Please note that this syllabus is available on the web at the address in the upper right-hand corner.  All essay topics -- plus many additional course materials I'll distribute in class as the semester goes on -- will be posted to that address.

Instructor: Dr. Stephen doCarmo
Office: Penn 131
Hours: MWF 11:00-12:00, 1:00-2:00
Phone: 215-968-8267
E-mail: docarmos@bucks.edu

Required Texts
The Norton Introduction to Literature.  Edited by Jerome Beaty et al.  Shorter 8th edition.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Writing Research Papers, by James D. Lester.  10th edition.

Catalog Course Description
In English Composition II, students write critical themes assigned in response to classroom study of short stories, poems, and plays.  After instruction in research techniques, students also write a research paper.

Format
Classes will consist of lectures, small-group workshopping, class discussions, occasional film viewings, and one-on-one conferences with me, your instructor.

Course Objectives
We've got three chief objectives in this course.  They are:

1.  To have you gain an appreciation for imaginative literature, namely drama, poetry, and fiction;
2.  To have you gain the research and bibliographic skills you'll need not only in other college courses but, quite possibly, in your professional life as well;
3.  To give you ample opportunity to improve your reading, writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills, which are vital, of course, to all academic and professional pursuits, not just English class.

Course Requirements
1.  You'll need to write three multi-paragraph "lit" essays that will grow out of our three different literature units -- one on drama, one on fiction, and one on poetry.  The first and second essays (your drama and fiction ones) should be about four pages long each, and you'll do them at home, on your own time.  The third essay (your poetry one) should be several handwritten pages long and will be done in class.

Each essay you write, wherever you do it, should possess the attributes of good writing you learned in Comp 110 -- that is, it should be thesis driven; it should be well organized; it should have sufficient support for its claims; it should have good transitions between its ideas; and it should demonstrate good sentence structure, proper punctuation, correct diction, and correct grammar.  Maybe most importantly, it will need to contain interesting and sophisticated ideas about the literature it responds to.  And while I'll provide you topic questions for each essay well in advance of its due date (even the in-class one), those questions will be broad and interpretable enough to require you to do your own thinking, not just spew back information and ideas already familiar to you from class.

I'll put written comments on each of your lit essays and will give them A-F grades, with +'s and -'s possible.  Due dates for final and rough drafts are on the schedule at the end of this syllabus.

2.  You'll need to take about ten unannounced reading quizzes on the assigned plays, fictions, and poems.  They'll be short (five questions each), will be given at the very start of class meetings, and will focus on important information from the readings rather than on abstract matters like theme or symbol.  (In other words, I might ask you how a certain character dies in act II of a play; I won't ask what her death "means" within the work as a whole.  That's the sort of thing we'll sort out together in class.)  Since these quizzes are information driven, you need only read, reasonably carefully, for each and every class meeting to do well on them.

I'll grade each of your quizzes on a 1-5 scale.  Get all five questions right and you'll get a "5," or an A, basically.  A 4 is a B, a 3 is a C, a 2 is a D, and a 1 is an F.

I'll drop your lowest quiz grade at the end of the semester, so don't panic if you bomb a couple of them.  Just panic if you start bombing them consistently.

3.  You'll need to write a 2,500-word (ten pages, roughly) research paper on a topic of your choice.  I'll give you more information about what I expect from this paper as the semester wears on.  But let me go ahead and tell you here that it will need to

a. express your sophisticated, well-informed opinion on a topic of general public interest;
b. be written for a non-specialized, "lay" audience;
c.  make use of about ten good external sources (and we'll talk in class about what "good" means);
d. demonstrate all the same attributes of good writing your lit-based essays do -- that is, those named in #1 above;
e. adhere to MLA format, which we'll discuss.

4.  You'll need to turn in three developmental documents related to your research paper: a proposal, a progress report, and -- near the end of the semester -- a rough draft.  When the time comes I'll give you forms to direct you in writing the first two of those.  But the "progress report," I can tell you now, will require you to turn in an outline of your paper-in-progress and notes on external sources you've been reading.

These three documents are not graded except as part of your participation grade (see below).  But unless they have been turned in, I will not accept your research paper at the end of the semester!  So please be sure to get them done.  Their due dates are on the schedule at the end of this syllabus.

