Week 2 Overview

Week 2 Introduction

The main work of Unit 2 will be to compose an annotated bibliography (5 sources, minimum) for your research paper. This will help you review sources and decide how they might be used in your paper. This also helps you narrow your focus.

• Note: The Annotated Bibliography is due next Monday, but you should begin work on it early in the week. Scroll down on this page for more information about the assignment.

• Read SA pp.339-365 ("Language")

• Read Orwell's "Politics and the English Language": 

•    http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit 

• Come to class prepared to discuss Orwell

• SA pp. 131-39 ("Definition"); 170-72 ("Claims of Fact"); 174-76 ("Claims of Value"); 178-183 ("Claims of Policy"); 202-222, 267 ("Support"); 269-280 ("Warrants"); 415-18 ("Taking Notes").

• Review the following web page: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/619/01/

• SA pp. 489-500 (MLA) and 501-13 (APA). Focus on the style format that you plan to follow in your own writing.

• Annotated Bibliography (5 sources, minimum).

1. A complete bibliographical citation of the source. For this class, use either APA or MLA formats; these are described in detail in our textbook:  In the back of SA, the MLA pages are outlined in blue and the APA pages are outlined in grey. 

1. The annotation: a brief paragraph describing the source, evaluating its strengths and weaknesses, and describing how it will be useful to you in making your argument.

We will also read George Orwell's famous essay on the relationship of style and thought, "Politics and the English Language." 

We will then read and discuss several arguments on a topic TBA. One of these will be the subject of a Summary/Critique.

Throughout the Unit, we will practice analyzing arguments in terms of claim, support, and warrant. This practice should help you to make more useful comments on your partners' drafts, as well as helping you to improve the argument in your own draft.

   Schedule of Assignments

Due by Wed, class:

Orwell's famous essay, "Politics and the English Language," makes a challenging argument but one that is very relevant for college writers to consider. Notice that the first two paragraphs of the essay briefly outline the argument he will make at greater length in the paragraphs that follow. In the first half of his essay, Orwell criticizes some of the ways language is being used, particularly by the elites—i.e., intellectuals and politicians—of his day (the essay was written in 1949: you might consider what recent or contemporary world events might have prompted him to consider these issues). In the second half of the essay, he discusses how these uses of language have influenced the use of power by these elites and have thus affected us all. The essay also offers, in several places, advice for writers who wish to avoid the sort of writing he criticizes.

Due by Monday:

An annotated bibliography is a brief report on your research. Each entry in the bibliography has two parts:

Our textbook (SA) describes an annotated bibliography with examples on pp. 437-38.

Reading TBA 

If you have not done so already, you should acquaint yourself with the resources available through the NU library http://library.nu.edu/.   Plan to spend some time orienting yourself to the Library's resources, which can be accessed online from your own computer.  In particular, explore the Journal Articles. These are more than 40 databases of journal, magazine and newspaper articles, many of which can be accessed in their entirety. These are likely to be the best sources of good research for your paper. We will go over this in class too, but you need to look over it on your own as well.