RESEARCH DRAFT #1
Answer the questions briefly but specifically - please use a font or color that makes your comments easily readable by your peer partner. When you have finished filling out the form, post it as a response to your classmate's post in the peer review thread.
Name of paper author:
1. Thesis. Without looking at the paper, summarize or paraphrase the author's argument or main point that s/he is trying to convey to the reader.
2. Introduction: strategies. Does the introduction make you want to keep reading? Why or why not? Is it a fairly traditional opening? How would you characterize the writing strategies used in the introduction?
3. Introduction: Follow-through. Having read the rest of the draft, did you find that the introduction gave you a good idea of what the author actually will address in the rest of the paper? If not, what is the main point that the author seems to be making?
4. Background and Definition. Does it seem like the author will provide his/her reader with a sufficient background or theoretical framework to understand the paper's central argument? Are all the important terms defined? Is this definition done at an appropriate place in the paper?
5. Organization I. Look at the overall organization of the paper. What type of underlying logic or strategy does the author seem to be using to structure his/her essay? In other words, what is the rationale behind the order in which s/he presents his/her material?
6. Organization II. Can you find any places where you feel the organization could be rearranged for better effect? Spend some time really envisioning how the paper will look as a completed essay - how it will flow - before answering this question. Is there any way to reorganize the elements in the essay to make it a better "narrative" - i.e., a more engaging read?
7. Research. As far as you can tell, are there any holes in the author's research? What points need further development? Can you think of any interesting and perhaps unusual approaches to the research that the author might not have considered (i.e.: for a paper on cell phone and driving abuses, sitting at a traffic light during rush hour and noting how many people who pass by are talking on their cellphones as they drive) - that might enrich his/her argument?
8. Relevance vs. Tangents. Are there any points of the argument that don't seem to fit - where the author seems to go off on a tangent? Are there any points that don't really seem relevant to the discussion at hand?
9. Opposition and Concession. Does the author take into account viewpoints opposed to his or her own? Does s/he need to do more of this? Does s/he need to tone it down?
10. Presentation. Can you offer the author any formal (meaning pertaining to the form of the essay) suggestions for the paper? Would an epigraph work? How about sub-headers? What further examples could be incorporated into the paper to concretize and support the argument? What sort of graphs, tables, or other visual materials could be integrated into the body of the argument to support the author's points?
11. Conclusion I. Does the conclusion seem to tie the paper together? Does it rely too heavily on summary? Do you feel that the author ends on a powerful note? Even more importantly, read the conclusion next to the introduction. Does the author end up proving what s/he said s/he would in the beginning of the paper?
12. Conclusion II. List below two alternative strategies that you feel might work well in the conclusion to this paper. Put a star next to the one that you think would be the most effective and discuss. (Strategies might include: using an example [i.e. saving one the author used elsewhere in the paper for the end]; using a quote; broadening out to include x and y ideas, etc.)
13. Documentation & Quoting. Is the documentation, as far as it is used in the draft, correct? Does the author use quotes effectively? Does s/he integrate them well, or are they simply inserted? Does the author use too many quotes? Too few? Are there appropriate uses of paraphrase and summary as well?
14. Final comments. Below, write the author a brief note about the paper. In particular, focus on what your agenda for the next two weeks would be if this were your paper.Writing Assignment #4 - The Reader/Researcher
To this point in the course, you have been exposed to many types of literature by several authors who lived and wrote during different points in history. You have been called upon to write about some of these works. When you have written, you have looked primarily within the work itself in search of meaning. For the final paper for this course, you will search more thoroughly for meaning. You will be asked to look at a piece of literature, the author of the work, and the literary criticism surrounding the author and his/her work. The addition of these two extra steps will take you outside of the work itself and into the realm of literary scholarship. You will be required to conduct research, to utilize the library and all its resources-books, scholarly journals, audio and video recordings, databases of all kinds, Internet search engines, and the librarians themselves (the most important resource available in the library).
Directions:
1) Select an author from our textbook for your research project.
2) If the author is a novelist or playwright, select a single major work to study for your project. If he/she is an author of short stories, select two stories or a single collection of stories to study. If the author is a poet, select three works or a single collection of poems to study.
3) Post the name of your author and title(s) of the selected works by that author which you plan to research in the Writing Assignment #4 thread in the discussion forum. You should also include a couple of sentences about why you chose this author and these particular works. A link to this discussion forum can be found in the Writing Assignment #4 folder.
4) Note: No two students may select the same author or works for this assignment, and selections are on a first-come, first-serve basis. Make sure to read all existing posts by your classmates before you post your own choices. If someone else has already spoken for your topic, choose another.
5) Read all links and documents contained within the MLA-style research and documentation folder within the Writing Assignment #4 folder. This will help you learn to properly integrate and document your sources for this assignment.
6) Conduct library and Internet research in order to discover what you can about your author's biography and the literary criticism surrounding his/her work. Literary critics are those who review the works of others. Their reviews can be found in scholarly journals and in some mainstream publications such as The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, and other popular publications which regularly review books. Even the Baltimore Sun runs a literary column each week. Certain reference encyclopedias such as Gale's Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC) and Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) will prove to be ideal resources for a project such as this. There is a link to the CCBC Library homepage to aid you in your research.
7) Your 1500-word research project should be structured as follows
A) The introduction (approximately 100-150 words).
B) One quarter (350 words) of the essay will be a biographical sketch of the author based on the research you have conducted. Ask yourself how the author's life has influenced his/her work. Make connections in your biographical sketch between events in the author's life and the works he/she produced. At least one outside (biographical) source should be cited in this section of the essay.
C) Read and analyze the literature by the author you have selected. If you have chosen a novel or a play, then you will analyze the individual work. If you have selected short stories or poems, you will write a comparison/contrast analysis of the multiple works. This analysis will form approximately one-fourth (350 words) of your total 1500-word (approximately six-page) essay. In this section of the essay, you will cite text from the primary work(s) by your author.
D) A summary discussion of the literary criticism about the works you have selected to analyze and of your author's entire body of work (canon) in general will comprise yet another fourth (350 words) of the essay. Were these critics publicizing their commentary during the lifetime of the author or long after the publication of the works? Do you have any way of knowing (perhaps based on your biographical research) whether critical reviews positively or negatively affected your author's popularity? What exactly do the critics have to say about the work you are studying? What do they have to say about the author and his/her body of work? At least one outside (literary critical) source should be cited in this section of the essay.
E) Your personal response to the author, his/her works, and the literary criticism you read (should appear immediately before the conclusion) (approximately 200-250 words).
F) The conclusion (approximately 100-150 words).
8) Your prewriting for this project will be to use the outline in #7 above to guide you as you organize your research notes using the interactive outlining tool at this website: https://rwtinteractives.ncte.org/view_interactive.aspx?id=722
A link to this site may also be found in the research and documentation folder mentioned in #5 above.
9) Use this completed outline to help you develop a rough draft of your essay.
10) Download the research peer review form and use it to help you revise and edit your draft into its final form. You may wish to have others read and comment on your draft as well. Give them a copy of this peer review form to use as a guide.
11) There is also a checklist of twelve common errors in grammar and mechanics that writers typically make. Use this checklist to help you edit your draft.
12) The final draft of this assignment should be uploaded as a file attachment to the Writing Assignment #4 assignment dropbox by the due date posted on the course calendar. Late work willNOT be accepted.
13) As always, follow the MLA-style manuscript format described in the syllabus, create an original title for your paper, and do not forget to document all sources and include a works cited page. You cannot pass this assignment without integrating research and documenting it properly.