Research Presentation
Tips for Oral Presentation on the COMP 102 Final Paper
DUE IN CLASS, Week 16, Day Two...
Whether you plan on a future in the business world, healthcare, or a university, you will eventually have to discuss and “present” ideas among colleagues, co-workers, or classmates at some point in your life. At the very least, you will have to report to a supervisor, boss, or professor, sometimes in an evaluated format to determine grades, a pay raise, or your very career. Whatever the case, it’s good to prepare for as professional a talk as possible, and it won’t hurt to start by informally chatting in Composition 102 about your research project.
I. Notes
A. Try to sum up your main points on small hand-held note cards.
B. Practice going over these points orally with classmates, etc.
C. Be ready to speak informally and extemporaneously, and don’t just read directly from your notes.
II. Strategy
A. State thesis and overview (forecast) your talk.
B. Announce transitions when you move from one point to another.
C. Summarize from point to point and/or at the conclusion.
III. Style
A. Think of this as just a conversation with classmates.
B. Prepare ahead of time to speak for at least a few minutes and no more than 5 minutes.
C. Consider all questions and comments in the spirit of sharpening your research, writing, and thinking.
IV. Extras
A. Visual aids, props, or handouts are optional. Please, no animal acts.
B. When you finish talking, think about asking specific questions of the class about how to improve on the paper, research, thinking, etc.
V. Audience Requirements
A. Show respect for fellow classmates by showing up.
B. Take notes for your own presentation and paper.
C. Ask questions, make suggestions, or challenge unclear points.
VI. Summa Summarum
A. Be sure to prepare and rehearse beforehand.
B. Everyone gets nervous before presenting, so don’t sweat it.
Final Paper & Research Specifications
• Six to eight (6-8) pages
• Argumentative thesis (see “Argumentative Structure”)
• International focus
SOURCE CHECKLIST [six to eight (6-8) sources]
• One (1) mass-media periodical
• One (1) technical/professional/scholarly journal
• One (1) journalistic/documentary broadcast or recording
• One (1) personal interview (via phone, e-mail, or in person)
• Two (2) primary-source books
[NOTE: no secondary sources (e.g. reference books), no school textbooks, no anthologies]
• OPTIONAL: Two (2) more sources of your choice, of any kind (except for reference sources)
FINAL NOTE: Good reference sources (e.g. dictionary, encyclopedia, almanac, etc.) do not count for any of the required 6-8 citations, and thus you may use them as much as you like in this paper.
COMP Paper #4 (Media Journal)
GRADING CRITERIA
Each section below is worth two (2) points — unacceptable work earns 0, and exceptional work earns 2. The assignment counts for ten (10) points of the final grade.
Source Use
Does the writer cite all source-references correctly in the essay and on a Works Cited page?
Summaries
Does the writer summarize effectively?
Responses
Does the writer critically analyze the media in effective responses?
Conclusion
Does the writer conclude with a few paragraphs of critical insight about the entire assignment?
Grammar
Is the English correct?
DUE: Week 13, Day One...
Tips for Revision: COMP Paper #3
1. Follow the argumentative structure as a process of thinking about where you stand on a given topic.
2. Follow the argumentative structure as a process of drafting an essay piece by piece.
3. Follow the argumentative structure as a process of convincing your audience to believe your thesis.
4. ARGUE JUST ONE MAIN POINT FOR THE ESSAY. / EXPRESS ONE MAIN IDEA PER PARAGRAPH.
5. Control and express your ideas strictly within properly structured sentences and tightly organized paragraphs.
6. Make clear transitions for your reader.
7. Avoid undocumented assertions – cite your sources!
8. Review proper MLA format in your text, on-line, and in the student-sample papers – check your cites before you hand in the paper.
9. TAKE THE TIME TO PROOFREAD YOUR OWN WORK CAREFULLY.
10. This is a challenging assignment, and so I encourage you all to work with a tutor in revising Paper #3.
FINALLY: EVALUATE ALL OF YOUR SOURCES CAREFULLY!
FINAL REVISION DUE: Week 12, Day Two...
COMP Paper #3
Do you agree with this postcard-style argument (above)? Do think Arundhati Roy is correct when she describes "a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy" ("The Algebra of Infinite Justice" 343)? Or does Dinesh D'Souza win the argument about America's "principle of the lesser evil" ("The Wrong America" 3)? And would the world be better or worse off without America?
[postcard by Gathered Images]
GRADING CRITERIA
Each section below is worth two (2) points – unacceptable work earns 0, and exceptional work earns 2. The assignment counts for ten (10) points of the final grade.
Source Use
Does the writer incorporate three relevant sources? Are the in-text references and Works Cited page correctly formatted?
Argumentative Structure
Does the writer establish a thesis? Does the paper develop this thesis with clear argumentative organization?
