Class with Keltz: Recent Episodes
Kelli Keltz
This podcast offers announcements, information, and short lessons provided by Professor Keltz, Associate Department Head of English.
Weekly Overview Transcript
Welcome to our final unit, student writers!
Because our due date for the Unit 3 essay fell on the first Wednesday of this new Unit, you will be completing your work on the research-based argument during the beginning of this work week. Please keep in mind that this is a very short work week of just three days (Monday through Wednesday), during which you will spend your time revising and polishing your final draft of the research based-argument.
Remember, this major written assignment is the most heavily weighted at 25% of your total course grade. So, we strongly encourage you to spend sufficient time moving through the revision process; and – perhaps most important, please watch the Unit 3 Review video on How to Improve Your Draft early, by Monday evening, to ensure you fully understand our expectations for revision and where to find some important course materials that will help you in your revision efforts. The video lesson is only 6 ½ minutes long, and it includes some valuable advice that you really won’t want to miss.
This week also includes a bonus, extra credit opportunity that is due no later than 11:59PM on Wednesday, the same day you will submit your final draft of Essay 3. You can learn more about this opportunity in the weekly lesson module.
Now, let me give you some advice. If – after you watch the “How to Improve your Draft video on Monday” – you have any last minute questions or concerns about your researched-based argument essay, please reach out to your instructor no later than noon on Tuesday. Remember, your instructor is not tied to his or her computer or to his or her email, so the request to reach out by noon on Tuesday is made to allow your instructor ample time to both receive and reply to the questions or concerns that you raise. Messages that are sent on Wednesday – the day your essay is due – may not be received in time for your instructor to reply prior to the time you are required to upload your submission.
When you read through the instructions included with the essay 3 submission area, please pay close attention to the “Important Notes” we have included about the grading of this major written assignment. Unlike the previous two essay you have written, this one is being submitted at the very end of the semester and the evening before final exam week starts. Consequently, your instructor will not have sufficient time within which to provide you detailed feedback. Because of this, and in order to return your graded essays promptly, we will be grading your essay 3 submissions holistically using the assignment’s rubric. Our goal in doing so is to be able to return your grades in time for you to see them before the last day in the final exam window.
Finally, we want to remind you to go to the final exam week lesson module immediately afteryou submit your final draft of the research-based argument. While the first lesson module in Unit 4 includes the last lessons aligned with and the submission area for your research-based argument, the 2nd lesson module in Unit 4 includes your exam prep materials, instructions and expectations, the assigned readings, a sample exam outline, and the assignment link for your submission of the final exam.
As always, your instructor is available via email or Teams chat if you have any questions. We wish you the very best during this final stretch of ENG 111!
TRANSCRIPT
I know I don’t usually have a mid-week podcast, but I wanted to check in on y’all during this very busy work week.
By now, you have completed your topic proposal; and, if you are keeping up with the lessons and activities in the “Independent Writing Process for Essay 3,” you have also completed your research as well as a preliminary draft of the Works Cited page for your essay 3. All in all, you’ve been extremely productive, and you should feel well prepared to begin thinking about how you will use your sources to provide support, opposition, or background information for the uninformed reader. Remember, however, the primary voice in this essay should be yours, not a mere summary of your sources. I talked a lot about that in the 1st podcast for this week, so I won’t belabor that point.
I encourage you to work through this week's Advanced Citation and Source Integration review lesson as well as the Plagiarism Lesson carefully so that you can avoid inadvertent plagiarism as you begin integrating well-chosen, supporting details from the required sources into your essay. Here’s an important tip: this week’s plagiarism quiz is a bit more difficult than you might think. To be successful on the quiz, make sure you carefully read the original source and then closely compare the sample paraphrase or quote in the quiz question to determine if the sample is plagiarized or not. Remember, just swapping out synonyms is not paraphrasing correctly. So even if the sample is cited correctly, if the sample sentence looks near identical to the original source with just a few words swapped out, that sample sentence is an example of plagiarism.
Here is some more advice. The key to avoiding unintentional plagiarism is actually very simple. Don’t look at the source while you are writing about it. Instead, read the source, put the source away where you can’t see it, and then write a sentence or two paraphrasing the key ideas that you would like to use as support in your essay; but, do so in your own words. Of course, you will want to add specific details or quotes from the sources that also need to be cited, but your first draft should be written entirely in your own words based entirely on your memory of the information you learned during the research process. Again, the trick is to NOT look at the source as you write your paper.
Now that you have completed your research on your chosen topic for Essay 3, the mini-lessons and activities in the “FRI & SAT Continue Independent Writing Process” folder asks you to craft a preliminary thesis and revise the preliminary Works Cited page that you drafted earlier this week and on which you should have cited each of your five required sources. Don’t forget that there are detailed instructions and models for citing each type of source in Rules for Writers. You could also work with the tutors in the Online ILC or Virtual REAL Center to ensure that you have cited each of your five sources correctly.
Wishing you a successful end to this busy week!
