Tuesday, December 11, 2007

We've come to the end of the semester . . .

I have finished grading all your Homestretch Analyses (read them in the Zines), posted the final version of the gradebook, and submitted my grades to the college. You should be able to see all your grades tomorrow on Maricopa Online. Have a happy and relaxing break. I wish you all well in your classes and your college career. I'll "see" some of you in my English 102 next semester. Now relax with Straight No Chaser's "12 Days."

Thursday, December 6, 2007

It's all in the details . . .

In this last paragraph of the semester, I ask you to analyze your participation in the class discussions, so get out your calculator and do the math! How much did you write? How often? What days of the week? Read the assignment document carefully for how to find the answers to all these questions.

These numbers probably provide a very different perspective on your participation than your memory of what you did or your attitude towards the discussion activity. Counting things does that!

Write about what your analysis reveals in a well-organized and well-developed paragraph. Publish it in the Zine by 11:00 am on Wednesday, December 12th. Note the unusual late morning deadline!

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Coming up to the final stretch


I have posted a couple of good argument essays from previous semesters in the Medallion Zine for you to read. They aren't perfect :-) but they highlight a couple of key parts of this assignment. Remember that this is a documented argument, so you need to support your position with evidence from others. Your Handbook has many examples of how to integrate source material into your writing, and there is a set of examples in the course folder drawn from the Terrorism article (TerrorismQuotes.rtf) Check out the rubric to see how the use of sources is evaluated in this piece of writing. Just don't drop quoted material into your paragraphs (See the Quotation Interloper for how that sounds to your reader.

Make sure to allow enough time to proofread your essay carefully. On the previous essay on Ethos and Audience, the lowest sub-set scores were for sentence precision and GUM.

This is the last week for the required discussion group entries; the deadline is Sunday night.