Examples of Effective ENG 111 Course Portfolios

I have posted this link in this week's assignments, but here it is another time. Remember, suspenders and belt are best insurance.

I am looking for examples for ENG 112; but, so far, I've only found two from sections a year old.

As always, write with any questions.

Steve

The link to the assignments for week fourteen is now active.

Get started on your portfolio.  It's due Tuesday, 11 May, at 9:30 in my office, Massey 231.

Steve

Assignments Links for Weeks Twelve and Thirteen Are Now Active

The assignments links for weeks twelve and thirteen are now active.

Please note, because I will be delivering a paper at and attending the VCCS New Horizons conference next Thursday, 7 April, we will have no physical class.  However, I have designed the work over the next two weeks in such a way that you should learn as much or more from doing it as you would in class.  More, I've designed it to allow you to practice and re-inforce the research and research paper writing skills you've learned so far this semester.  I think you'll find the research paper topic more interesting and personally useful than doing a rhetorical analysis of King's "Letter." 

As always, one of the tricks to success is to fully read and make sure you understand the assignment.  The second trick, as always, is to start the assignment as early as possible; hence, you'll give yourself a chance to do your best work.  Finally, the last trick is to, as always, write me with any questions.

Steve

Announcements for 25 March

1.  Your assignments link for the week has been made active.

2.  We will not meet today in 206.  I gave much thought to meeting with you in class today, and I realized there was little to be gained, and you would learn more by getting started working on finishing your King research paper.  The way one learns proofreading--the only new topic for this week--is by practice and trying out techniques until one finds a set which works with where one is as a writer.  I've outlined the most common proofreading/editing techniques on a web page to which I've provided a link.  As you finish up the revisions of your King paper and come to the stage where you are satisfied with it, then proofreading begins.  Try out one or two techniques.  Do try the one which involves getting someone else to proof your work, but--in addition to asking them to proof--make sure you ask them, "What's the one thing I could learn to do in terms of grammar and usage which would make my writing clearer?"  This is the next thing you should work on fixing in terms of your grammar.  Ask me for help when you find your answer.

3.  Most of your week will be spent reading through, revising, and improving your King paper. Make sure to schedule your week with enough time to go through multiple revisions, format the paper in MLA style, create a Works Cited page, and have your printer run out of ink.  One of the tricks you should be learning in terms of writing process is to start early enough that you plan for problems to crop up and be fixed.  You've been working on this paper in stages all semester, just pull it out here at the end.

4.  One final note, whenever I have a physical paper due, especially one folks have been working on as long as you have the King paper, the universe seems to conspire to make absences jump through the roof on the day the paper is due.  Even if you don't have the paper done and ready to hand in, come to class on 1 April.

5.  The 6-8 April, I will be out of town presenting at New Horizons--a Virginia Community College Conference on teaching innovations.  [We won't have a physical class, but don't worry.  I'll have work for you to do.]  Many of you were in the "Getting a Clue" learning community last fall.  Miles McCrimmon, Jena Morrison, and I will be presenting on the course design at the conference, letting the rest of the system know about survivingsarge.pbworks.com, and maybe getting a teaching award.  As part of preparing for this award, we created a video presentation which stars some of your writing and the basic elements of the course design.  I thought those who were involved might like to view the video, so I've included a link to it below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuqAzlogdo0

As always, write with questions.

Steve

Welcome back from Spring Break

Welcome back.  I hope you return rested, safe, and ready to hit the ground running.

Remember, your reflective essay must be posted to your blog or ready to hand into me by Thursday, 25 March at the beginning of class.

25 March is the last day to withdrawal from a class with a grade of "W."  In doing your mid-term reflective essay, you've discovered that your learning or performance warrants a grade of a "D" or an "F," then you should consider withdrawing from the course.  While a withdrawal may impact your standing as a full-time student, a "W" on your final transcript looks much better than a "D" or an "F."  "D"s don't transfer, but they may count toward graduation in most AA majors.  If I can answer any questions to help with this decision, write.