Transcript: Week 11 Overview
Because the four page draft of your essay is due after the Thanksgiving break, we strongly encourage you to complete your outline early this week so that you can move directly to drafting during the break. You will find instructions for writing this outline in this week’s lesson, and here is my first tip. Read carefully the “Creating Your Outline for Essay 3” mini-lesson because in it you will see that I give you explicit instructions for how to develop each section of this essay. If you review this resource carefully, there is really no reason why you shouldn’t be able to develop the essay appropriately and according to instructions.
Now let’s talk a little bit about outlines. I have seen far too many students skip outlining and dive right into drafting because they view outlining as a time-consuming, unnecessary extra step. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I will argue that it is much easier for students to develop a longer essay if they start with an outline. I would also argue that the outlining process can actually decrease the amount of time you will need to spend in drafting. This is something I honestly didn’t buy into until well into my graduate school years, but I hope that you will hear me out and avoid my naiveté!
At the onset, an outline will save you the frustration of staring at a blank screen while you wait for inspiration to hit you. You know you’ve all been there! Even more important, however, an outline will save you time by providing you with a writing plan as well as a base structure within which you can simply and relatively quickly add your analysis and supporting details.
You see, essay organization can be incredibly challenging when writers generate pages of text and then try to impose order. It is so hard to create a critical distance from your words once you’ve put them on paper; and students who don’t begin the process with an early eye toward organization and structure will -- more often than not – end up with drafts that ramble, drafts that include redundant, irrelevant, illogically developed, or seemingly obvious content. Please, don’t let this happen to you! When you take the time to outline, to lay out your thesis and your topic sentences, along with a few paraphrased facts to ensure you have support to develop your main points, what you end up with is a detailed roadmap for the entire essay; and a roadmap can be easily expanded and quickly checked for gaps in logic or development. All of this in mind, we encourage you to print out and complete the outline template early this week. Then, talk to your instructor or a tutor at the REAL Center or ILC if you have any questions about the base structure of your outline.
Finally, you will notice that this week’s attendance-related assignment is to submit your drafted introduction with thesis statement before you leave for the break. This assignment was designed to ensure that you completed one of the most difficult parts of the draft before the break.
Let me know if you have any questions. Have a great week, and enjoy your holiday.
Transcript: Week 9 Overview
Welcome to our new week!
Now more than ever, as you work to complete the major written assignment from our last unit while beginning a brand new unit of study, you will need to make every effort to manage your time and your workload with great thought and care.
With regard to the Unit 2 essay, due during the beginning of this week, let me give you a quick word of advice. I cannot begin to tell you how important it is that you watch the Essay 2 Feedback Resource Video. It’s only 11-minutes in length and much shorter than any lecture you might have in a seated class. The video covers not only the most common problems students have demonstrated in their draft submissions, but it also offers specific revision strategies to address those problems. Please, don’t miss out on this valuable resource!
I also encourage you to take a second look at the feedback that was offered to you on your graded, Summary/Analysis assignment. Although that early writing assignment did not require you to write a “standard” academic essay, like the one you are submitting this week, it did require you to compose standard-academic body paragraphs. With that in mind, you should use the feedback you received on that early assignment to guide your revision and continued development of the body paragraphs within your effects-based argument essay.
At this point in the semester, I hope you are recognizing that none of the writing you do in this class is mere “busywork.” In fact, most of the writing we do builds upon the previous, allowing you to practice and apply skills that will help you grow as a writer of standard academic essays. Theeffects-based argument essay you will submit this week is worth 20% of your total course grade. That’s a big chunk of your grade; and for some, success on this essay will have a significant influence on their ability to pass the course.
Looking ahead to mid-week, we will begin Unit 3, and the topics we will cover are interesting for sure, but you’ll learn more about those later in the week! While Unit 3 expects you to demonstrate continued mastery of standard, academic essay writing, it also expects you to develop further your ability to incorporate outside source material into your own ideas and arguments. With those goals in mind, our new unit will delve into research-based argument, adding internet research methods to our continuing study and work with source integration.
I wish you all a productive and successful week!
Week 6 Overview Transcript (12-Week Course)
Welcome to this new week, student writers!
This week we will begin with a lesson on tone and style. As a college-level writer, you must learn to strike a balance between overly pretentious, stuffy writing and conversational, informal writing. This lesson on tone and style, then, will show you that successful, academic writing should follow the four C’s of effective communication; it should be clear, complete, correct, and concise. Once you finish that lesson, you will be ready to take the quiz on tone and style. In this quiz, you will be asked to revise sentences in order to eliminate wordiness, clichés, or slang. So, take your time with this lesson and please do not be afraid to make major changes to the sentences in the quiz in order to make them as clear and concise as possible.