5.  You'll need to participate during class meetings.  Come to class consistently and on time, be considerate of me and your classmates, speak up intelligently in both small-group and large-group discussions, pull your weight in whatever other in-class activities I ask you to take part in, put an appropriate amount of time and effort into the developmental documents for your research paper, and I'll happily give you an "A" for this portion of your grade.

Grading
Your first at-home lit essay (the one for our drama unit) will be worth 10% of your final grade.
Your second at-home lit essay (the one for our fiction unit) will be worth 15%.
Your in-class lit essay (that for our poetry unit) will be worth 10%.
Your reading quizzes will be worth 15%.
Your research paperwill be worth 40%.
Your class participation will be worth 10%.

Attendance
You get five free skips -- "excused" or "unexcused" doesn't matter.  After that, your final grade for the course falls a third of a letter grade (from a C+ to a C, for instance) per absence.

Since I don't distinguish between excused and unexcused absences, you shouldn't burn up all your skips thinking it'll be okay to miss more classes later should you get sick or have an emergency.  Your five skips are for sickness and emergencies.  So budget them wisely.

Please note that no one who misses more than a dozen class meetings, no matter how extraordinary the circumstances, will be able to pass this course.

Rewrites
You can rewrite two of your three lit-based essays, if you want, provided you (a) turn in the rewrite within seven days of your getting back the original, and (b) make significant improvements to the essay.  Simply re-arranging a few sentences or fixing some punctuation won't get you a new grade.

If you get a failing grade on a lit essay (a D or an F), you must rewrite it within seven days -- otherwise you won't have fulfilled the requirements for the course.  You can't revise more than two failing lit essays, though, and you can't improve them to better than a C+, so please don't think of this as a safety net.

Please note also that while late papers can be re-written, the penalty for lateness never goes away.

Skipping Assignments
Sorry, but you can't. All writing assignments (the three lit essays, the research paper, the developmental documents for the research paper) must be submitted to me; otherwise you won't receive a passing grade for the course.

Late Work
You can turn in late either of your two at-home lit essays at a penalty of one full letter grade per class period.  Penalties begin at the end of the class period when the assignment was due.

You can't turn in your in-class lit essay late (the "poetry" one); it's due at the end of that class period, no matter what.

You can't make up missed reading quizzes, since it wouldn't be fair to people who had to take it when it was originally given.

You also can't turn in your research paper late, since it's not due till our last day of class.  If for any reason you're not going to be able to meet that deadline, it's imperative you talk to me well beforehand.

Tutoring
If you need help with a writing assignment for this course, please work either with me or with someone in the Tutoring Center (Library 121).

If you'd like to listen to the advice of a friend, family member, or classmate who's read a rough draft of yours, that's fine -- great, even.  But nobody besides me or a Bucks tutor should be helping you actually write sentences for an essay for this course, okay?  Please talk to me if you're confused about what constitutes too much help.

Special Needs
If you have a documented learning problem that requires you to have extra time on quizzes, extended deadlines for essays, or anything else, please talk to me about it as soon as possible.

Plagiarism
This is from the College Catalogue:

The expectation at Bucks County Community College is that the principles of truth and honesty will be rigorously followed in all academic endeavors.  This assumes that all the work will be done by the person who purports to do the work without unauthorized aids.  In addition, when making use of language, information and some ideas not his or her own, whether quoting them directly or paraphrasing them in his or her own words, the student must attribute the source of the material in some standard form, such as naming the source in the text or offering a footnote.

I've been teaching writing in college for eight years now.  And I've met very, very few students who weren't able to pass a comp course by simply doing their own work.  You don't need to cheat to get through English 111.  But you may need help.  I expect to give lots of it, as do the people in the Tutoring Center.  So please come put us to work.

Course Schedule
Please bring your Writing Research Papers text to every class for which a "research writing workshop" is scheduled.
And please be sure to do the readings before the date on which they appear!

Wednesday Jan. 22: Introduction to the course.  We'll go over the syllabus, and I may collect a writing sample from you, too.
Friday Jan. 24: Beginning of our DRAMA UNIT.  Discussion of Miller's Death of a Salesman, pages 1543-1555.  (Just read to "[BERNARD enters in knickers.].")

Monday Jan. 27: Discussion of Miller's Death of a Salesman, through page 1596.  (Just read to "[LINDA appears in the house, as of old.].)
Wednesday Jan. 29: Discussion of the remainder of Miller's Death of a Salesman (i.e. through pg. 1612).
Friday Jan. 31: We'll be meeting in room 212 of the library on this day to learn some basic research strategies.

