Friday, January 23, 2009

Today’s Agenda:

For your homework today, you were to complete a précis draft of “The Oblivious Empire” (1015-1025).

Let’s begin today by getting those drafts out.

Today, I will be handing you back your graded draft précis for “Those Unnerving Ads Using ‘Real’ Women.”

The grade you will reflect two things:  your ability to meet the basic writing standards that are taught in Eh 123, as well as your ability to follow my directions for formatting a précis. Many of you did not rise to the occasion of basic 123 writing, and some of you simply did not pay attention to the required components of a précis. Accurate work is rewarded in this class. Sloppy work will be treated (and rejected) as such.

There is both good news and bad news for you. The bad news may be that you are unhappy with the grade you are about to receive. The good news is that, when you eventually turn in your final draft of your précis for “The Oblivious Empire,” if you receive a better grade, that grade will be counted TWICE. It will replace your previous grade on the “Unnerving Ads” précis and also be counted towards your “Oblivious Empire” essay.So there is hope.

However, there is an exception: For those of you who have not turned in your “Unnerving Ads” précis to me yet, it is now too late to do so, and you will not receive credit for it. This rule is outlined in our course policy and procedures sheet, which we addressed on day one.

Grading Policies:

·         Once assignments are handed back to students, no further late assignments will be accepted.

I will now hand back the précis. I will only take individual questions about the précis after class or during my office hours.

How I graded: You will notice that your paper has numbers written on it. This is because many of you made the same mistakes, and rather than write the same thing on all of your papers, I decided to come up with a numeric system, which corresponds to the chart below. Simply find your number on this list, and you will see the error in question.  I have reviewed all your submissions for the most common errors, and we will now be discussing the top five errors. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION, AS YOU DO NOT WANT TO MAKE THESE SAME MISTAKES ON YOUR NEXT PRECIS!

In case you are interested in where you stand in the class at this point:

Class Grade Breakdown

B-            4

C+           1

C             6

C-            3

D             2

F              NR

Common Précis Errors

1: Your précis is supposed to start with an MLA-style citation for the article. Your draft does not do this.

2: You are providing your own opinion, which is not what you are supposed to be doing in this document. You need to stick to the goals of the section as they are written on the course blog.

3: Your issue section is supposed to begin with definitions for the more difficult terms or phrases in the document. Your draft does not do this yet.

4: Your Thesis section does not include an explanation of either the article’s thesis or the claims and evidence the author uses to support this argument.

5: Your sentence would better begin with a phrase that links the idea to the author. For example “Daum says” or “According to Daum”

6: You are to define terms and phrases in a paragraph format, not as a list. Don’t just list the terms, contextualize them in the paragraph. Find a meaningful way to transition from one term to the next.

7: Your individual questions need to be better defined and explained. Do not simply stack them on top of one another.

8: You have not yet identified the specific claims and evidence that Daum uses to support her argument. These subjects should be addressed over the course of several paragraphs.

9: In class, I mistakenly told you that Daum was a model – this is not true. No one lost any credit for this, as the fault was my own. However, the fact should be removed from your paper.

10: Go into more detail about this; get more specific.

11: Don’t forget to cite the sources you get your definitions from.

12: New Paragraph

13: Don’t just list questions. Situate each, and explain why these questions are being asked.

14: Awkwardly worded.

15: Cite

16: Begin with the thesis statement.

17: Use the author’s LAST name, not their first, when you reference them by one name.

18: A quote or quotes from the text would work better here.

19: Not Clear

20: Sentence Fragment.

21: Begin by explaining that there are particular terms in the argument that need to be defined.

22: Where are the questions?

23: This does not do an adequate job of situating the reader.

Okay, now that we are aware of those basic mistakes, there are some other general writing issues I want to address.

1) Many papers had clearly not been proofread.

2) Many papers contained sentence-level errors (sentence fragments, run on sentences)

3) Many papers had poorly constructed paragraphs.

a. In a paragraph we ONLY DEVELOP ONE IDEA AT A TIME, and a PARAGRAPH is generally 6-8 sentences long

Okay, before we dive into our work for today, let’s consider again what a precis is, and how it works.

Let’s look at a good example

Review of Situation, Issue, and Thesis

The Précis (Pray-SEE)

There are three simple parts to a Précis.

The point of a précis is to lay out an argument for an audience who needs to know about the argument without reading the entire ten, twelve or twenty page document. We have to inform the audience on the argument without “dumbing it down” or oversimplifying it!

To write a précis, you will need to incorporate direct quotations from an article to express those points that are better articulated by the author than you yourself could articulate them. You will sometimes need to use words in quotes to emphasize the author’s original tone. It is hugely important to show an author’s bias without commenting on it and editorializing, without using “I” anywhere in this piece.

You will need to paraphrase quite a bit in this document, and can expect to use phrases like “according to….” or “X claims” every couple of lines. The point here is to report on the author’s thoughts and comments, and to leave your own opinions at the door (there will be time enough for voicing your opinions in the future).

The three parts of the précis: Situation, Issue, Thesis

*Each section should be titled as such. This is okay in a précis.

Situation

·         The very beginning of your précis.

·         It should lay out what the audience needs to know about the author, the full title (including subtitle), and whatever publication info you have in MLA style (except for the author’s name which should be done first name first).

·         Next, you need to establish the basic context for the writing: who is writing it (what do we know about the author and or his or her position, profession etc), to whom are they addressing the piece (audience), when was it written, and whether there is any particular EVENT that has driven this response. Some arguments may have this, some may not. You can expect to take the better part of a paragraph to convey this information.

·         SITUATE the writing for an audience who WILL NOT READ THE FULL ARTICLE. What general information do they need to know about it?

Section II

Issue

·         The author may use technical jargon or academic lingo in the argument. You need to begin your ISSUE section by defining these terms for the reader. Clarify for the ready any terms or phrases you think may cause him or her difficulty.

·         Lay out the basic questions that the author addresses (NOT the answers).

·         END WITH THE MAJOR ISSUE QUESTION. The major issue question is the question the author attempts to answer with his or her thesis.

Section III

Thesis

·         Thesis section. This is where the THESIS appears (the answer to the major issue question.)

·         It is also where the other claims and evidence for those claims (as well as the major claim) will appear.

·         This is the lion’s share of the précis.

Group work on Précis.

Your homework for Monday is to finish your draft of the Précis, which you will be submitting for a grade.

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