In addition, this week, you will be reading the second two readings associated with the effects-based argument, which asks you to consider how technology affects social relationships or identity. Remember, it’s important that you read all four of the required readings associated with it this essay because you are going to have to use them for your essay. In addition, you are also going to discuss all four readings in this week’s discussion board. As you will find out, some of the authors believe technology such as social media, the internet, and smartphones have been incredibly damaging to social relationships. These authors argue that we are quickly losing face to face communication skills when we rely heavily on social media to connect with our family and friends. They also think that creating the perfect identity on social media has led some users to experience depression and anxiety. In contrast, others believe that social media sites may be helping users overcome their shyness and develop significant relationships. In fact, some believe social media and the internet can actually combat anxiety. This week, you will get to read these various arguments and then decide for yourself what you think. I look forward to reading your responses in this week’s discussion!
Last week’s schedule for your independent writing process asked that you brainstorm a list of 15-20 effects that you believe technology has on social relationships and identity. If you completed that independent activity, and I sincerely hope you did, you should have a good idea which effects you feel most compelled to explain in your essay. The next logical step in your independent writing process, then, is to craft your thesis and begin structuring an outline of topic sentences that you can use next week when you will need to begin drafting the essay.
Finally, our grammar assignments in LaunchPad will help you learn how to use pronouns correctly. Pronoun-antecedent errors occur when the pronoun does not match the noun it’s replacing in either number or gender. Pronoun reference errors occur when it is unclear what the pronoun is referring to. Pronoun errors are some of the most common and most frequent errors that we see in student writing, so we hope you work carefully through the LaunchPad unit on pronouns so that you can start avoiding pronoun errors in your writing.
I wish you a productive week of continued learning (and writing), and don’t forget that reply posts in discussion are due on Sunday!
Week 4 Overview Podcast Transcript
Welcome to draft week, student writers!
This week, we will begin with a video lesson on how to format your essay correctly, using MLA guidelines. Please pay close attention to the details explained in this video so that you don’t end up giving away points on your essay for basic formatting errors. Then, our first graded assignment for the week, due Wednesday, asks that you create your Works Cited page for the draft you will submit on Friday. Here’s our first tip! As you review carefully this week’s lesson on Creating Your Works Cited Page, take note that the sample citation included in that lesson is very close to the citation you will need to create for your Works Cited page. We provide examples such as this one for your benefit, so please do not miss them by skimming over (or skipping entirely) a lesson! Remember, your final draft of the Summary/Analysis essay is worth 15% of your total course grade, and it will include assessment of your MLA formatting as well as your source integration (which means you must create a Works Cited page that not only lists your chosen article but also conforms to MLA documentation rules).
Most importantly, this is the week you will submit your preliminary draft of the summary/analysis essay to your peer response workshop for review. Since this is our first workshop, I want to mention that many students (at this point in the class) tell us they don’t normally enjoy peer response workshops because they find them to be either “uncomfortable” or “a waste of time.” The first group, those who feel “uncomfortable,” often feel this way because – as student writers themselves – they just don’t feel equipped to provide feedback on their classmates’ writing. The 2nd group, those suggesting that peer workshops are a “waste of time,” typically feel this way because of past experience, because the feedback they received from classmates in a past workshop was generally unhelpful. Fear not, student writers! To help overcome those common problems associated with peer response, this week’s module includes an important lesson on how to provide constructive feedback.
Remember, you don’t have to be a writing expert to give honest (but kind) and useful feedback about any piece of writing. You just have to care enough to actually read the draft thoroughly and pay attention to specific areas within the draft that don’t quite meet the goals of the assignment. In this week’s “Post Your Peer Reviews” item, we provide you with specific questions to answer as you read each draft, and these questions will help you identify those areas of feedback that will be most useful for your classmates. Just make sure you provide detailed and specific feedback in response to each question that is listed in the instructions for posting your peer reviews. Remember, you will be graded on the quality and clarity of the feedback that you provide in this workshop, and – perhaps even more important – you do not want any of your classmates to feel that YOUR reviews were generally unhelpful.
One final bit of advice before I sign off. Please take note of the “Important Course Policy Reminder” that is posted immediately following this week’s list of “Assignments, Tasks, and Activities.” I’d really hate to see anyone in this class give away hard-earned points on their final draft of a major written assignment simply because they did not complete (or did not meet the length requirements of) a preliminary draft during draft week.
I wish you another productive work week; and, as always, reach out via email or MS Teams chat if you have any questions about this week’s lessons or assignments.
Transcript: Week 3 Overview and Advice – 12WK
Last week, you began the first two stages of your writing process for the summary / analysis essay; and if you completed last week’s independent work schedule for the writing process, which I sincerely hope you did, you should have ended the week with a drafted paragraph of summery and a pretty good idea of the two rhetorical features you would like to analyze in your two body paragraphs of analysis. This week our focus will be on those two body paragraphs of analysis and your thesis statement.
Our first video lesson explains four steps for writing a paragraph of analysis. The video also describes and goes over a sample for each of the required components within an analysis paragraph. Please, do not skip that video lesson! It is only 7 minutes long, and I promise it will not be a waste of your time.