Sentence & Paragraph Structure
Does the writer communicate ideas in well-crafted sentences and paragraphs?
Grammar
Is the English correct?
Overall Quality of Assignment
Has the writer turned in a good essay?
FINAL DRAFT DUE: Week 12, Day Two, IN CLASS!...
Argumentative-Paper Structure
The following general structure that you’ll apply to thinking, arguing, and writing should serve to force critical analysis of your own ideas and others’. Central to the idea of argument is a fair balancing of positions; ultimately, you will avoid such logical pitfalls as “straw man argument” and “either/or” thinking by building the strongest case on all sides of a given issue. In development, your thesis statement will flow through this structure and eventually synthesize with the opposition you describe.
One important thing to note in considering this outline is that the numeric divisions suggest sections (NOT paragraphs) of your essay. In order to logically develop your thesis and persuade a reader along the way, you as a writer have the obligation to prove a case by fulfilling the ideas required in each of the following sections.
I. Introduction
A. Grounding of issues in a stylistically strong and focused opening
B. Articulation of main thesis statement
II. Facts of the Case
A. Construction of all relevant facts, definitions, historical background, etc.
B. Exposition of all relevant details, sources, and ideas as foundation for argument
III. Opposition
A. Fair presentation of opposing viewpoints to your own that serve to critique your thesis
B. Even-handed construction of an alternate case to challenge your own
IV. Refutation: Fair and systematic rebuttal of Opposition
V. Concession and Synthesis
A. Admission of points you will concede to the Opposition
B. Synthesis of these points and reconstruction of stronger thesis
C. Final compelling arguments
VI. Conclusion: Restatement of thesis as developed throughout the essay
Consider this structure, first, by plugging in the details of classically polarized arguments (e.g. pro/con on the death penalty, abortion, prayer in schools, etc.). Secondly, employ this structure with your own ideas developing toward a final research paper, and start drafting a customized outline.
COMP Paper #2
GRADING CRITERIA
Each section below is worth two (2) points; unacceptable work earns zero, and exceptional work earns 2. The assignment counts for ten (10) points of the final grade.
Source Use
Did the writer incorporate two relevant sources? Are they cited correctly, both in the essay text and on a Works Cited page?
Essay Structure
Does the writer establish a thesis? Does the paper develop this thesis with clear organization?
Sentence & Paragraph Structure
Does the writer communicate ideas in well structured, strong sentences?...paragraphs?
Grammar
Is the English correct?
Overall Quality of Assignment
Has the writer turned in a good essay?
DRAFT DUE: WEEK SEVEN, Day Two, in class!...
Citing Sources
PLAGIARISM & MLA FORMAT
Avoiding Plagiarism
In the Western tradition of scholarship, writers clearly acknowledge the use of sources as a way to bring integrity, authority, and proof to bear on academic work. As students and scholars, we consider intentional plagiarism to be outright theft, an act that destroys integrity and yields at least a failure for the course (if not expulsion from the learning community). Unintentional plagiarism – using someone else’s words/work without clear acknowledgment – consists essentially of uninformed, sloppy, and/or lazy scholarship. But careful use of sources can avoid plagiarism.
First, always take careful notes and keep complete details on any piece of research. Second, use word-for-word quotes sparingly, only when the wording is especially strong, memorable, or crucial to your argument. Paraphrase pieces from a source when the wording is not particularly strong but details are relevant. And summarize lengthy passages (or an entire work) to get at a main idea you’d like to include in your paper.
MLA In-Text Citation
Whether quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing, you are using someone else’s work, and so it is always necessary to cite the source. Depending on what kind of source you have and what you’re doing with it, the key is to make the source clear to the reader, so that they will know you are referring to another’s work and so they can find it on your Works Cited Page.
When quoting an author, be sure to use punctuation marks. To direct the reader to the author, you can either name the author within your prose or put the name in a parenthetical cite. Either way, be sure to put the page number in parentheses, like this:
● George Orwell describes his neighborhood “to convey something of the spirit of the Rue du Coq d’Or” (5).
● Some critics have referred to terrorists as “super-empowered angry men” (Friedman 167).
Follow these same guidelines when you summarize, paraphrase, or even just refer to someone else’s ideas, words, research, work, etc. NOTE: If you quote a section that takes up longer than four lines of typewritten text, be sure to use a block quote, e.g.:
In Orwell’s universe, poverty seems to affect the poor in the same way that wealth affects the rich:
The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people – people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work. (7)
See your handbooks or the Diana Hacker web site for exceptions (author/page unknown, etc.).
The Works Cited Page
Since the Works Cited page is organized per alpha order, with the author’s last name first, you see how crucial it is to make clear in-text citations for your reader to find a source on the WC page.
