Paper 1 Draft
Paper 1 is a 5-page research paper, demonstrating your ability to do outside (academic) research that further investigates a topic that arises from our discussion.
For the Paper 1 Draft, I'm asking for at least 3 pages, with at least one source from our assigned readings (that source can be historical or scholarly), and at least two academic sources. (You are welcome to include additional sources, be they popular, historical, personal, etc.)
For the Paper 1 Draft, I'm asking for at least 3 pages, with at least one source from our assigned readings (that source can be historical or scholarly), and at least two academic sources. (You are welcome to include additional sources, be they popular, historical, personal, etc.)
Upload a copy to Turnitin.com (for me to evaluate).Evaluation:
Bring a printout to class (for peer review).
- Does the submission have a clear thesis -- a non-obvious claim that takes a clear stand on a debatable issue?
- "Writing has changed culture" is not a debatable claim, because nobody would argue "No, writing has not changed culture."
- Likewise, "Has writing changed culture as much as agriculture?" is not a claim -- it merely asks the question (without taking a stand on any particular answer).
- Take a stand. (Journalists are trained to avoid letting their
opinions show; but an academic article is more like an editorial. You
still need to be fair about the good points against you and the weak
points in your favor, but in the end you want to convince your readers
that your opinion is better than the alternatives.)
- Does the thesis arise from the readings?
(For the draft, at least one of our assigned readings, whether academic or historical.) - Be specific. Quote from Trithemius, or Tiro, or Plato's character Socrates, rather than resorting to "Some people may say..."
- Make sure that your thesis and your conclusion are both deeply tied to the readings. If your paper would still work if you swapped out the readings you chose, and swapped in some different readings, then the thesis is probably not deeply tied to the readings.
- Does the argument engage with current scholarship?
(For the draft, a minimum of 2 sources from current scholarship -- articles from the past 5 years, or books from the past 10 years. You are welcome to include older sources, too.) - "Engage with" means more than "quote" or "summarize." (Review the material about Bloom's Taxonomy, from Ex 1)
- Demonstrate your ability to make connections -- connecting several different sources, within the same paragraph.
- Avoid writing a paragraph that summarizes each of your sources. Cross-reference, interact, interpret, challenge. You might:
- Use quotes from one work to help you interpret passages from another work; or
- Use quotes from two different works to illustrate a philosophical difference; or
- Quote a prediction or observation that was made in the past, and quote recent work that affirms, challenges, augments, or otherwise affects the way we should interpret the prediction today.
- Does the submission follow the conventions of an MLA style paper, to a degree appropriate for the rough draft fo a paper in an upper-level English class? (See "Short Research Papers")
Are we just supposed to bring a copy to class? I don't see a slot in turnitin.com.
The slot should be visible now.
Please do bring a printout to class for the peer review. I will evaluate the copy you upload to Turnitin.com.