After you complete this week’s practice writing assignment and you have drafted your first paragraph of analysis, your focus will move to your thesis statement. You definitely won’t want to miss this week’s content on crafting a thesis. In it, you will find that we have provided you with thesis statement templates that you can actually use in your essay. Just remember, the last sentence of your introduction should be your thesis statement.
I encourage you to review carefully the highlighted tasks on the work schedule for your independent writing process. In addition to developing your paragraphs of analysis and preliminary thesis, you should also begin generating ideas for and drafting your essay’s introduction. If you review the summary / analysis essay prompt, you will see that the first full paragraph under the “Assignment Structure” heading describes the content required in your intro and that your intro must include some background information on the author of the essay you have chosen to write about. We haven't given you that information, nor is it provided in our course reader. This means that you are going to have to do some basic Google searching to find out who the author was. As you do this basic research, try to find out what types of publications the author typically wrote for. Were they popular publications, news related, academic, or do they fall into some other category? Also, try to figure out the type of topics and issues the author was most often concerned with in his or her writing. Did the author tend to write about ideas that were political, social, cultural, academic, or business-related? I think you get the idea. Whatever the case, your answers to those questions will not only help you draft your introduction; they will also help you determine who the intended audience for the essay you are analyzing might be. If, for example, the essay you are analyzing was originally published in a magazine for educators (and one of them was), it would be logical to suggest that the author’s intended audience might be teachers. This information will be especially important to recognize as you draft your paragraphs of analysis. You may need to dig deep to find this information, but I am confident you can do it!
A quick word of warning before I sign off. As you do some basic searching for information about your author and the essay’s original place (and time-frame) of publication, be sure that you do not plagiarize any of the phrasing or sentencing of the information you find online. Any information you add about the author to your essay’s introduction must be written using your own phrasing, or it must be quoted from a source, as appropriate. Ask questions about this if you have them. You do not want to be cited for plagiarism!
Good luck this week, my fearless student writers! And, as always, I am just an email or Teams chat away if you need me.
Transcript: ENG 111, Week 9 Overview
This week you will read the second two readings associated with the second prompt for the effects-based argument; this is the prompt about how technology affects intelligence. I want to start this episode with an extremely important reminder. Here it is: intelligence is not defined as the ability to access information. Let me repeat that, intelligence is not defined as the ability to access information. You are not intelligent because you know how to use Google to look up information about some topic. Instead, intelligence is the ability to think critically, to delve into complexities, to engage in debate, to analyze, and to synthesize information. Too many students in previous semesters got stuck on the idea that technology must be making us smarter simply because it has increased our access to information.
Consider this: Does walking into a library full of millions of books make you smarter? No, it does not. You have to read those books to increase your intelligence. That’s the difference between having access to knowledge and being intelligent.
Just like last week, the authors you read this week have varying ideas about the effects of technology on intelligence. For example, Clay Shirky believes that the internet has not only increased our ability to access more information (than we could ever possibly hope to consume) but it has also given us the opportunity to collaborate together and ensure that the most accurate, the most well-researched information is gathered and shared. In contrast, our 2nd author (whose name I am not going to pronounce because I’m sure I will say it incorrectly), well, he believes that, “Social networks train us to focus on images and emotions, sapping the quest for knowledge.” He sees social media sites as responsible for reducing “our curiosity by showing us exactly what we already want and think, based on our profiles and preferences.” So while he agrees with Shirky that the original intent of the internet was to collect and share knowledge on a massive scale, he also believes that social media sites have distorted that original intent, creating platforms that make us less likely to engage in ideas outside of what we already believe.
Just like last week, you’ll get a chance to respond to these readings in this week’s discussion board, and we can’t wait to hear your ideas about this controversial topic!
Your other focus this week will be on drafting your introduction and thesis statement for your effects-based argument, so if you haven’t already done so, you must choose which prompt you are going to write about immediately. You also need to review the lesson on writing effective introductions and conclusions before you draft your introduction. Our hope is that you will use one of the strategies on page 5 of that lesson to start your introduction.
I wish you a productive week, and as always, if you have any questions or concerns, contact your instructor right away.
Week 7 Overview Transcript
Welcome to this new week, student writers!
This week we will begin with a lesson on tone and style. As a college-level writer, you must learn to strike a balance between overly pretentious, stuffy writing and conversational, informal writing. This lesson on tone and style, then, will show you that successful, academic writing should follow the four C’s of effective communication; it should be clear, complete, correct, and concise. Once you finish that lesson, you will be ready to take the quiz on tone and style. In this quiz, you will be asked to revise sentences in order to eliminate wordiness, clichés, or slang. So, take your time with this lesson and please do not be afraid to make major changes to the sentences in the quiz in order to make them as clear and concise as possible.