To build a WC page, first consult an MLA guide to find out how to format any given piece of research. You can then put these cites in alpha-order per the first significant term of the cite – sometimes there will not be an author, and so the first term of a cite might not be a last name but a corporate author or even the title of the work. See the New World Reader or the Diana Hacker web site for exhaustive lists of citation formats.
On Global English and the American Language
This handout is a collection of quotes, notes, and observations relevant to our reading of James Baldwin, Mary Blume, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, and Ilan Stavans.
Encapsulated development of English (just the broad strokes):
Old English (Germanic) --> Latin incorp. from Roman missionaries --> Norman Invasion (1066)/English Frenchified --> Middle English (5 major dialects)/Chaucer --> Early Modern English (Shakespeare) --> Conquest of the New World, incorporation of indigenous languages and Spanish (e.g. vaquero becomes buckaroo, barbacoa becomes barbecue) --> Continuing immigration & diaspora make for MexiStani, Frángles, Blaxicans, Cubonics, the Blackcent, etc.
ANECDOTES: bulshitería (Guatemalan friends), fahita (Alma Pita restaurant), puro party (Texas)
“The first American colonists had perforce to invent Americanisms if only to describe the unfamiliar landscape and weather, flora and fauna confronting them. … But this occasional tolerance for things American was never extended to the American language. Most of the English books of travel mentioned Americanisms only to revile them … The climax came in 1863, when the Very Rev. Henry Alford, D.D. dean of Canterbury, printed his ‘Plea for the Queen’s English.’ He said: ‘Look at the process of deterioration which our Queen’s English has undergone at the hands of the Americans.’” (Mencken 3 and 27)
antibaby: “birth control pill” (Stavans 69)
bananaspli: “banana split” (Stavans 74)
cat: “Dude, hipster, a righteous groover” (Décharné 26)
el cheapo: “…cheap”
hip-hop: “…a subculture esp. of inner-city youths whose amusements include rap music, graffiti, and break dancing…”
hipiteca: “Aztec hippy” (Stavans 143)
loco: “mentally disordered: CRAZY, FRENZIED”
“On and on, Latinos’ marketing popularity is uncritically treated as a sign of their ‘coming of age’ in U.S. society or else, equally uncritically, condemned as a sign of their commodification; but seldom have studies looked at marketing as constitutive of U.S. Latinidad. … In these constructions the Spanish language is built as the paramount basis of U.S. Latinidad.” (Dávila 3-4)
“There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican Americans will share in that dream and in that society if they dream in English.” (Huntington 45)
Works Cited
Dávila, Arlene. Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People. Berkeley: UC Press, 2001.
Décharné, Max. Straight From the Fridge, Dad: A Dictionary of Hipster Slang. NY: Broadway Books, 2000.
“El cheapo.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1999.
“Hip-hop.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1999.
Huntington, Samuel. “The Hispanic Challenge.” Foreign Policy March/April 2004: 30-45.
“Loco.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1999.
Mencken, H.L. The American Language: An Inquiry Into the Development of English in the United States. 4th ed. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938.
Stavans, Ilan. Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language. NY: HarperCollins, 2003.
On Assimilation
Download the following brief piece on Latino Assimilation (as a PDF doc) from the current Encyclopedia Latina.
COMP Paper #1 – Criteria & Tips
GRADING CRITERIA
Each section below is worth two (2) points; unacceptable work earns 0, and exceptional work earns 2. The assignment counts for ten (10) points of the final grade.
Summary
Is it coherent and complete?
Essay Structure
Does the writer establish a thesis? Does the paper develop this thesis with clear organization?
Sentence & Paragraph Structure
Does the writer communicate ideas in well structured, strong sentences?...paragraphs?
Grammar
Is the English correct?
Overall Quality of Assignment
Has the writer turned in a good essay?
FINAL DRAFT DUE: Week Three, Day Two, in class...!
GENERAL TIPS
● Come up with an original title, your own headline for your essay.
● The author/narrator IS George Orwell. He really lived these experiences!
● Sum up the reading FULLY in one-to-two paragraphs BEFORE you start to respond, BEFORE you state your thesis and develop it with a personal story.
● BE VERY CAREFUL ABOUT PLAGIARISM! If you want to paraphrase, be sure that you use YOUR OWN WORDS; if you want to quote, be sure to put the author’s words in quotation marks; beware of using the author’s exact wording without quote-marks! And always cite your source(s)!
● PAPER FORMAT!!! This part is super-easy! Get your margins correct (1” all around), and eliminate extra spacing, etc. (See “Paper Details” on the syllabus, page two.)
● When I recommend a tutor, PLEASE GO SEE A TUTOR – if you don’t follow the doctor’s advice, will your health last? ALSO: DON’T GO SEE YOUR OWN “TUTOR” – BE SURE TO USE THE TRUMAN TUTORING CENTER … I can tell when your “friends” help you too much!
