English 111 and English 112 Class with Martin: Recent Episodes
Lisa Martin
Week 5 Overview Podcast Transcript
We will begin this week with lessons on writing your thesis statement for your summary analysis essay and creating your Works Cited page. Please do not skip over these very important lessons. For example, the thesis statement templates are provided for you to use in your actual essay. Remember, the last sentence of your introduction should be your thesis statement.
There is also a video tutorial on formatting your essay correctly in MLA so that you don’t end up losing points on your essay for basic formatting errors. In addition, the sample citation of an article that is included in the lesson on creating your Works Cited page is very close to the citation you will need to create. We provide these tools for your benefit, so please do not skip them simply because there is no weekly assignment grade attached to them. You will be graded on these specific skills (writing a thesis statement, formatting your essay in MLA, and creating a Works Cited page with your chosen article cited correctly on it) when you submit your final draft of the summary analysis essay.
Most importantly, this is the week you will submit your rough draft of your summary analysis essay to your peer response workshop for peer review. Most students tell us that they don’t normally enjoy peer response workshops because they either uncomfortable giving feedback themselves or they feel the feedback they get is usually unhelpful. To help overcome the typical problems associated with peer response, we created a lesson on how to provide constructive feedback in this week’s lesson module. Remember, you don’t have to be a writing expert to give honest feedback about any piece of writing. You just have to care enough to actually read the draft and pay attention to areas in the draft that don’t quite meet the goals of the assignment. We provide specific questions for you to answer about each draft that you read to help you identify specific areas of feedback you should provide. Make sure you provide detailed and specific feedback in response to each question. Remember, you will be graded on the quality and clarity of the feedback that you provide.
As always, reach out via email if you have any questions or concerns at all. Wishing you another successful week!
In this week’s lesson, you will learn all about your first major writing assignment for the semester, the summary/analysis essay. This first essay assignment is worth 15% of your overall course grade, and you may be a little nervous about it since for most students, this will be their first major writing assignment in college. However, fear not! You will be provided with every tool necessary to succeed on this assignment.
This week, we will focus on the steps to writing a successful summary. Luckily for you, those steps are carefully described on pages 15-18 of your English 111 Wake Tech Reader in the selection called “The Art of Summary in Academic Writing.” The basic goal of a summary is to walk your readers through the main ideas of a reading, step by step, so that your summary can act in place of the original article. You’ll read all about how to write a summary as part of this week’s reading assignment.
However, I did want to offer you one very important tip for summary writing in this podcast. When you write your summary, don’t look at the original text as you are trying to summarize it! Instead, read a paragraph or two of the article, close your book, and write a few sentences describing in your own words what you just read. Writing your summary with your book closed will ensure that you write the summary in your own words. If you keep your book open, you will unintentionally mirror the exact sentence structure and phrases of the original text. This kind of close mirroring is plagiarism, unintentional or not. Therefore, the most important tip to remember when it comes to summary writing is simple: Don’t look at the original article as you attempt to write your summary!
Next week, we will focus on the step to writing a successful analysis. To write your analysis paragraphs, you’ll need to consider the author’s purpose, the intended audience, the author’s tone and style, use of evidence, etc. Thus, be on the lookout for next week’s lesson and practice assignment on writing an analysis.
As always, I ask that you pay close attention to all the materials in this week’s lesson (not just the ones that are graded). And as always, please reach out via email if you have any questions or concerns. Have a great week!
This podcast offers specific strategies for effective proofreading of college level essays.
Welcome to Week 1 everyone! Each week, you will start by listening to a brief podcast that introduces you to the topics of the week and offers some useful tips for completing the week successfully. Often information presented in the podcast will appear in one of the course quizzes as an additional question. You won’t know whether or not there will be a question about the podcast in a weekly quiz until you take the quiz however. Thus, it is in your best interest to listen to each one as you start your week. We promise that no course materials are a waste of your time. Each item is designed to increase your learning opportunities and to engage you with course concepts.
In fact, listen to two former students discuss the value they saw in these weekly podcasts.