In addition, this week, you will be reading the second two readings associated with the first prompt for the effects-based argument; this is the prompt that asks you to consider how technology affects social relationships or identity. You may or may not end up choosing this prompt, but it’s important that you read all four readings associated with it regardless because you will likely review at least one classmate’s draft about this prompt. Plus, you are also going to discuss all four readings in this week’s discussion board. As you will find out, some of the authors believe technology such as social media, the internet, and smartphones have been incredibly damaging to social relationships. These authors argue that we are quickly losing face to face communication skills when we rely heavily on social media to connect with our family and friends. They also think that creating the perfect identity on social media has led some users to experience depression and anxiety. In contrast, others believe that social media sites may be helping users overcome their shyness and develop significant relationships. In fact, some believe social media and the internet can actually combat anxiety. This week, you will get to read these various arguments and then decide for yourself what you think.
We are also giving you an opportunity this week to start brainstorming some ideas for your essay. This brainstorming/prewriting activity is an independent, non-graded exercise, but we think brainstorming a list of 10-25 effects of technology on either social relationships or intelligence this week will help you maintain your own voice when you draft your essay over the next few weeks.
Finally, our grammar assignments in LaunchPad will help you learn how to use pronouns correctly. Pronoun-antecedent errors occur when the pronoun does not match the noun it’s replacing in either number or gender. Pronoun reference errors occur when it is unclear what the pronoun is referring to. Pronoun errors are some of the most common and most frequent errors that we see in student writing, so we hope you work carefully through the LaunchPad unit on pronouns so that you can start avoiding pronoun errors in your writing.
I wish you a productive week of continued learning (and writing), and don’t forget that reply posts in discussion are due on Sunday!
Week 6 Overview Podcast Transcript
Congratulations student writers! This is the week that you will complete the first unit of the semester, which ends with your submission of the summary/analysis essay. Week 6 also marks the first week of our second unit, during which you will compose an effects-based argument. Before we discuss the specifics of Week 6, we would like for you to take some time in order to reflect on your progress in the course thus far. Have you done your best work in Unit 1? If not, why? If, for example, you realize that you missed two or more assignments, what are you going to do differently in Unit 2 to ensure that you won’t miss any more? What patterns of behavior or thinking will you need to change to end Unit 1 successfully and to be successful on the lessons and the assignments that you will complete for Unit 2? Now is the time to really reflect on your past behaviors and thinking, your time management strategies, and your work ethics in order to set new goals for yourself for the remainder of the semester.
Now let’s talk about Week 6 specifically. You’ll begin this week focusing on the last stage of the writing process for your summary/analysis essay, which as you’ll remember is Stage 5: Revise and Polish. As a reminder, Stage 5 of the writing process involves three steps: global revision, local revision, and surface revision. To help you with both global and surface revisions, we have included a video tutorial on how to improve your draft. Please watch this video well before the night your final draft is due so that you can apply the important lessons and advice included in the video to your global and surface revisions. In addition, please check out the Proofreading Strategies video or podcast to get some great tips on how to successfully find and correct your sentence-level errors. Remember, folks, proofreading is the very last stage of the writing process, and it can make all the difference. To effectively proofread your essay, you’re going to want to print out a copy so that you can read it aloud with a pen in hand. Even if you can’t print out your essay, reading it aloud – or even better, having someone else read it aloud to you – will help you find and correct around 70% of your sentence-level errors. The final draft of your summary/analysis essay is worth 15% of your overall course grade, so it really is a major test of everything you learned throughout Unit 1.
Once you’ve submitted your final draft, it will be time to turn your attention to your effects-based argument. This second essay assignment asks you to consider the effects of technology, such as the internet, social media, or smart phones, on either social relationships and identity or on intelligence. This week, you’ll read through the prompt and rubric, watch a video introduction to the assignment, and read the first two readings associated with the new assignment.
And of course, as usual, you have Launch Pad assignments to complete, so it’s a busy week, folks, and you’ll need to manage your time wisely to complete it successfully.
That’s all for now! As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please email your instructor right away.
Transcript: Week 4
Last week, you began the first two stages of your writing process for the summary / analysis essay; and if you completed last week’s independent work schedule for the writing process, which I sincerely hope you did, you should have ended the week with a drafted paragraph of summery and a pretty good idea of the two rhetorical features you would like to analyze in your two body paragraphs of analysis.
This week our focus will be on your two body paragraphs of analysis, and this week’s video lesson explains four steps for writing a paragraph of analysis. The video also describes and goes over a sample for each of the required components within an analysis paragraph. Please, do not skip that video lesson! It is only 7 minutes long, and I promise it will not be a waste of your time.
After you complete this week’s practice writing assignment and you have drafted your first paragraph of analysis, I encourage you to review carefully the highlighted tasks on the work schedule for your independent writing process. In addition to developing your two body paragraphs of analysis, you should also begin generating ideas for and drafting your essay’s introduction and preliminary thesis. We will go over thesis statements more in-depth next week, but I wanted to end this podcast with some tips for drafting your intro.
