working on writing prompts from the SAT and ACT as our Quick Writes. This week we started on a lighter note and played a quick game of Bananagrams. Anything to keep us working with words!

We're also reviewing common problems with grammar that show up on college entrance exams AND in students' writing. Today's topic was pronouns and chosing the correct form according to the case (nominative or objective) needed.

My aim with the students today was to talk over any problems or challenges that they are encountering as they work on their papers. Most of them are having some difficulties with their thesis statements. In these statements, the students are to take a stand on the topic which they have chosen. This can be one of the hardest parts of the paper. One of the next hardest parts is to make sure that all of their points on their outlines and all of their research is related to providing supporting details about the thesis.

Assignments for next week:

-- Rough draft of the introduction for their paper.

-- Outline #2. This outline should be in the following format:

     I. Topic heading

          A. Related sub-topic

          B. Related sub-topic

          C. Related sub-topic.

     II. Topic heading

           A. Related sub-topic

               1. Details

               2. Details

          B. Related sub-topic

          C. Related sub-topic.

     III. Topic heading

               etc.

-- The Related sub-topics should be stated in complete sentences. These will serve as the topic sentences for the paragraphs that contain this information.

-- Continue your research for the various points on your outline. Set your own personal goal regarding how much of the research you need to have done each day/week so that you can begin writing you rough draft. Rough draft #1 is due in 3 weeks.

Have a great week! Enjoy the warm weather.

Tammy Prichard

Plagiarism

PLAGIARISM

            “Plagiarism” comes from the Latin, plagiarus, which means kidnapper.  In antiquity, plagiarii were pirates who sometimes stole children.  Plagiarism offers the words or ideas of another person as your own.  Plagiarism happens intentionally and accidentally.  Occasionally, a student will take large portions or whole papers and present them as their own.  Most often, however, the student knows the rules and is careless, or he is uninformed regarding proper citing of sources.

            To avoid plagiarism, develop personal notes with your won ideas on a topic.  Discover how you feel about the stand you’ve taken with your subject.  Then, rather than copying sources directly into the content of your research, synthesize the ideas of the authorities with your own thoughts by using the précis and paraphrase.  Rethink and consider ideas gathered by your reading, make meaningful connections, and when you refer to a specific source, give it credit.

Checklist for documenting your sources

·        Let a reader know when you begin borrowing from a source by introducing a quotation or paraphrase with the name of the authority.

·        Enclose within quotation marks all quoted materials – a key word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph

·        Make certain that paraphrased material has been rewritten into your own style and language.  The simple rearrangement of sentence patterns is unacceptable.

·        Provide specific in-text documentation for each borrowed item.

·        Provide a bibliography entry in the “Works Cited” section.

Forms of plagiarism:  (WWS, p. 29+)

·        Uncited data or information;

·        an uncited idea, whether a specific claim or general concept;

·        an unquoted but verbatim phrase or passage;

·        an uncited structure or organizing strategy;

·        misrepresenting evidence;

·        improper collaboration;

·        dual or overlapping assignments.

Bad ideas and attitudes that promote plagiarism:

·        Start late; adrenalin will get you through.

·        Don’t waste time writing until you know what you want to say.

·        Just skim the assignment prompt; don’t get bogged down in details.

·        Part of the assignment is guessing what our instructor expects.

·        Follow your interest above all.

·        To get the lay of the land, start every paper by doing an internet search of key terms and skimming sources that turn up.

·        Do all your work on-screen, where the action is.

·        When taking notes on sources, just summarize; come up with your own ideas when you’re done.

·        Your paper is your responsibility; hole up and write it.

·        During your initial reading of sources, keeping track of publications information will only slow you down, and you may not even use some of the sources.

·        Compose your paper in the file where you collect your sources and notes, so these can be readily drawn in.

·        Try to sound impressive and sophisticated, like a real scholar.

·        Don’t seek help if you find yourself in a jam; it’s humiliating and will single you out to your instructor as a screw-up.

·        In a pinch, borrow a friend’s paper to inspire you, or borrow some notes to work with.

Citing Sources

When should you cite and why?

1)  Whenever you use factual material – e.g. data, information, testimony, or a report that you found in a source.  You need to make clear to your readers who gathered the information and where to find its original form.

2)  Whenever you use ideas – e.g. claims, interpretations, conclusions, or lines of reasoning arrived at by another person.  Let your readers know that you are summarizing or paraphrasing thoughts formulated by someone else.

3)  Whenever you use a special concept, term, or theory that you found in a source.

4)  Whenever you make use of a source passage’s distinctive structure, organizing strategy or method.  Citing tells your readers that the strategy or method is not yours and allows them to consult its original context.

5)  Whenever you quote verbatim.

Over-citing:

·        frequent citation can weaken a paper by making you seem less thoughtful and too dependent on others

·        citing “common knowledge” or citing inefficiently

·        giving too much rehash of other people’s ideas and need to generate more original ideas of your own

Citing well

·        credits the work of others;

·        respects the scholarship of your readers;

·        shows your respect for your topic;

·        strengthens your paper by displaying intellectual character;

·        establishes you also helpful, honest, open, serious, and careful

·        Intermittent, casual, sloppy, or vague citing raises suspicion and makes your readers skeptical.

Three Basic Principles (for how to use sources)

First Principle:  Use sources as concisely as possible, so your own thinking isn’t crowded out by your presentation of other people’s thinking and your own vice lost in your quoting of other voices.

Second Principle:  Never leave your reader in doubt as to when you are speaking and when you are relying on material from a source.

Third Principle:  Always make clear how each source you introduce into your paper relates to your argument.