Student 1: I just like to start off by saying I love the weekly podcasts. It really gives the students the feeling that we actually have a teacher, and if I have a problem, it’s actually a person I’m reaching out to, and that makes me way more prone to reach out via email when I do need help.
Student 2: I appreciate the advice given in the weekly overviews. Sometimes the work load for English 111 needs to be properly time managed, and hearing from my instructors what assignments should be prioritized first is extremely helpful.
So, let’s start with the useful tips for completing the week successfully. Our first tip for this week (and for the semester really) is that you should watch every video tutorial included in the course. We find that some students will only watch the first minute or two of a video tutorial and assume that they don’t need to watch the rest, or even worse, they will skip over them entirely. For example, this week’s video tutorial is a tour of the course. You may think you can tour the course on your own by just clicking around the site, but we promise that video will show you the most important areas of our course that you’ll want to remember for later. There is also a video tour of the course syllabus. While this video cannot replace your careful reading of the entire syllabus, it does highlight the most important policies that affect your grade. I don’t know about you, but I would want to know as soon as possible what mistakes I might make that would hurt my grade in a class.
Finally, let’s talk about the topics of the week. This week's module contains important activities and assignments designed to help introduce you to this Blackboard-based course and ensure a strong start. The content in each weekly module will always be ordered sequentially, and you are encouraged to work through it all in the order presented. Pay close attention to the list of Assignments, Tasks, and Activities included in each week’s lesson so that you don’t miss any assignments.
Not every podcast will be as long as this one, but we took the extra time to explain what you can expect in the weekly podcast. We also took hours of our time to make a podcast for each week of the semester, so we hope you will take a few minutes each week to listen to them.
Welcome to Week 15! This week, you will be closely analyzing Ray Bradbury's short story "There Will Come Soft Rains." By the end of the week, you should know which of the two short stories you would like to write about in your final exam essay. Also, don’t skip the lecture notes on Bradbury’s story! I promise these notes will further your understanding and appreciation of the story.
In addition, you will be writing a progress report, which is a short piece of reflection writing. With this assignment, I am asking you to reflect on your progress with your I Search Essay. Reflection is essential to learning. In fact, all academic endeavors are perfect for problem-solving, trial-and-error, reflection, learning from mistakes, and discovery. Thus, I’m asking you to consider what problems you’ve already encountered during Unit 3, and what specific actions you need to take to get back on track.
Finally, please keep in mind that your draft of at least 5.5 pages of your I Search essay is due next week, so it's essential that you finish your research process this week! As I said at the beginning of this unit, it will take you at least one hour to locate and read each of your sources. If you’ve only found one or two sources, you’re running behind schedule. You need to have gathered all six sources by the end of this week because it’s going to take you several hours to draft out those 5.5 pages of your essay. In short, you simply won’t have time next week to gather more sources, so please complete your research this week.
Hope you have another great week!
Welcome to Week 16 folks and Happy Thanksgiving! This is a very short week, and we know you are excited to enjoy your holiday break. Before you leave for break though, you have to finalize your research based argument! As you do so, please keep in mind some of the tips we’ve given you throughout Unit 3. For example, make sure you aren’t submitting a summary of events related to your chosen cult, conspiracy theory, or unsolved murder. Instead, be sure your essay includes several points of analysis that answers the why questions from your chosen prompt. We don’t want a boring summary of basic facts about your chosen cult, conspiracy theory, or unsolved murder. Instead go beyond the obvious or surface level of information. Also, check that your voice is front and center throughout your paper. You don’t want most of your paper to be a series of quotes or even paraphrases from your sources. We want to know what you think!
In addition, consider the two podcasts you listened to in this unit: the one about the Branch Davidian cult from Sinisterhood and the one about Princess Diana from Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know. Both of these podcasts provided comprehensive information about their chosen topic, but they also analyzed why and how people think and behave the way that they do in relation to these events. You should do the same. In fact, you should use both podcasts as a model of effective research, storytelling, and argument.