First, be sure to review the summary / analysis essay prompt. The first full paragraph under the Assignment Structure heading describes the content you must include in your intro. There you will read that your intro must include some background information on the author of the essay you have chosen to write about. We haven't given you that information, nor is it provided in our course reader. This means that you are going to have to do some basic google searching to find out who the author was. As you do this basic research, try to find out what types of publications the author typically wrote for. Were they popular, news related, academic, or do they fall into some other category? Also, try to figure out the type of topics and issues the author was most often concerned with in his or her writing. Did the author tend to write about issues that were political, social, cultural, academic, business-related? I think you get the idea. Whatever the case, your answers to those questions will not only help you draft your introduction; they will also help you determine who the intended audience for the essay you are analyzing might be.
A quick word of warning before I sign off. As you do some basic searching for information about your author, be sure that you do not plagiarize any of the phrasing or sentencing of the information you find online. Any information you add about the author to your essay’s introduction must be written using your own phrasing, or it must be quoted from a source, as appropriate.
Good luck this week student writers! As always, be sure that you contact your instructor right away with any questions or concerns.
Transcript: Week 3 Overview Hi, class, and welcome to week 3!
Unlike some composition instructors -- who jump right in to essay development – others of us prefer to step back and begin with paragraph development. In fact, when you review the resources in this week’s module, you will learn that your first major assignment for this class will not be a standard written essay; rather, it will be a “Rhetorical Portfolio” composed of a very specific series of standalone paragraphs. You’ll learn more about this major assignment in this week’s module, but I wanted to give you a brief explanation as to why we choose to start the semester by having you focus on developing paragraphs as opposed to developing essays.
You see, essays are composed of multiple paragraphs, so the ability to write strong, coherent, well-supported paragraphs is – arguably – one of the most important skills a student must learn in order to craft a well-organized and fully-developed essay. We also like to have our students start with paragraphs because very few students have actually had opportunities to really study, analyze, and practice strategies for developing standard academic body paragraphs.
With this starting point in mind, the assigned resources for this week will introduce you, first, to the characteristics of effectively developed body paragraphs and, second, to the rhetorical patterns often used to develop body paragraphs in academic essays.
You’ll also notice that there’s a critical reading activity early this week, and it’s important because it will prepare you for our discussion later in the week. For the critical reading activity, you will analyze and evaluate a few body paragraphs in a very interesting, published article on "The Problems of Students Evaluating Faculty." Interesting topic, right? I l know. We are really looking forward to reading your thoughts about that article in this week's discussion!
All of the resources and activities assigned for this week and covering paragraph development are extremely valuable because you will begin the early stages of your writing process for the Rhetorical Portfolio this week. How exciting!
Finally, this week will end with an introduction to LaunchPad and your first foundational grammar assignment. Did you remember to register for LaunchPad (LP) last week? If not, you may have already earned a zero on that required, homework assignment. Even worse, you won’t be prepared to complete the graded, grammar assignment due this week.
Listen, if ever you have questions about the assigned work, but you don’t contact your instructor in advance of due dates, your instructor won’t be able to offer timely help. So, please, as we begin this new week, contact your instructor immediatelywith any questions or concerns you might have with LP.
That’s it for now. I wish you a productive and interesting week!
Please listen to this short, two minute episode to learn about a time-sensitive, extra credit opportunity.
TRANSCRIPT
This is the first semester that we created podcasts for our classes, and we decided to use them because online English courses are notoriously text heavy. Our hope was that the podcasts might be beneficial to students who respond best to an auditory delivery of content. We also hoped the podcasts would help us mimic a traditional, seated class environment, allowing you to hear our voices at the start of each week and to help you all to feel more connected to us as real, human instructors behind the screen (not mere names on a page full of text).
So, now we want your feedback on our use of podcasts as a method for delivering weekly content. Did the podcasts we created achieve what we had hoped they would? Are there additional benefits to weekly podcasts that we hadn’t even considered? If you are willing to call in and provide us thoughtful answers to the two specific questions that I will read in just a moment, you will earn 2 extra credit points on your upcoming essay assignment.
Here are the questions:
- In general, what do you see as the most valuable or beneficial aspect of receiving course content via podcast?
- In particular, what did you like or appreciate most about the specific type of content that we offered each week in our “Weekly Overview and Advice” podcasts?
In order to earn the extra credit, you must call in to the Anchor messaging system and leave a voice message with your answers. Follow closely the instructions that are included with the attached transcript for this episode. You will find that transcript posted in Blackboard with this episode. Answers sent via email or any other method will not earn extra credit.
Transcript: Week 15 Content Overview (and Advice)
Before I get to this week’s overview, I want to take a minute to ask if you completed the writing process action plan from last week. If so, you’ve drafted your thesis and you already know some of the main points that your essay will cover. This means that you are in a very good position to begin the outline assigned in this week’s writing process action plan. Please contact your instructor early this week with any questions you might have about your preliminary thesis.
Because the four page draft of your essay is due on Friday, we strongly encourage you to complete your outline by Tuesday so that you can move directly to drafting on Wednesday. This will give you a solid three days within which to complete the full four pages that are required for this week’s draft workshop.
