English 290.950: Intermediate Analytical Writing
Writing Assignment:
Submit a 12 page research essay formatted in your
discipline’s style with bibliography, 10 sources.
You will begin writing your annotated bibliographies now, but you should also start to write this research paper alongside the bibliographic work. At this point you are jotting down notes about what you need to do to communicate your line of inquiry, or what needs more context and support. I think you should have some overall sketch or outline with which to work at this stage
as well. This may change, and dramatically. The point, though, is get your best ideas to date on paper. Start composing, a little at a time. A good goal right now is a paragraph a day.
1. Annotation review. Please click the link to Cal Poly’s Kennedy Library tutorial about the annotated bibliography. I like this site because it is geared to the undergraduate researcher and is written in simple, clear prose (my favorite kind). Think of the annotated bibliography as a field guide for a future researcher; you are helping him or her navigate the available scholarship by
describing the way in which an article, book, documentary or survey is useful in contributing to one’s knowledge of the topic. An annotation will alert a fellow researcher to useful special features, like data or graphs. An annotation might speak to the source’s credibility. There is also a solid citation guideline page on Cal Poly’s library website (link). Please review (or
stick with OWL Purdue) if you are somewhat new to your discipline’s style. Note that the page has live links to various styles’ home pages; I urge you to click and learn.
2. Unit 3: Annotated Bibliography and Proposal
3. Unit 4: Extended Definition of Key Term
Note that there are particularly important terms that reappear consistently in the
discourse. You will have to engage with that term when you write this paper and, as such, you should unpack that category
–both for yourself and for your readers. Identify one specialized term you will be using in your Unit 5 Discipline
-‐Specific Scholarly Article. Write a two page paper that defines that term (not a dictionary definition –your definition) and how it is used in the scholarship. An extended definition provides a larger context (historical, sociological, political, biological) for understanding that term. This assignment helps you to engage actively with the language of your field (i.e. discourse) rather than parrot it.
4. Start writing your introduction (you will submit the first two pages next week
for me to review). The key here is to make sure your first few sentences
do work. They must contribute to the overall project somehow: perhaps they describe something, or tell an anecdote. Perhaps these sentences ask a key question. Each sentence has to have a purpose. It can only do so
much work, but it has to do something. Let’s face it: a dictionary definition is useless at this level. It also drowns your voice before you have established it. So, look at your first sentence. If it doesn’t immediately set your reader
along or towards your line of inquiry, then start again. Crisp,
clear, purposeful and yours. Each sentencehas a purpose, and
each paragraph has a purpose. It can be a fairly complex one, but each paragraph performs one function. Each sentence in the paragraph reasonably and logically connects to the one before it and the one after it; they all
combine as one unit with one purpose. That is paragraph unity
. You should be able to read your paragraph and know what its purpose is (Description? Claim? Analysis of data? Challenge to one
of the source’s premise?). You should be able, in a word or two, describe
what it does in your paper. Your paragraphs are the stepping stones of your line of inquiry. You are trying to communicate a path to your reader, one stepping stone at a time. But now you need to connect
those units of thought. Write strong transitions to connect paragraphs. You should know the logical relationship between those proximal paragraphs; if you don’t, perhaps they ought not to be next to each other. A strong transition is a structural move, signaling to your reader that you are carrying over th
e material from earlier paragraph in order to do something with it in the new
paragraph. If you don’t know what the relationship is between two paragraphs, that should tell you that you are not establishing a strong line of inquiry.
In a short paper like this, you should establish what your thesis somewhere in the first two pages.
1. Determine the ratio between argument and evidence.
You want a nice balance between your claims and your support. This isn’t to say that all papers ought to be 50/50. Depending on the
nature of your paper, you may want a bit more evidence than argument (or vice versa). However, there should be a balance. If your paper is 70% argument and 30% evidence, then you need more support. If you have 30% argument and 70% evidence, then shore up your claims throughout paper.
2. Make global (“macro”) revisions: What are the glaring weaknesses? Could anyone reading this paper know what this paper is about and what it is trying to achieve? Are there sections where it is hard to tell what the overall line of inquiry is?
3. Make local (“micro”) revisions: Write simple, direct, clear sentences. The best writers write simply
–they are confident in their ideas, so they want to communicate them clearly. Don’t be afraid to be simple, which is different from simple-minded.
Possible other paper:
Identify one specialized term you will be using in your Unit 5 Discipline
–
Specific Scholarly Article. Write a two page paper that defines that term (not a dictionary definition your definition) and how it is used in
the scholarship. An extended definition provides a larger context (historical, sociological, political, biological) for understanding that term.
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