Monday Feb. 3: Discussion of Wilson's The Piano Lesson, scenes 1 and 2.  (It starts on pg. 1155 of your Norton.)
Wednesday Feb. 5: Discussion of Wilson's The Piano Lesson, scenes 3 and 4.  (That's through pg. 1201.)
Friday Feb. 7: Discussion of the remainder of Wilson's The Piano Lesson.  (That is, through pg. 1214.)

Monday Feb. 10: Research writing workshop.  I'll also bring you the topic question for lit essay #1 on this day.
Wednesday Feb. 12: Discussion of Susan Glaspell's Trifles (pgs. 1019-1029).
Friday Feb. 14: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your Lit Essay #1 drafts.

Wednesday Feb. 19:Rough draft of lit essay 1 due.  In-class workshopping on drafts.
Friday Feb. 21: Beginning of our FICTION UNIT.  Discussion of Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (70-74) and Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (75-78).

Monday Feb. 24: Lit essay #1 due with all drafts, outlines, conference notes, etc.  After that...research writing workshop.
Wednesday Feb. 26: Discussion of Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" (41-63).
Friday Feb. 28: Snow day.

Monday March 3: Discussion of Bharati Mukherjee's "The Management of Grief" (224-36).  I'll also bring you the "form" for your research paper proposal on this day.
Wednesday March 5: Discussion of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, through pg. 26.
Friday March 7: Research writing workshop.

Monday March 10: Research paper proposal due.  Also...discussion of The Great Gatsby, through pg. 64.
Wednesday April 12: Discussion of The Great Gatsby, through pg. 102.
Friday March 14: Discussion of The Great Gatsby, through pg. 153.

Monday March 17: Discussion of the remainder of The Great Gatsby (that is, through pg. 189).
Wednesday March 19: Research writing workshop.  I'll also bring you the topic question for lit essay #2 on this day.
Friday March 21: Discussion of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (537-49).

Monday March 24: Discussion of Carver's "Cathedral" (580-90).
Wednesday March 26:Rough draft of lit essay 2 due.  In-class workshopping on lit essay-two drafts.  Be sure to bring a copy of your draft on this day -- I'll collect it!
Friday March 28: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your unit-two essay.

Monday March 31: Beginning of our POETRY UNIT.  Discussion of Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll" (619), Etheridge Knight's "Hard Rock..." (624), Maxine Kumin's "Woodchucks" (627), William Blake's "London" (625), and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" (634).
Wednesday April 2:Lit essay 2 due with all drafts, outlines, conference notes, etc.  After that...research writing workshop.
Friday April 4: Discussion of A.R. Ammons' "Needs" (652), Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" (658), Walt Whitman's "[I Celebrate Myself...]" (658), John Donne's "The Flea" (664), and Mary Oliver's "Singapore" (683).

Monday April 7: Discussion of Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" (699), Sharon Olds' "Sex without Love" (701), Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" (727), and Michael Harper's "Dear John, Dear Coltrane" (762).
Wednesday April 9: Discussion of Poe's "The Raven" (754).
Friday April 11: Discussion of E.A. Robinson's "Mr. Flood's Party" (770), Langston Hughes' "Harlem (A Dream Deferred)" (908), and Marge Piercy's "What's That Smell in the Kitchen?" (918).  I'll also give you the "form" for your research paper progress report on this day.

Monday April 21: Research writing workshop.
Wendesday April 23: Discussion of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" (926) and Wallace Stevens' "Anecdote of the Jar" (964).  I'll also bring the topic question for lit essay #3 (the in-class one) on this day.
Friday April 25: Discussion of four or five poems I'll have photocopied and given you well before this date.

Monday April 28: Research paper progress report due.  Also...discussion of four or five more poems I'll have photocopied and given you well before this date.
Wednesday April 30: Class replaced by one-on-one preparatory conferences with me on your upcoming in-class essay.
Friday May 2: Lit essay 3 due.  (You'll write it in class on this day.)

Monday May 5: Rough draft of research paper due.  In-class workshopping on your draft.
Wednesday May 7: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your research paper.
Friday May 9: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your research paper.

Monday May 12: Class replaced by one-on-one conferences with me on your research paper.
Wednesday May 14: In-class workshopping on your research paper.  Please bring your draft.
Friday May 16: Research paper due with all sources and notes.  Instructor evaluation.
 