Now let’s talk a little bit about outlines. I have seen far too many students skip outlining and dive right into drafting because they view outlining as a time-consuming, unnecessary extra step. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I will argue that it is much easier for students to develop a longer essay if they start with an outline. I would also argue that the outlining process can actually decrease the amount of time you will need to spend in drafting. This is something I honestly didn’t buy into until well into my graduate school years, but I hope that you will hear me out and avoid my naiveté!
At the onset, an outline will save you the frustration of staring at a blank screen while you wait for inspiration to hit you. You know you’ve all been there! Even more important, however, an outline will save you time by providing you with a writing plan as well as a base structure within which you can simply and relatively quickly add your analysis and supporting details.
You see, essay organization can be incredibly challenging when writers generate pages of text and then try to impose order. It is so hard to create a critical distance from your words once you’ve put them on paper; and students who don’t begin the process with an early eye toward organization and structure will -- more often than not – end up with drafts that ramble, drafts that include redundant, irrelevant, illogically developed, or seemingly obvious content. Please, don’t let this happen to you! When you take the time to outline, to lay out your thesis and your topic sentences, along with a few paraphrased facts to ensure you have support to develop your main points, what you end up with is a detailed roadmap for the entire essay; and a roadmap can be easily expanded and quickly checked for gaps in logic or development. All of this in mind, we encourage you to print out and complete the outline template early this week. Then, talk to your instructor or a tutor at the REAL Center or ILC if you have any questions about the base structure of your outline.
Finally, you will notice that this week’s attendance-related assignments are scheduled differently. Unlike most weeks, your first attendance-related submission (the four page draft) is due on Friday instead of our typical Wednesday. Although there is no Wednesday submission this week, don’t think this means we are giving you a vacation! On the contrary, we just wanted to provide you additional time within which to complete your outline and four-page draft. Please use the time with wisdom, and feel free to submit your draft early if you are able to do so! Your workshop responses due on Sunday will be this week’s second attendance-related assignment.
Week 13 Transcript: Weekly Content Overview
Over the past few weeks, you have learned a little about cults, conspiracy theories, and unsolved murders, the three topic choices for your next major writing assignment. Last week we asked you to begin the writing process by scheduling a research plan and by completing an interest inventory. Did you complete both of those tasks? If so, you likely finished last week with a strong idea of which of the three topic choices you were most interested in researching. You also finished the week with individual dues dates for each step in the process, and you know that there is not a lot of time within which to complete a substantial amount of work.
Fear not, folks, because the fun starts this week! This week you will begin your research so that you can propose your narrowed topic by the week’s end.
Remember, the essay you will compose for this Unit does not ask you to speak generally about one of the three topic choices; rather, it asks that you answer a specific “why” question connected to one of those topics, and it asks that you do so by analyzing a specific cult, conspiracy theory, or unsolved murder that you will learn more about via your independent research.
As you begin your research process, we want to stress (again) the importance of finding your own voice and ideas on the topic. Your research will inevitably turn up an array of opinions and viewpoints about your topic, and while you will use those to support (or provide opposition for) your argument and to provide background for the uninformed reader, your essay will not be a simple summary of your research. Remember, your thesis for the research-based argument will offer your informed answer to the why question associated with your topic.
This week is going to be a very important and extremely busy one. To begin with, you will learn about thee very important aspects of research: (1) how to conduct research through the library databases, (2) how to evaluate web sites in order to determine whether or not a web site is appropriate for use in academic research and writing, and (3) how to distinguish between fake and real news.
Your professors will probably always tell you that the best sources for academic research can be found via the library databases, and I would agree with them! Because of this, I will suggest that you allow yourself no less than a full hour to work through all of the content areas on the Library Research lesson page. The other two lessons, on Internet research and How to spot fake news, may only take a half hour or so to complete, but they are no less important.
Thanks to the internet, it is – in fact – easier than ever to quickly find all sorts of information about any topic. However, the accuracy of that information is not always so straightforward. How do you know, for example, which company, organization, political party, or person created and maintains the website you are visiting? I know you are aware that media bias does exist, but have you thought critically about what that bias means, how to recognize it, or how people use the Internet to purposefully spread disinformation? We believe that information literacy, which is the ability to identify, to find, to evaluate, and to use information effectively, is one of the most important skills you will need to be successful not only in college, but in the workplace and in life in general.
I wish you a productive week of research, and I encourage you to keep up with this week’s Writing Process Action Plan! Next week you will complete your research, and draft your thesis and outline!
Transcript: Week 11 Overview
Welcome to our new week!
Now more than ever, as you work to complete the major written assignment from our last unit while beginning a brand new unit of study, you will need to make every effort to manage your time and your workload with great thought and care.
With regard to the Unit 2 essay, due during the beginning of this week, let me give you a quick word of advice. If you have not already done so, please – I cannot begin to tell you how important this is -- please be sure to watch the Essay 1 Feedback Resource Video from last week. It was only 10-minutes in length and much shorter than any lecture you might have in a seated class. The video covered not only the most common problems students have demonstrated in their draft submissions but it also offered specific revision strategies to address those problems. Please, don’t miss out on this valuable resource!