Remember, your reflective essay should shoot for four or five pages in which you review your performance in the class with an eye toward improvement, argue for the grade your performance and learning warrant, and--most important--use fully developed PEA paragraphs to reflect on what you have learned this semester and to provide examples, evidence, and analysis from your work which help "prove" your learning.  You'll be writing a similar reflective essay at the end of term as a cover essay for your final portfolio.

Also remember that the final draft of your King research paper/rhetorical analysis is due on 1 April.

It's Spring Break, but...

Remember your two upcoming deadlines, and plan your work accordingly:

1. By Thursday, 25 March, you should have completed a 4-5 page reflective essay in which you argue for the grade you've earned so far this semester, critique your performance in the class with an eye toward a plan for improvement, and--finally and with the bulk of the paper--develop a series of PEA paragraphs describing your learning (in detail) throughout the semester.

2. By Thursday, 1 April, you should have finished a final draft of your King paper, published it to your blog and handed it into me in print form.  This paper should include parenthetical, MLA form citations and a work cited.  Again, go for five plus pages, exclusive of the work cited page.

Steve

Assignment link for Week Eight is now active.

The assignments discussed below are explained and discussed more fully in the weekly exercises.  You can find this link by following the weekly assignment tab for week eight.

Topics Covered Week Eight:

• The last of research notes. Say, "Yeah."
• Producing a second draft of your research paper.
• Keeping a working bibliography up to date.
• Basic MLA parenthetical citation.
• Introduction to a portfolio's reflective cover essay.
• Pre-writing for your mid-term reflective essay.

Discussion:

This week, you'll finish the last of your research notes for the King paper, write a draft of your King research paper/rhetorical analysis, and do the basic prewriting for a mid-term, reflective cover essay.  

Last week you explored the research notes taken by others, offering feedback and just learning what goes into a good research notes.  You received feedback on the research notes you'd taken on your two secondary source, journal articles, and you wrote a post integrating this feedback and planning how to best improve your notes for those in your group who will be using them.  The first half of this week, you'll be taking this plan forward and updating your notes into their final form.  You'll need to complete your work the first half of the week, because in the second half of the week, you and your group will need access to your notes.

The second half of the week, you'll finish a second draft of your research paper.  This time, you'll add an introduction and conclusion, and you'll flesh out your body with the addition of any evidence you can now add via the improved research notes on your group's blogs.  At this point, you should also feel free to bring in additional outside sources, but remember to cite them.  For many of you, citing will be new.  Each time you cite a source, you'll need to make sure it is in your working bibliography, and you, hence, create a citation for it in MLA format and put it in the correct alphabetical order by last name.  In MLA style, when you cite a source in the text of your paper, you do so within your sentences using something called parenthetical citation.  This means that just before the end of your sentence you stick in a set of parentheses, like this, ().  Within the parentheses goes: 1) the author's last name--use the first author's last name if there are multiple authors; and, 2) the page numbers of containing the material you're citing.  It should look something like (Brandon 231-4).  Note that the last name and the page numbers are separated by a space. Also note that if there are multiple page numbers, you shorten the final page number, so you don't repeat information and keep your citation short.  For instance, 231-234 becomes 231-4.  279-281 becomes 278-81.

Since MLA citation style was designed to cover the needs of print material, usually humanities books and articles.  The style becomes more cumbersome if you use online sources, which are likely not to list an author and not to have page numbers.  Since for right now, you've only taken research notes on journal articles, you don't have to worry too much about citing online sources.  Remember that the library has several pages set up to guide you through how to cite sources in different styles, including MLA, and their guide can help you with citing online sources.  You can find the library guide to citation here: http://libguides.reynolds.edu/mla

Last but not least, you'll do two brainstorming assignments to begin to gauge and write about what you've learned and about your performance in the class.  The exercise will make you conscious and, through your writing, me more conscious of how you are doing in the class, what you've learned, and how you're learning it.