English 505

This week in class im focusing on the groundwork for the research paper. First I had my students complete a prewriting excersize about topic selection. I made them list at least three topics, and then chose one. For the chosen topic they had to come up with at least five points of interest and then write a 250 word abstract twoards developing a thesis and argument in the paper. I think that is the most difficult concept to communicate to them (the fact that this is an argumentative research paper.) First, they presented their ideas like it was an informative research paper, then when i started to talk to them about it being an argumentative paper they seemed to have trouble wrapping their minds around the fact that they didn't have to write fifteen pages of pure argument, nor did they have to solve once and for all the argument they developed.

Confrences seem to be helping a great deal. I'm getting to the point where I am familiar enough with my students individual writing style that I can make suggestions that move them in the right direction as opposed to just re-explaining things in different terms.

I'm spreading the sub-sections of this paper out a bit in an attempt to tackle them in a logical order and at an appropriate level of depth. Today we focused on the annotated bibliography. I'm having them do a ten source annotated bibliography. I'm actually going to have them complete it up front, nearly a month before the paper is due. Ideally this would move back towards the middle to end of the writing process but I want them to have their sources lined up and in place early. I actually pulled up an annotated bibliography I did in an undergrad class here, and explained some of the purposes for doing an annotated bibliography. I always make an attempt to stress at least some of the future professional applications that the various assignments and processes we are trying to teach them in 106. Most of the students in my class are in science and engineering fields and will end up doing alot more writing than they think.

I also showed them the Purdue Libraries website and walked them through the search function and academic journals area. Megasearch was down, but I showed them JSTOR as an example of full text and then showed them a few others from the list that were tailored to common research topic themes (economics, the reality of technological progress, and statistics were some of the ones that at least two students' topics fell under in one way or another.)

I was going to show them endnote but MLA format citation seemed to be giving them a bit of trouble (especially intext, but bibliographies were hit or miss also in paper 1) so I think im going to hold off on that until after the bibliography is due (because it autoformats for MLA--which is useful, but for the first real research paper they do I'd rather have them look it up on The OWL or out of a handbook, there is no garauntee they will have access to endnote in the future.)

Phil