Bulletin

Attention Citizens and Alien Residents of Logophoria,

There are a few issues I wanted to go over with all of you as a group.

Study Guide:
If you are not reading the study guide, you are flying blind in terms of what I want from you and how I grade an essay. I do not want my grading criteria to be a surprise to you -- I don’t want you to be thinking “I hope I get a good grade.” I want you to be fully empowered with a complete knowledge of what I expect -- I want you to be thinking “I know I’m going to get a good grade; luck and hope have got nuthin to do with it.”

General Procedure:
Please label your assignment (the attachment) as dw#5 (or whatever it is). I have a separate folder for each student. Send all attachments as .doc or .rtf or in mac format (mac is so obviously better, I won’t even explain why -- you should just know).

If you have a question -- begin the subject line of your email with the word “question.” I will give priority to questions. Don’t ask me to confirm each of your submissions -- I will send out a grade summary each week and you can verify that your stuff went through at that point.

If you do more than one workshop, please indicate this when you are submitting your work. DW#6 first one, DW#6 second one. Quite confusing otherwise (which means you are less likely to get the proper credit).

It is extremely important that you clearly indicate who wrote the essay and who wrote the workshop about the essay (if it is unclear, you are less likely to receive credit for your work.


Essay #2:
You must be in the photograph, and you must be visible in the photograph. It should not be the back of your head or your feet or I don’t know what.

You need to include the photo with your essay.

make sure you answer all parts of the assignment.

Workshops:
First of all, there where some people who did multiple reviews for various partners -- that’s a good thing. Some people therefore received multiple reviews for their paper -- also a good thing. Unfortunately, some people could not find a partner (possibly because some had more than one) and therefore where unable to do the workshop at all -- this a bad thing. The bad thing outweighs the good things. Therefore, from now on -- you may still DO multiple workshops; however, you may NOT RECEIVE multiple workshops. The people who are willing to do the workshops have to spread their generosity around. There is an incentive for doing extra workshops. This is almost the only way to get extra credit towards your participation grade. Your participation grade counts for ten percent of your final overall semester grade and is largely based on your workshop scores.

Secondly, each answer should be at least a paragraph in length. A paragraph is longer than three sentences. The more specific your advice, the more helpful it will be to your classmate. Try to give specific suggestions about things that can be added, deleted, or changed, and be sure to explain why this is. Direct your comments to your classmate -- do not speak of them in the third person.

Make sure you answer all parts of all questions. For example, don’t just say which sentence is the thesis; explain why you think that sentence is the thesis.

The most important question is number five -- make sure your answer to that question is your most carefully considered.




Question #6 asks about the voice of the essay. Think of voice as the author’s personality as expressed in the writing. Voice should be consistent throughout. Voice means you can tell who wrote a paper, even when their name isn’t on it. Voice is comprised of tone, vocabulary, diction, sentence length, style, rhythm, frequency of adjectives, obscurity of metaphor, length of paragraphs, tendency toward or away from complex sentences (or long lists), and other habitual patterns.

The workshop must be accompanied by an edited copy of the essay that you have reviewed for your partner. It would be very helpful (i.e., you might get more points) if you used a different color for the material you edited.


Essays:
You should think of the workshop questions as a guideline to your basic priorities in the proper construction of an essay.

Obviously the single most important element in any essay (the defining feature of an essay) is the thesis.

First, the thesis must be explicitly stated in the first paragraph (the introduction). It should be a sentence that your reader can underline or highlight. If your reader has to paraphrase your thesis, then your thesis is not explicit. If the workshop your classmate did for you includes language such as “the thesis is about the importance of . . . ,” this means that the reader had to reconstruct a thesis that wasn’t actually there. If the workshop your classmate did for you includes language such as “the thesis is the third sentence in the first paragraph: ‘This photograph is very important to me,’” then your thesis is explicit and quotable.

Second, each paragraph should include language that explains the relationship between the material in the paragraph and the idea expressed in the thesis. Each paragraph should explain how the evidence in that paragraph supports the opinion expressed by the thesis.


Third, make sure you review the study guide on academic essay (are you beginning to get the idea that the study guide is important?). This explains to you what I mean when I tell you to write an essay. Half of your semester grade is based on essay -- don’t guess. The essay has three parts -- I will be looking for all three. The introduction has three parts -- I will be looking for all three. I have provided you with the rubric that I use to grade essays -- read it or regret it. A rubric is a series of criteria used to assess grades to essays. The development rubric reads like a flow chart -- it is a series of questions you should ask yourself in sequence. If you can positively answer the first, then ask the second. When you get to a question that you can not answer in the positive, this will tell you (approximately) what grade your essay should earn. If this grade is satisfactory, then stop and turn your paper in. If this grade is unsatisfactory, then revise your paper (using the next question in the rubric as a guideline) until you know that the paper satisfies those conditions.



Essay #3
You do not have to choose a topic from the idea bank.

You should at least look over the
suggestions I have provided, but no, you are not required to choose one of them. However they should give you an idea of the pattern that your thesis should take. Read the reminder about how to use John Leo’s essay as a pattern to follow for your Argument of Definition. First, you must decide what the category is. Then you can determine your thesis. For example: Flag burning is Free Speech. Your thesis should be a definition, not an evaluation. If your thesis includes a qualifier such as good or bad, as in “Paris Hilton is a terrible role model for young girls,” then you are not writing a definition (you are writing an evaluation). The reminder explains the three parts of the Argument of Definition essay. Your essay must include these three parts.