 

Topic for the First "Lit" Essay
We’ve now read two plays (Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman [1949] and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson [1987]) that express dissent from what we typically call “the American dream.”  Please choose one of these plays, describe its objection to the American dream as it conceives it, and – while making good use of your own experiences in and observations about present-day America – explain why you do or don’t appreciate its dissent.

Additional Requirements and Pointers
Your essay should possess the attributes of good writing taught to you in Comp 110 – that is, it should be thesis driven; it should be well organized; it should have sufficient support for its claims; it should have good transitions between its ideas; and it should demonstrate good sentence structure, proper punctuation, correct diction, and correct grammar.

The assignment essentially requires you to write in the first person – that is, to describe personal experiences and observations while using the “I” pronoun.  You can, then, consider yourself officially licensed to do so – no matter what your high school teacher told you!

You should absolutely, positively quote the play you’re writing about to help you support your claims about it.  If you’re quoting from within a single line of dialogue, just put the character’s words within regular quotation marks, like this:

In a heated argument, Biff tells his father, “I am not a leader of men, Willy” (1608).

If you’re quoting a chunk of the text where the speaker changes, please double indent from the left (or “block quote”), and reproduce the text so that it looks exactly as it does in your anthology, without quotation marks around it.  For instance:

WILLY: [Astonished.]  What’re you doing?  What’re you doing?  [To LINDA.]  Why is he crying?
BIFF: [Crying, broken.]  Will you let me go, for Christ’s sake?  Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?  (1609)

Please don’t use exorbitantly long quotes.  Use just what you need to help you make your point.  If you want to cut stuff out of the middle of a long quote, show that you’ve done so by inserting ellipses (…) at the point where words have been excised.  You should never have ellipses at the beginning or end of a quote, though!

Please don’t use any sources beyond the play you’re writing about – unless you talk to me about it first.

If briefly discussing a second play we’ve read will help you illuminate some aspect of the main one you’ve chosen, please feel free to do so.  (Don’t feel obliged to do this, however.)

Your essay should be about four pages long.  It should be double-spaced.  It should be written in twelve-point font.  It should have one-inch margins on all its pages, top and bottom, left and right.  It should also have a good title!

I think that’s it.  If you’ve got questions…DON’T BE SHY!  Get in touch with me. This essay is due at the start of class on Friday Feb. 21st
 

Topic for the Second “Lit” Essay
Please write a roughly four-page essay in response to the following prompt:

What is the point of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?  In other words…what big idea is the novel trying to convey to us?  What does it want us to come away knowing about America, the world, or human nature generally that we may not have known before?  In answering this, please touch on some other text we’ve read during our “fiction” unit, explaining its thematic similarities to  (or differences from) Fitzgerald’s novel.

Additional Requirements and Pointers:
Your essay should possess the attributes of good writing you learned in Comp 110 – that is, it should be thesis driven; it should be well organized; it should have sufficient support for its claims; it should have good transitions between its ideas; and it should demonstrate good sentence structure, proper punctuation, correct diction, and correct grammar.

Please write for a general audience – not just for me, your instructor!  (In other words…you shouldn’t be writing sentences like “You asked us to talk about…” or “In class someone said that…,” since no one but me would understand what you’re talking about.)

It’s fine to presume your audience is familiar with the texts you’re writing about – thus you don’t need to kill big amounts of space synopsizing the plots of the texts you’re writing about!  Just jog your readers’ memories briefly about events and characters pertinent to your case.

You should absolutely, positively quote the texts you’re writing about to support your claims about them.

Please remember to always introduce your quotes, providing your readers the context they need to understand them.

Long quotes should be kept to a minimum – but if you do use a quote over four lines long, “block” it by double indenting it from the left.  There should be no quotation marks around a block quote.

Please be sure to put page numbers in parentheses after direct quotes and close paraphrases.  (No “works cited” page is necessary for this essay, though.)

Please don’t use any sources beyond the fictions you’re writing about – unless you talk to me about it first.  (This includes the Matthew Bruccoli critical texts included in our edition of Gatsby.)

Though I’ve asked you to touch on some other text we’ve read in our “fiction” unit (that is, one of our short stories), you should give the bulk of your attention to Gatsby.  I only want to see that you can at some point reference another work and make some interesting connection between it and Fitzgerald.