● I try to give good, honest criticism and advice so that my students may improve and bring their work up to an “acceptable” level – PLEASE take my comments as assistance, NOT an attack…!
● If you did not get much done on your very first draft, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND that you show me another draft in progress, preferably during office hours. For example, if you only did a paragraph or half a page, build on the draft and show me how it’s progressing.
● SAVE YOUR ROUGH DRAFT, AND BE SURE TO STAPLE IT TO THE BACK OF YOUR NEXT DRAFT, WHICH YOU WILL TURN IN FOR A GRADE.
COMP: Thesis Statements
Constructing a Thesis Statement
For extra practice, review the following examples and formulas for constructing a sound thesis statement.
Lite/Simple:
The moral of George Orwell’s story is that even a slum can have valuable life lessons and experiences, just as I had when I first moved to this country and started working.
Though Orwell says his job was acceptable and his neighborhood colorful, I see only misery in his situation and personally will never live in a slum again.
The main idea in Down and Out is that poverty makes for unusual social situations, and I can agree given my own experience living in an SRO.
Heavy/Advanced:
Though globalization brings a better standard of living to developing countries, international organizations should monitor and foster fair working conditions so that sweatshops can be eliminated.
Hip-hop has spread around the world to become a global phenomenon, but fans should remember its roots as an American art-form that once advocated community instead of materialism.
Although Nike is environmentally sound and provides a useful product, it is not a socially responsible company because it treats workers unjustly.
Types of Assertion:
Opinion, Policy, Evaluation, Cause, Interpretation
Tests:
1. Is the statement too vague?
2. Is the statement too explicit (e.g. “In this research project, I plan to argue _________.”)
3. Is it too subjective?
4. Is it too objective?
5. Is the statement appropriate to the assignment?
Process:
1. Start with a working thesis: “I believe X because Y.”
2. Refine your thesis through research, reading, and note-taking.
3. Refine your thesis through drafting, and then revise it as you go along.
4. Use qualifying terms to focus, narrow, and strengthen your thesis.
A Few Sample Paragraphs
Note the three-sentence structure in the following paragraphs, demonstrating how a paragraph mirrors the structure of an essay: introduction, body, and conclusion. This basic structure is more important to conveying your ideas than any random formula for how many sentences you should have in a paragraph.
Smoking is for lowlifes, at least on film. A survey of 1990s blockbuster movies found that on-screen smokers tended to be poor and villainous. But while the habit may have lost its previous glamour, it retains a “cool” factor that is likely to seduce impressionable adolescents. (“Cigs” 15)
The trouble with human space flight is that perception is everything. Nations that undertake the challenge of sending their citizens into space are engaged in a calculated display of technical prowess. Taxpayers and politicians have been willing to go along with the attendant cost and risk to human life so long as the goal seems worthwhile. (“Editorial” 3)
As he has in the past, Mr. Calderón called on the United States Congress to pass changes to immigration law that would grant legal status to about 12 million Mexicans living and working illegally in the United States. He also reiterated his strong opposition to plans to build more fences and other barriers along much of the southern border. The assembled business executives and dignitaries gave him a standing ovation. (McKinley)
WORKS CITED
“Cigs for villains.” NewScientist 13 Aug. 2005: 15.
“Editorial: Keep on flying.” NewScientist 13 Aug. 2005: 3.
McKinley, Jr., James C. “Mexican President Assails U.S. Measures on Migrants.” The New York Times 3 Sept. 2007. 3 Sept. 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/world/americas/03mexico.html.
Globalized Slums
Our first 102 reading assignment, by George Orwell, dates back to 1933, but a Harper's article by Mike Davis connects the rise of mega-cities, slums, and global urban poverty directly to the policies and forces of globalization.
Download the slums handout (Word doc) with brief quotes from this article.
For a good source of international journalism, with heaps of articles and on-line debates about this and other topics relating to globalization, see OpenDemocracy.net.
Also, download a sum of the City Colleges of Chicago "Vision 2011" mission as a PDF document, to see how the district is "raising standards" and promoting "global citizenship."
On Wikipedia
Here are just a few more reasons to go beyond the popular reference site and instead do some database research...
...from beloved "fake" TV pundit Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report via YouTube...
International News Sites
Feel free to post your favorite links to international English-language news sites, in addition to those listed here.
Al-Ahram Weekly
Al-Jazeera
All Africa
Asia Times
British Broadcasting Service
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
China Daily
EFE News Service
Gulf Daily News
Ha'Aretz
The Jerusalem Post
The Jordan Times
Kyodo News Service, Japan
Nigerian News
OpenDemocracy
Persian Journal
SYLLABUS: COMP 102-G
Welcome to English 102-G for SPRING 2008!
Our required text:
BE SURE TO GET THE SECOND EDITION (2008) OF THE TEXTBOOK!
Download the syllabus for English 102 Section G.