28 Apr 2008 [ Prev | Next ]

WB2-7: Presubmission Report

A presubmission report is a working document that asks you to focus on whether you have all the components of a good paper, before you launch into churning out the paragraphs.

You may find, as you work on the presubmission, that you need to adjust your thesis or otherwise shift your approach. That's fine -- you don't need to ask my permission to make such changes; that's what this assignment is for.

Remember that you might not find an entire article or book on the subject that you're researching; or, a book that you think is important may not be available in the time-frame you have left. These are the realities of research, and the best way to respond is to adjust your thesis so that you set out to prove something that you can, in fact, prove with the evidence available to you.

Your presubmission report is a word processor file, uploaded to Turnitin.com.

Also, bring a copy on Monday for your informal peer presentations.

1. Topic
2. Thesis statement (with topic, a precise but non-obvious opinion, and a blueprint for the paper)
3. Quotations supporting your thesis
4. Quotations supporting alternate or opposing arguments
5. Preliminary conclusion
6. MLA-style Works Cited list (demonstrating your knowledge of the correct format)
7. Format the presubmission as an MLA-style paper (title block, pagination, etc.)

I can give very useful feedback on just 2 pages, but the more you give me, the more helpful I can be.

Please don't write out the whole paper first, then "look for quotes" to support the opinion you reached before you did any research.


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3 Comments

Jeanine O'Neal said:

I can't seem to find a consistent answer to my question anywhere. I plan on citing more than one of Flannery O'Connor's stories in my paper. To do this, should I write a new works cited for each story or is their a different way of listing them. I found one cite that said to do it as such:

O’Connor, Flannery. "The Life You Save May be Your Own." Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Comp. Flannery O’Connor. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.
---“A Stroke of Good Fortune.” Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Comp. Flannery O’Connor. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

Jeanine O'Neal said:

P.S. I also don't see a section on Turnitin.com to upload this. Am I the only one with these problems? Hmmm...

The slot should be open -- people are starting to submit this assignment.

"Comp" would be if someone other than Flannery O'Connor did the work of collecting the stories; she's the author of the whole collection, so it's better to cite her as the author, rather than the compiler. Yes, if you cite more than one work from the same book, treat each story as a separate work.

The works cited list in this assignment doesn't need to be perfect since I don't expect it to be final, but of course the more work you put into that part of the paper now, the more time you'll save later.

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