Your essay should be double-spaced.  It should be written in twelve-point font.  It should have one-inch margins on all its pages, top and bottom, left and right.  And it should have a good title!

I think that’s it.  If you’ve got questions, or if I can help you get your draft started, get in touch.
 

Topic for the Third “Lit” Essay
(To be written in class on Friday May 2nd)

Please write a multi-paragraph essay in response to the following prompt:

How do you personally know a good poem when you see one?  Please reference and directly quote at least two poems we’ve read in class – one that exemplifies what you like in poetry and one that contrasts nicely against that one.

Additional Requirements and Pointers
Please bring to class on May 2nd your Norton Introduction to Literature and the poetry handout I put together for you, since you’ll need to directly quote the poems you’re writing about.  You can also bring a loose outline for the essay you’re going to write.

You should demonstrate a good understanding in your essay of at least several “critical” terms we’ve used in class during our poetry unit.  You’ll find a list of them at the end of this document.

While you need to write about at least two poems, I wouldn’t advise that you tackle more than three or four.  I’d rather see you think deeply about three poems, say, than just scratch the surface of five or six.

Just because we didn’t get around to discussing an assigned poem during class time doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write about it in your essay.  In fact, I’ll probably be impressed to see you thinking about a work we didn’t talk about in class.

Please resist the temptation, should you feel it, to respond to the topic question with answers like “good poems are short,” or “good poems are easy to understand.”  I doubt you’ll squeeze a good essay out of either of those!

You’re perfectly welcome to write in the first person, using the word “I.”  In fact, it makes sense, given the question I’ve asked, to do so.  Since you’ll only have an hour to write, though, and since I’ll mainly want to see your good understanding of the literature, personal stories and anecdotes should probably be held to a minimum.

Please write for an audience of strangers – not just for me.  (In other words, you shouldn’t be writing sentences like “You asked us what we think makes a good poem,” since no one but me will understand this.)

When quoting poems, put slashes where line breaks occur.

LIke the other essays you’ve written for Comp 111, this one should possess the attributes of good writing taught to you in Comp 110 – that is, it should be thesis driven; it should be well organized; it should have sufficient support for its claims; it should have good transitions between its ideas; and it should demonstrate good sentence structure, proper punctuation, correct diction, and correct grammar.

Since this essay will be on-the-spot writing, I won’t weigh spelling and punctuation as heavily as I might with a multi-draft essay.  So don’t spend more than a few minutes of the hour proofreading.

You have a whole hour.  Use it!  If you’re done writing in twenty or thirty minutes, there’s a good chance you’re not demonstrating the depth of analysis I’m hoping for.
 

Critical Terms We’ve Used in Our Poetry Unit
We’ve discussed the difference between denotative and connotative meanings.

We’ve discussed the difference between “poetic” diction and “low” diction.

We’ve acknowledged various sound effects: rhyme, “eye” rhyme, end rhyme, internal rhyme, meter (of which “iambic” is one sort), assonance, consonance, alliteration, and onomatopoeia.

We’ve acknowledged the importance of the speaker in a poem – especially when the speaker is someone you’re not supposed to like or trust.

Relatedly, we’ve talked about tone in poems – as in, the tone of voice you’re supposed to hear when you read a poem.

Lastly, we’ve discussed various types of internal structures in poems: narrative, meditative, contrastive, discursive, and descriptive.
 
 

Instructions for the Researched Essay
(40% of your final grade, due May 14th)

Please write a roughly ten-page (2,500-word) essay persuading readers of the validity of your opinion on some important current cultural issue.

Additional Requirements and Pointers
Please don’t forget that I won’t accept your final draft unless I’ve gotten from you the research-paper proposal and the progress report due earlier in the semester.

When I take up your final draft, I must get with it

(1) whatever drafts, outlines, and/or organizational exercises you’ve done that helped you produce your final draft, and
(2) at least twenty annotated sources read before or during the drafting of your paper (and these should adhere to the guidelines given to you early in the semester!).

Of the twenty-plus sources you annotate, roughly ten should wind up quoted and/or paraphrased in your paper (and so listed on the “works cited” page at the end of your paper).

If between ten and 15% of your final draft is comprised of direct quotes and/or close paraphrases from outside sources…that’s good.  If, as you’re working, it becomes clear you’re going to deviate significantly from that rule of thumb, talk to me about it.

Please make sure the entirety of your paper adheres strictly to MLA form.  You have, to help you with this, your Writing Research Papers book, your MLA pamphlet from the Bucks tutoring center, and the MLA “template” paper I’ve given you.

