November 2007 Archives

Your self-assessment paper should be driven by a focused, argumentative thesis.

Your ILP is a plan. It looked ahead to what you hoped to accomplish.

The self-assessment is a reflective paper -- it looks back on your accomplishments. According to the syllabus, "a final self-assessment essay will give students the opportunity to reflect on writing progress and to identify writing goals and challenges for the future."

Your draft should be about 5-6 pages.  The final draft will be worth 10% of your grade.

Just like all submissions in this class, it should support a single main idea, expanded and developed by supporting ideas. Each paragraph in the paper should have its own topic sentence and supporting sentences. For each claim that you make, SHOW supporting evidence (in the form of direct quotations from your own papers, from comments I or your peers have made about your work, from handouts or textbook chapters, or from MyCompLab results).

Since LA100 does not focus on research skills, I ask that you not choose a topic that involves statistics, scientific studies, polls, or other research that you can't do on your own. Acceptable topics might include, "I should (remain at/transfer away from) SHU next term," or "The time I spent (working/socializing/playing a sport) has (positively/negatively) impacted my progress towards a degree from Seton Hill." Pick a topic that is complex enough that you will be able to write a "con" argument about it next week. (Hint -- try writing in support of the claim that you don *not* think is true first, and phrase it as the "pro" argument.)

Submit this assignment by writing it in Google Docs. I ask that you draft and revise it there, too, so that I can watch how your submission has developed.

During class today I will remind you how to share it with me so that I can read it. I will give you feedback there, after which you will post a revision to Turnitin.com.

This is the assignment I asked you to draft on Google Docs. When you have finished, upload your final version to Turnitin.com as usual.

Assignment: Use facts, logic, or your own personal experiences to disagree with a statement of fact or opinion. Avoid trading bumper sticker slogans here -- nothing on abortion or similar hot-button issues, because no 200-word paragraph is likely to end decades or centuries of debate. Stick to something of a more modest scale. You must also cite the source of the claim you feel is a misconception. "Some people say" is not a citation -- it's far too vague.

On Sept. 23, Jay Leno opened his monologue with yet another joke about Britney Spears. When he said, "[This example is hypothetical, so I'm going to leave the joke part blank,]" he promoted a common stereotype about blond women, who seem to have to choose between being physically attractive and having more brain cells than a houseplant.

You could try,

For decades, my aging Cousin Gertrude lived alone, brushing off her suitors by saying "Look before you leap." At her funeral last week, a man who had proposed to her unsuccessfully about once every ten years said, "She who hesitated, is lost."

• Falling numbers of pirates, rising global temperature
• Correlation vs. Causation
• Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Selected Logical Fallacies

• False Dichotomy
• Ad Hominem
• Non Sequitur
• Hasty Generalization
• Circular Reasoning
• Red Herring
• Loading the Question
• Slippery Slope
• Post Hoc (Ergo Proper Hoc)

Completely optional. In between my illness and the deadline for midterm grades, we had to rush a bit.

If you wish, you may submit another revision of Essay 2, and I will average this grade with the grade you got on Essay 2  The only catch is that in order for me to accept this revision, you must first complete the reflective essay that defends a specific thesis about the work that you did when you revised your rough draft of Essay 2.

If you choose not to turn in this assignment, you won't get a zero -- I will just leave the grade blank and it won't factor into your final grade at all.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions about an upcoming assignment.