I also encourage you to take a second look at the feedback that was offered to you on your graded, Rhetorical Portfolio assignment. Although that early assignment did not require you to write a “standard” academic essay, like the one you are submitting this week, it did require you to compose standard-academic body paragraphs. With that in mind, you should use the feedback you received on that early assignment to guide your revision and continued development of the body paragraphs within your definition essay.
At this point in the semester, I hope you are recognizing that none of the writing you do in this class is mere “busywork.” In fact, most of the writing we do builds upon the previous, allowing you to practice and apply skills that will help you grow as a writer of standard academic essays. The extended definition essay you will submit this week is worth 20% of your total course grade. That’s a big chunk of your grade; and for some, success on this essay will have a significant influence on their ability to pass the course.
Looking ahead to mid-week, we will begin Unit 3, and the topics we will cover are interesting for sure, but you’ll learn more about those later in the week! While Unit 3 expects you to demonstrate continued mastery of standard, academic essay writing, it also expects you to develop further your use of rhetorical patterns to develop main points. With those goals in mind, our new unit will delve into research-based argument, adding library research methods to our continuing study and work with source integration.
I wish you all a productive and successful week!
Transcript: ENG 111, Week 10 Overview
Our initial focus this week will be on how to cite sources correctly. This stuff can be tricky, and there is an early quiz this week covering both works cited entries and in-text citations. With that in mind, I encourage you to get an early start on the resources included in this week’s folder, titled “Citing Sources.”
The week’s early focus on MLA citation will also prepare you for your continued work on and submission of your extended-definition essay draft. That’s right folks, you submit your draft this week and participate in peer workshop. Let me offer a quick word of advice. After you submit your draft to the workshop, you should also consider submitting it to the Virtual REAL Center to get some feedback from one of our fabulous ENG-instructor tutors. Instructions for using the VREAL Center can be found under Course Resources.
I also want to add a word of warning about this week’s workshop. Students who post late drafts to workshop make it very difficult for their peers to complete their reviews on time. Because of this, you are not required to complete reviews for any person in your workshop group who submits his or her draft after the assigned due date and time.
Please, be respectful of your groupmates this week; and as you complete your peer reviews, be sure to answer each of the numbered-review questions, according to instructions. Don’t skim the instructions, and please, try not to wait until the last minute on these reviews. Doing so often leads to incomplete, overly general, and – frankly – inadequate reviews. Remember, your groupmates’ -- just like you – would like to receive useful feedback that will inform their continued revision and ongoing development of their essays.
Since we are on the subject of feedback, pay close attention to the draft feedback video lesson posted in this week’s module. This valuable resource provides tips for improving your draft. You will need to keep these tips in mind as you continue your revision efforts and as you offer feedback to your groupmates.
Finally, this week’s LaunchPad lessons will teach you to use commas correctly. Let me give you a hint. There is far more to comma rules than, "Don't use commas when you pause."
I wish you a productive and successful week of revision!
Transcript: ENG 111, Week 9 Overview During this unit, we have provided you with a wealth of resources and ideas regarding the choices, habits, behaviors, and characteristics of successful students. This week, we will review two final characteristics: a growth mindset and emotional intelligence. Do you demonstrate either of these characteristics? You’ll have to learn about them this week and find out! As a reminder, each of the resources assigned in this unit have been purposefully selected to help you think critically about and prepare effectively for your drafting of the Extended Definition Essay. Check your calendars, because that draft is due soon! If you haven't already started, you really need to begin drafting this week. At the start of this week, you will review how to write a thesis statement for an academic essay, but you will do so in more detail, building on what you learned about thesis statements in Week 6. You will also learn about the "quote sandwich" method of incorporating quotes from sources and how to cite those sources correctly in MLA, in-text citations. Doesn’t that sound fun! I wish you a productive week and best of luck with your drafting!
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to Week 7 everyone.
This week we will begin with two softchalk lessons. The first will introduce you to and provide you with some basic rules regarding the use of tone and style in academic essays. This is an important lesson, folks, especially as you begin drafting your first, standard essay assignment for English 111.
The second softchalk lesson will pick up where we left off with last week’s videos and focus on two additional characteristics of successful students. This lesson is directly associated with your first graded activity due this week, a short writing assignment. Start early on this one, as it will provide you a valuable practice opportunity to compose an academic paragraph that you might later be able to revise and strengthen for use in your extended-definition, essay assignment.
Our grammar assignments in LaunchPad this week will help you learn how to use pronouns correctly; and, finally, our assigned readings and critical reading activity will not only expand your understanding of the concepts covered in our early softchalk lessons but also prepare you for this week’s discussion.
I wish you a productive week of continued learning, and don’t forget that reply posts in discussion are due on Sunday!
This short podcast will offer some advice and time management tips as you continue the final stages of your writing process.
Is online English the right choice for you?
This 4 minute podcast episode provides a brief introduction to online English 111 and discusses two very specific levels of proficiency required of all enrolled students.