Your paper should have a clear and unmistakable thesis.  It should be well organized.  It should have clear transitions between its paragraphs.  It should have ample support for its major claims.  It should use appropriate diction.  And it should be well proofread, with very few errors in spelling, grammar, or punctuation.

As with other writing you’ve done for this class, it’s okay if you include first-person accounts of your own experiences and observations.  Considering, though, the amount of researched information you'll need to include in this essay, you may have somewhat less room for that type of writing in this assignment than in previous ones.

Your paper shouldn’t have a cover sheet or a plastic cover.  It should look exactly like the MLA “template” paper I’ve given you.

I think that's it.  It's imperative you come to me with whatever questions you've got, so...don't be shy.  You know where to find me.
 

Instructions and Requirements for Research-Paper Annotated Sources
When I get from you the final draft of your Comp 111 research paper at the end of the semester, it must (must!) come to me with at least twenty annotated sources, roughly ten of which will actually be cited in your paper.

An "annotated source" is a print (or photocopy) of a source you’ve read with your notes and “highlightings” on it.  A source can be...

• a book (or part of a book);
• a journal or magazine article;
• a newspaper article;
• a pamphlet;
• a review (as of a movie, play, novel, etc.);
• an interview with a specialist; or
• a good, professionally produced website.

PLEASE NOTE that of your twenty annotated sources, no more than a dozen should be websites, pamphlets, reviews, interviews with specialists, and/or newspaper articles!  This means at least eight should be books (or parts of books) and/or articles from periodicals!

In order for a printed or photocopied source to count as a source, I’ll need to see that you’ve…

• numbered it,
• written all the information about it required for a proper MLA bibliographic citation at the top of its front page,
• highlighted or underlined its most important (or “quote-worthy”) passages, and
• written on the back of its last page (or stapled to it) a short paragraph reminding yourself why it is (or isn’t) going to be useful to you in your project.

In the event that one (or more) of your sources is something you can’t mark up and turn in with your final draft (a library book, say, or a personal interview), your careful notes on that source will count as an annotated source.

It’s vital, in the notes you take on such a source, that you have quotation marks around words you’ve copied directly from the source and that you note the page numbers (when appropriate) on which ideas and information you’ve pulled out appear.

You should also number these annotations, include on them all the information about the source you’ll need for an MLA citation, and include on them a few sentences about why that source is or isn’t likely to be useful to you.  (In other words…do all the things you’re doing for your “regular” annotated sources!)
 

How to Credit (in MLA Style) a Writer Whose Idea You Want to Use in Your Own Essay

I’m working here with the following source:

Suozzo, Andrew.  “The Chicago Marathon and Urban Renaissance.”  The Journal of Popular  Culture 36.1 (2002): 142-159.

In his essay “The Chicago Marathon and Urban Renaissance,” Andrew Suozzo suggests that

only after a somewhat shaky history in the eighties and early nineties did [Chicago’s] marathon come together to the point that it can now attain world supremacy in the number of participants.  This meteoric rise closely follows the city’s dramatic recovery from a “rust-belt” city whose future was in grave doubt to a revitalized metropolis capable of retaining an affluent citizenry and attracting a well-helled body of tourists.  (Suozzo 142)

From there Suozzo goes on to enumerate some of the factors that made Chicago’s revitalization possible.

The brackets in the above quote indicate that I’ve somehow altered Suozzo’s words.

Or I can do this:

In his essay “The Chicago Marathon and Urban Renaissance,” Andrew Suozzo suggests that the Chicago marathon’s “meteoric rise closely follows the city’s dramatic recovery from a ‘rust-belt’ city . . . to a revitalized metropolis” (Suozzo 142).

The ellipses above ( . . . ) tell my reader I’ve removed some of Suozzo’s words.

Or I can do this:

It has been suggested that the Chicago marathon’s rise to international fame in the 1990s directly paralleled the city’s return to affluence and fashionability (Suozzo 142).  With this in mind, we might also say that….

BUT I CAN’T DO THIS!:

The Chicago marathon’s rise to international fame in the 1990s clearly parallels the city’s return to affluence and fashionability in the same time period.  With this in mind, we might also say that….

CREATING IN-TEXT CITATIONS
In-text citations are the little parenthetical tags I put at the end of each direct quote or paraphrase in my essay.

