Week 4

    Good afternoon.  Hope your week is going well.

 Today we will review the autobiographical essay (#2) due today,  the summary practice of "Learning to See," by Samuel Scudder, sentence work and punctuation assigned last week. 

Note, during readings please give each writer your undivided attention and constructive feedback.   We'll look at the soundness of the narrative structure in terms of the plot (clear conflict, development, crisis/climax) and rendering of setting, scene, and character specifics (autobiographical self-portrait);  at the use of descriptive imagery to reveal place, incident, character, feeling drama; and at the overall unity and development of  the piece (clearly implied or stated thesis idea); lead-ins and conclusions, and the fluency of the sentence elements.

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Notice how the author makes use of the additive pattern in the following poem:

Island Cities                  by John Updike You see them from airplanes, nameless green islands in the oceanic, rectilinear plains, twenty or thirty blocks, compact, but with everything needed visibly in place— the high-school playing fields, the swatch of park along the crooked river, the feeder highways, the main drag like a zipper, outlying malls sliced from dirt-colored cakes of plowed farmland. Small lives, we think—pat, flat—in such tight grids. But, much like brains with every crease CAT-scanned, these cities keep their secrets: vagaries of the spirit, groundwater that floods the nearby quarries and turns them skyey blue, dewdrops of longing, jewels, boxed in these blocks.

Remember,  a composition of even a single paragraph must organize itself around an idea, stated or implied, which is the thesis or topic idea.

What is a thesis? A thesis is a single sentence statement of the point you intend to describe, explain, illustrate, argue or prove. Where is the thesis to be found? Typically, by convention, teachers ask that it appear by the last line of the opening paragraph. It thus provides a focus and a clear direction and means of selection, for whatever does not in some way help to advance the thesis idea, may not belong in the essay at all. When you and your readers know what your point is, you and they can follow the logic of your development, the order and arrangement of supporting topics and personal commentary. It is a good idea to have a draft statement of your thesis in view so that you stay on point as you draft the essay. Build key words into the thesis statement to provide you and readers references to what lies ahead. A thesis controls to some extent what will appear in the essay and creates an obligation on your part to follow through on its promise, for it creates an expectation.

--------------------------------------Five Types of Conclusions:

• Summary
• Callback
• Thematic
• Encouraging
• Quotation

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  Today you will be assigned a summary composition (#3)  that requires no response or evaluation on your part, simple an accurate description or accounting of the primary content and or more direct quotations to substantiate the account. We here practice one aspect of what is called "critical reading" which is one component of research, and which includes correctly identifying and recasting in one's own words the key argument(s) or claim and crucial topical support of a given report, article, or essay source.  When researching a subject, one must determine a source's relevance and reliability and its effective contribution to the particular research objective.  We must ask, is the report based on reliable and relevant evidence?  Does it derive from a reporter's first-person experience or eye-witness observation and include telling facts, examples, arguments or expert testimonials ?  Is the piece compelling, strong, complete, unbiased, up to date?  Sources that present little in the way of evidence or insight or little that is convincing or those that are no longer timely and relevant may be of little use.  So we search for material that contributes to our understanding in key ways and that may contribute to whatever larger purpose in our research work.

The summary work today does not require you have a thesis or provide any sort of response or evaluation.  It does require you articulate the thesis or key point of the piece, means of development, and supporting topical information. I will be looking for one or two direct quotations, also.  You must be careful not to plagiarize (see note below).  

The article you read and summarize today will be one you use as a stepping stone or launch to an essay on a related topic that makes use of it and two or more other sources. (#4).

In the finished assignment (#4), you will have used the Internet to find sources for an essay piece that is built from the several chosen sources.  In the course of composing, you will have to summarize, and perhaps at times paraphrase source ideas, which means putting the ideas into your own words in  in about the same number of words as the original.  You will also quote directly, which means using the exact wording of the original passage and using quotation marks around the material.  Source article titles and authors will be clearly identified as the information or conclusions tied to them appears.

