Lesson Plan for Week 7: General Thoughts and Notes

Patrick Mooney, TA
Eng 193, Prof. Newfield
13 November 2012

1. Thought for the day:

   1. Every time a student sits down to write for us, he [sic] has to invent the university for the occasion — invent the university, that is, or a branch of it, like History or Anthropology or Economics or English. He has to learn to speak our language, to speak as we do, to try on the peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding, and arguing that define the discourse of our community. Our perhaps I should say the various discourses of our community, since it is in the nature of a liberal arts education that a student, after the first year or two, must learn to try on a variety of voices and interpretive schemes — to write, for example, as a literary critic one day and an experimental psychologist the next […] I am continually impressed by the patience and good will of our students.

      -David Bartholomae, "Inventing the University"

2. Administrative matters:
   • There will not be section next week, due to Thanksgiving break. Enjoy the holiday and travel safely!
   • Two options for your second paper:
     • Write a standard academic paper of 5-7 pages on a topic of your choosing.
       • You may, if you wish, perform the same assignment as last time: pick a non-self-published article on a text we have read in class and disagree with (some aspect of) the article author's claims.
       • On the other hand, you are also welcome to write a standard thesis-driven essay on another appropriate topic of your choosing.
       • In either case, you should not write about the same primary text with which you dealt in your first paper.
     • Alternately, you may write a crime/detective story of 5-15 pages, if you wish.
3. Return of papers and discussion of what was/was not successful on the papers:
   • Many people wrote very good papers. Even people who were less successful are doing some things well.
   • On the other hand, everyone has some room for improvement, and I see helping you improve to improve your writing as a primary part of my job. Please see me if you have questions or want advice!
   • One of the things that limited the success of some people was the choice of the article that they evaluated. Since disagreeing with the article author's argument was the primary focus of the assignment, choosing an article that is amenable to academic analysis — i.e., one that makes specific claims, declares its intentions by defining its key terms and their relationships, etc. — opened up possibilities for many people. Conversely, those who chose articles that did not make specific claims or that equivocated or were vague on key terms often had difficulty constructing a meaningful, satisfying argument.
   • In general — and there were many exceptions to this observation — those who picked academic articles were able to construct papers that were more nuanced and complex, and which received higher grades. Part of the reason for this is that academic discourse, in contrast to the kind of discourse that we have come to expect from politics, expects that arguments will be sophisticated, will be fair to those with whom we disagree, and will make its presuppositions explicit.
   • These expectations were also a component of how you were evaluated on your papers. In particular, if you did not fairly represent the argument of the author with whom you were disagreeing, that hurt your grade. Remember that academic discourse is (or represents itself as being) modeled on the search for truth, not simply choosing a party affiliation.
   • As discussed on my grading rubric, one of the things that hurts your grade is problems with formatting or grammar.
     • I do not personally believe that there is a necessary correlation between intelligence and knowledge of the minutiae of English grammar, but part of my job is to prepare you for life in the "real world," and you will encounter many people in your professional lives who do believe that this correlation exists. Some of these people will serve gate-keeping functions by making choices about whether, e.g., you will be hired or promoted, so it is worthwhile to learn to write clean, error-free prose.
     • If you are having trouble with the mechanics of writing, you may want to take your paper to Campus Learning Assistance Services, or to a friend who is knowledgeable about English grammar and punctuation. I am also happy to discuss these issues with you!
     • One of the opportunities that you have in college that you will not have later in life is the opportunity to receive free writing tutoring! Take advantage of this opportunity while you have it.
     • I did not fully enforce the grammar/formatting limitations while grading this paper, but did point them out. I will fully enforce these penalties on the next paper.
   • Overall statistics for (my) students' grades on this assignment:
     • Mean: 85.66% (a middle B)
     • Median: 86.58% (a high B)
     • Mode: 88.5% (a middle B+)
     • Standard deviation: 6.31 percentage points
     • It might be worth mentioning that English majors did not do substantially better than non-English majors on this assignment: the statistics for the two groups were very nearly identical.
   • If you have additional questions about your grade, you might find it worthwhile to take another look at my grading rubric.
   • If you do not believe that the grade you received is a fair assessment of the work you performed, then you should look at the dispute procedure on my grading rubric. Essentially, I want a copy of your paper with my comments on it, plus a written explanation, based on my grading rubric, of why you think you should receive a higher grade. We will then schedule an appointment to discuss your grade. If we still do not agree on what your grade should be after this conversation, then you should speak to Professor Newfield.
   • If you have questions about the details of how your grade is calculated, you should see this document.
4. Questions for discussion:
   • Choose three detectives we have seen so far.
     • What do you see as the detectives' primary benefits as protagonists in the stories in which they appear?
     • What drawbacks do the detectives have as protagonists?
5. Assignment for section. Due in section during week 9, which is the next time we will meet.
   • If you are planning to write a detective/crime story for your second paper, then you should sketch out the detection structure for your story, in the same way that you did the assignment for "The Parker Shotgun" or "The Adventure of the Dancing Men."
   • If you are planning to write an academic paper for the assignment, you should bring the first page of that paper.
   • In neither case will I see your assignment for section as committing you to do anything in particular on your final paper. However, the more effort you put into the assignment, the more benefit you will get from the feedback your writing group gives you.