In MLA style, it’s the author’s last name and the page number on which the quote appeared that go in the parentheses.  There’s no comma or any other type of punctuation between them.

If there’s no author’s name provided for the source (though the majority of your sources should be authored!), I simply put an abbreviated version of the title, and then the page number.  Had there been, then, no author given for the article I was quoting on the previous page, my in-text citation would have looked like this: (“Chicago” 142).

If you can’t provide a page number for a quote because, maybe, you got the source using EBSCOhost, or because it’s from a web page, then don’t put anything at all after the author’s name or the abbreviated title.  If your reader doesn’t see a page number, they’ll automatically know it was an electronic source, or a personal interview, or something else for which a page number couldn’t be given.
 

PLEASE NOTE…
1.  I should never see a URL (or web address) in an in-text citation!  I should only see URLs on your works cited page, where you give me all the MLA-required info about each source you’ve quoted.  Put the web page author’s last name in the in-text citation – or an abbreviated version of the page’s title, if there’s no author named.

2.  I should never see a publishing company’s name or a year of publication or anything else not described above in an in-text citation!

3.  If a work has more than one author, put only the first author’s name, alphabetically speaking, in the in-text citation.

4.  If your essay quotes or paraphrases more than one work by an author, you should give an abbreviated version of the title of the work being quoted in each in-text citation.  If, then, I have more than one Andrew Suozzo work cited in my essay, the in-text citation for the quotes on the previous page would look like this: (Suozzo, “Chicago” 142).

5.  If I’m going to be quoting a number of phrases or facts in a row from a source, I can hold off and put my in-text citation after the last one only.  But I need to make it clear to my reader as I begin that string of quoted phrases or facts that I am relaying here so-and-so’s words or ideas.

6.  Use your own good judgment about what sort of ideas and/or facts need to be attributed to a source.  You don’t have to have an in-text citation if you’re telling me that Mars is the fourth planet from the sun, or that the Great Depression started with the stock market crash of 1929.  These things are general knowledge.  If you’re telling me, though, that 289 people died from gunshot wounds in Philadelphia in 2002, then you’re going to need a source!
 
 

Questions for the Research-Paper Proposal
Please write your answers to each of the following on this form, using the backs of the sheets for extra space, if needed.  Your answers, plus two annotated sources, are due in class on Monday, March 10th.

1.  What will the general subject matter of your paper be (e.g. divorce law, animal rights, music on the internet, U.S. Middle-East policy, etc.)?

2.  I know it’s early, but…what point do you think you might want to argue about the subject matter above?  (In other words…what are you right now imagining your paper’s thesis will be?  State it in a clear, complete, single sentence – for example, “Peer-to-peer music-sharing services like KaZaA don’t violate copyright law and should not be shut down.”)

3.  Please brainstorm a list of the types of factual information you’ll probably want to get your hands on.  (For example, info about the history of internet music sites, statistics on how many people use those sites, facts about record sales since those sites have gotten big, etc., etc., etc.)

4.  The Ebscohost database, remember, allows you to ask for publications related to certain subject areas.  Are there any subject areas you know you’ll want to check off
before you begin your Ebscohost search (e.g. law, business, psychology, education, the arts, politics, etc.)?

5.  Are you likely, do you think, to find entire books pertinent to your argument?  Why or why not?

6.  What terms, off the top of your head, do you imagine you’ll want to search on to find good books and articles on your topic?

7.  Spend a few sentences telling me what “first-person” stories you might be able to bring to bear to strengthen your argument?

Please attach to this form two annotated sources that adhere to the instructions and requirements I’ve given you in class!
 

Questions for the Research Paper Progress Report
(Due Monday, April 28)

1.  Please give me your thesis statement as you believe it will appear in your essay.  You should present it in a single, complete, well-focused sentence.

2.  Either attach to this sheet – or write out on the back of it – a reasonably detailed outline illustrating the steps and stages by which your essay will progress and your thesis will be argued.

3.  Taking into consideration the outline you’ve devised, do a little thinking about the types of sources you need that you haven’t yet gotten your hands on.  Certain facts, information, or statistics?  Good background or historical information?  An articulate expression of your adversaries’ positions?  A profile of an important person in the field you’re thinking about?  What else?

4.  Please include with this sheet (a folder or manila envelope might be a good idea) at least twenty annotated sources adhering to the instructions I gave you early in the semester.  This progress report isn’t acceptable without them – and your research paper isn’t acceptable without the progress report!
 