Homework draft beginnings of essay #4:   review the text and videos at the link here provided:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/science/so-happy-together.html?src=me&_r=0  Then describe  what it is all about and what are to you the most important ideas and associated images or examples (in 250 words or so). For now, use third person point of view and start by referencing the article title and author.  Do not add opinions or any information or content not presented in the subject piece.  Incorporate two or three direct quotations to illustrate key elements of the original.   Follow the format guidelines discussed and illustrated in the handout used in class. 

Select material for quotation on the following bases:

   * the wording is particularly memorable, to the point, and not easily paraphrased

   * the passage expresses an author’s or expert’s direct opinion that  you want to emphasize

   * the passage provides example of the range of perspective

   * the passage provides a constrasting or opposing view

Format quotations according to the following guidelines:

       Brief quotations of no more than three lines should be worked into the text within the usual margins from left to right, and enclosed by quotation marks. Use a signal phrase or tagline to introduce them, followed by a colon or comma. 

       Longer passages, four lines and more, should be set off in block format, indented and aligned 10 spaces from the left margin, with no quotation marks but those that may be internal to the passage itself.

Examples of Summary with Supporting Quotations:  

        "In the Arcadian Woods," by George Makari, a psychoanalyst, he reveals that it is no easy matter to diagnose the specific cause or source of an individual's anxiety, for it is a "quintessential mind-body phenomenon" with complex roots scientists have yet to unravel.  Since the 17th century, when the first modern medical descriptions of anxiety were recorded, the mystery has only deepened:

   Anxiety disorders are now associated with complex epigenetic models, the transgenerational          transmission of trauma, a neuroscience for fear conditioning, and even a pediatric infectious  illness that triggers auto-immune mechanisms and results in obsessive compulsive disorder.  

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 from “An Ocean of Plastic” (full text available on the web):

       In the article “An Ocean of Plastic,” Kitt Doucette describes the threat of plastic to all marine life and, perhaps, human life, too: “Even small organisms like jellyfish, lanternfish and zooplankton have started to ingest tiny bits of plastic. These species, the very foundation of the oceanic food web, are becoming saturated with plastic, which may be passed further up the food chain.”  The fish we eat, he emphasizes, may contain the residues of these ingested plastic particles, and thus may pose health risks. He explains in more detail below, citing also the authority of a leading marine biologist:

[. . .] the chemical toxins concentrated in the [plastic] waste lodge themselves in the animals’ fatty tissues, accumulating at ever increasing levels the higher you go up the food chain. It isn’t clear yet if these chemicals are reaching humans, but PCB’s and DDT are know to disrupt reproduction in marine mammals. In humans they have been linked to liver damage, skin lesions, and cancer. “The possibility of more and more creatures ingesting plastics that contain concentrated pollutants is real and quite disturbing,” says Richard Thompson, a British marine biologist who has been studying microplastics for 20 years.

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The source title and author, be it an article or essay in a magazine or newspaper or that of a website from which you summarize or borrow material, should be identified at the outset in your introduction or first use of the material. The year or date of such information should be recent, or otherwise noted.  Use brackets [ ] around any material you add for the sake of clarity or any necessary change to the original, such as a verb tense, a pronoun, or an ellipsis (to abbreviate the length of the passage). 

Reference to the particular source material by title and author and the purposeful use of direct quotation where warranted are requirements.  We will practice referencing and quoting from various textual sources as needed.  The following list gives examples of suitable taglines to introduce quotations:

Deani writes, . . .

As Dean says,

According to another authority, author of . . .

Makari, the author of "In the Arcadian Woods," suggests a different view, claiming . . .

*Note:  Plagiarism is theft of another's work, whether inadvertent or not.  The following is one textbook example of plagiarism (The Brief Bedford Reader, 9th ed.) :

Original passage:  If we are collectively judged by how we treat immigrants–those who appear to be 'other' but will in a generation be 'us'–we are not in very good shape.

Paraphrase (plagiarised):  The author argues that if we are judged as a group by how we treat immigrants–those who seem to different but eventually will be the same–we are in bad shape.

A paraphrase or summary must express the original freshly; it is not enough to make superficial changes to the wording here and there.  Moreover, the syntax–sentence structure– should not mirror the original.

The following URL illustrates the ways that quotations are presented and punctuated, along with whatever citations may be required:  http://www.writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_quoting.html

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