Rules for Quoting

·        Quote only what you need or is really striking.

·        Quote verbatim.

·        Construct your own sentence so the quotation fits smoothly into it.

·        Usually announce a quotation in the words preceding it.

·        Choose your announcing verb carefully.

·        Don’t automatically put a comma before a quotation.

·        Put the period or comma ending a sentence or clause after the parenthetical citation.

·        Indicate clearly when you are quoting a passage as you found it quoted in another source.

Writing Notes

Note-taking is the heart of research.  Notes taken for a research paper will fall into the following categories:

·        Personal notes:  expressions of your own ideas and thoughts pertaining to your subject and in response to your reading.  Reflect on findings, make connections, record discoveries, explore another point of view, and identify prevailing views and thoughts

·        Quotations notes:  capture the authoritative voices of the experts on the topic, feature essential statements, offer conflicting points of view, show the dialogue that exists about the topic and prove that your have researched the subject carefully.

–  select material that is important and well-phrased; not common knowledge

–  use quotation marks

–  use exact words

–  quote key sentences or short passages, but not whole paragraphs

–  quote from both primary and secondary sources

·        Paraphrase notes:  requires you to restate in your won words the thought, meaning, and attitude of someone else.  Paraphrase maintains your voice or style in the paper and helps to avoid endless strings of direct quotations.

            Five rules of paraphrasing:

·        rewrite the original in about the same number of words

·        Provide an in-text citations to the source

·        Retain exceptional words and phrases from the original by enclosing them within quotations marks.

·        Preserve the tone of the original by suggesting moods of satire, anger, humor, etc.

·        Put the original aside while paraphrasing to avoid copying word for word.

·        NOTE:  When readers see an in-text citation bout no quotation marks, they will assume that you are paraphrasing, not quoting.

·        Summary notes:  describes and rewrites the source material without great concern for style or expression.  These notes record material and statistics that have marginal value for your study, which note an interesting position of a source on a related topic, or to reference several works that address the same issue.  Mark in your notes with quotations any key phrasing that you cannot paraphrase.  Provide documentation.

·        Précis notes:  requires you to capture in just a few words the ideas of an entire paragraph, section, or chapter.  Condense the original with precision and directness.  Reduce a long paragraph into a sentence, or an article into a paragraph.  Preserve the mood of the original.  Write the précis in your own words while retaining key phrases or words.  Provide documentation.

·        Field notes:  charts, notes from experiments, research journals, lab notebooks, and questionnaires.  Interviews require careful-note taking to insure accurate quoting.

Choosing Sources

Sources

A source usually provides one of two things for your research and for your paper:

1)  It provides factual data to interpret and to use as evidence to support your assertions;
     –  Examples:  exact text of a written, spoken, or visual compositions; statistics or measurements; a summary record of an experience; information.

2)  It provides ideas about data, to build upon or dissent from.

     –  examples:  a particular claim made by another writer about the topic you are addressing, along with the reasoning that supports the claim; a general concept – a term, theory, or approach that has appeared in discussion of other topics and that you apply to your own.

·        When dealing with factual data:

     –  stance of acceptance, although you may call into questions the completeness or accuracy of provided facts

·        When dealing with concepts/ideas:

     –  three basic stances are Yes, No, or Maybe (with conditions)
     –  you can affirm or reject the ideas of another

·        Use sources in whatever ways are required to make a persuasive case for your way of looking at the material.

·        Make clear what comes from you and what comes from your sources.

Writing 3 Class Notes -- September 20

Greetings!

 

Our Quick Write involved an ACT test prompt. The question dealt with whether conscience or money/fame/power is a more powerful motivator. As a class we brainstormed key points that we would include and how we would organize this essay. I'm hoping these exercises are helpful.

 

Our words for our Vocabulary Building included more words from an SAT guide: autocracy, autonomous, avarice, and benign. Usually we have words with Latin roots, but our first 2 had Greek roots.

 

We spent the bulk of our class time going over a handout that discusses Choosing Sources, Taking Notes, Citing Sources, and Plagiarism. I've had the students read some other sources, but I though we needed to discuss them as a class. The handout is available on Dropbox and as separate entries on the blog.  As I'd written last week, the students should be well on their way with research. Both students and parents should feel free to ask any questions.

 

The students handed in their initial outline. The next draft of their outline is due in two weeks.

 

Have a great week. Work hard!

Tammy Prichard

Writing 3 Class Notes -- September 13

Greetings!
From my point of view, we had a productive class time. Our Quick Write was a short brainstorming session with an ACT writing prompt concerning dress codes. We took turns contributing and organizing ideas.

Our Vocabulary Building exercise included SAT prep words, a Latin dictionary, a Latin/English derivatives book, and a book of word etymologies. Knowing the roots and derivatives of words often opens up an even wider vocabulary.

Our Grammar Review included sentence fragments, run-on sentences, subject-verb agreement, pronoun-verb agreement, and pronoun-antecedent agreement. Some of this information is helpful for their own writing, and some will aid future testing.

The students should be in the "gathering information" stage of their research paper. We covered what makes a Finding the Best Sources, Evaluating a Source, Preparing an Annotated Bibliography, and Note-Taking. (Please go to the blog for more information and review of the information.)

Next Week's Assignments:
-- An first draft of an outline for the paper.
-- Notecard check. (A check of the students' progress in researching their topic.)

Note: I had mentioned at the very beginning of the class that most of the work for this class will happen outside of our class periods. Realistically, the students should do about an hour of work a day on this project. This is not something that they should leave until the last minute.

Have a great week!
Tammy Prichard