 

Checklist for the Researched Essay Due May 16th

1.  Formatting Stuff

Your essay should have…

_____ No cover sheet!
_____ Your name, the course number, your instructor’s name, and the date of submission on four separate lines in the upper left-hand corner of its first page.  (This info should be double-spaced.)
_____ A good title – with no quote marks, bolding, underlining, or italicizing – situated beneath the above information.
_____ No skipped spaces between the information in the upper left-hand corner and the title, or between the title and the start of the essay.
_____ One-inch margins all around (except for the header – see the next item.)
_____ A header, beginning with the second page, situated in the upper right-hand corner with your last name and the page number.  It should be a half inch from the top of the page.
_____ 12-point font throughout.
_____ Double spacing throughout.
_____ A works cited page, with the words “Works Cited” in plain text at the top of it.
_____ Every work actually cited in your essay (that is, every work directly quoted or paraphrased) listed on that works cited page, alphabetized either by author’s last name, or – in the event you don’t know the author’s last name – the title.
_____ A proper MLA-style citation for each work listed on the “works cited” page.  (Your Writing Research Papers book, remember, helps you with this.)
_____ A proper MLA-style in-text citation after each direct quote or paraphrase in the body of your essay.  It should be after the quotation mark that ends the quote but before the period that ends the sentence.  (See your “How to Credit (in MLA Style) a Writer Whose Idea You Want to Use in Your Own Essay” sheet for more information.)
_____ Quotation marks around every direct (or word-for-word) quote in the essay.
_____ Quotation marks within any direct quote you’re using changed from double marks ( “ ) to single marks ( ‘ ).
_____ Brackets ( [  ] ) around any part of a direct quote you’ve added or altered in any way.  (See your “How to Credit (in MLA Style) a Writer Whose Idea You Want to Use in Your Own Essay” sheet for an example.)
_____ Ellipses ( . . . ) at any point within a direct quote where words have been removed.  (Remember, though, that ellipses should never appear at the beginning or end of a direct quote.  See your “How to Credit (in MLA Style) a Writer Whose Idea You Want to Use in Your Own Essay” sheet for an example.)
_____ No quotation marks around “block” quotes.  (See your “How to Credit (in MLA Style) a Writer Whose Idea You Want to Use in Your Own Essay” sheet for more information.)
_____ Quotation marks around the titles of any magazine, newspaper, or journal articles you mention, and italicization (like this) for any book title you mention.
_____ A staple or paperclip in its upper left-hand corner.
 

2.  Content Stuff

Your essay should have…

_____ A clear central thesis, stated plainly in a single sentence somewhere in or near your essay’s introductory paragraph.
_____ Enough background information on your topic to help a non-specialized reader get sufficiently situated within the issue you’re addressing.
_____ Sufficient explanations of any specialized terms.
_____ About ten to twelve outside sources cited (that is, directly quoted or paraphrased) in its body.
_____ Good introductory phrases for each and every one of its direct quotes and paraphrases.  (See your “How to Credit (in MLA Style) a Writer Whose Idea You Want to Use in Your Own Essay” sheet for examples of good introductory phrases.)
_____ Good organization throughout, as your argument progresses through clear, logically connected stages.
_____ Good, clear transitions between all sentences and paragraphs.
_____ Good support, in the form of facts and opinions from specialists, for each of its important claims.
_____ An effective conclusion that reminds the reader of its central thesis and indicates, perhaps, important questions and issues future thinkers in your field might want to take up.
_____  An absolutely minimal number of grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.
 

3.  Accompanying Stuff

The final draft of your essay should come to me with…

_____ Both the proposal and progress report sheets you’ve already turned in to me.
_____  Any rough drafts you’ve got.
_____ Any outlines and brainstorming activities you’ve done beyond those for your proposal and progress report sheets.
_____ At least twenty annotated sources – those actually cited in your essay and all the others that didn’t make the cut, too.  (See your “Instructions and Requirements for Research-Paper Annotated Sources” sheet for more information about annotated sources.)
 

Please put all your stuff, with the final draft of your researched essay on top, in either a folder or a big envelope!  If you want your essay back this summer, please leave me a self-addressed, stamped envelope so I can mail it to you.  Otherwise, you’re welcome to swing by my office for it in August.  I’ll still be in Penn 131.