Finally, even though it’s a short week, please take advantage of the resources in this week’s lesson, including the research based argument review item and in the in-text citation video tutorial.
If you have any last minute questions or concerns, you better ask right away! Your final draft is due Wednesday night at 11:59PM at the latest. We know the break actually starts on Wednesday, so technically the week ends on Tuesday night, but we wanted to give you as much time as possible to finalize your revisions.
Wishing you all the best, and thanks for listening!
Welcome to Week 14 folks! You will begin this week with a study of plagiarism and integrating source material correctly. Although the topic of plagiarism might seem rather obvious or unworthy of detailed study, I would argue otherwise. In fact, students are often charged with plagiarism because they inappropriately paraphrase or summarize the words of others in research papers or fail to document their sources correctly in the body of their essay. Although inappropriate paraphrase and/or summary might lead to inadvertent or unintentional plagiarism, the academic community -- and your college instructors -- will recognize it as plagiarism nonetheless.
The key to avoiding unintentional plagiarism is actually very simple. Don’t look at the source while you are writing about it. Instead, read a section of the source, put the source away where you can’t see it, and then write a sentence or two paraphrasing what you just read in your own words. Repeat this process until you have a full summary of all the main ideas in the source. Then when you go to write your draft, you should just tell the story of your topic in your own words. Of course, you will want to add specific details or quotes from the sources that 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.
I encourage you to work through this week's Course Lecture: Advanced Citation and Source Integration 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 another 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.
In addition to your work on plagiarism, you will also be completing your research on your chosen topic for Essay 2 by documenting, summarizing, and evaluating the relevancy and credibility of each source you have found. Your work on your Annotated Bibliography this week should include (at minimum) two objectives: (1) Completion of your Works Cited page (2) Preliminary selection of significant, supporting details from the five sources you are required to integrate into your research-based argument. An Annotated Bibliography requires you to cite, summarize, and evaluate each of your five sources. Thus, each entry on your annotated bibliography will include a paragraph summary of the source’s content and a few sentences explaining why the source is credible and how you might use it in your essay. Because we recognize that an Annotated Bibliography is a time consuming project, we have made this assignment due on Sunday night rather than our usual Friday night deadline. Finally, don’t forget that this annotated bibliography is a major writing assignment that is worth 5% of your overall course grade, so it has far more impact on your course grade than a normal weekly assignment.
Wishing you another successful week!
Welcome to our new week!
This week, we will turn our attention to conspiracy theories and unsolved murders, allowing you to gain more experience reading, watching, and listening carefully to an author's research and then forming your own viewpoints on the topic. You will also learn more about Stages 1 and 2 of the researched-based argument assignment as you ensure that you understand the assignment and that you have a plan for completing it.
This week, we want to stress the importance of understanding the available prompts for your research paper. The first part of each prompt asks you to research and explain one specific cult, unsolved murder, or conspiracy theory, but we really want to stress that this explanation is just the beginning of your research process. What we don’t want is a simply summary that looks like a Wikipedia article on your chosen cult, unsolved murder, or conspiracy theory. What we do want is an analysis that answer the “why” question. Thus, if you choose to research a cult, you must also research why people join cults and why cults are so difficult to leave. Likewise, if you choose to research a conspiracy theory, you must also research what makes conspiracy theories so attractive to some. And of course, if you choose to research an unsolved murder, beyond simply summarizing the facts of the case, you must also research and explain why unsolved murders or true crime stories are so fascinating. The point here is that we want you to do far more than simply report information; we want you to also analyze.
We also want to make sure that you maintain your own voice in your research paper, so this week we are asking you to generate your own list of ideas about cults, conspiracy theories, and unsolved murders. We know that you may not currently know anything about a specific cult, for example, but we bet you have some theories about why people join them. Thus, we are hoping that the interest inventory that is included in this week’s writing process suggestions will help you figure out what you already know about your chosen prompt that you might include in your essay.
In addition, as part of this week’s writing process suggestions, we have included a link to an excellent online resource: the research paper planner. This web link will generate a complete research calendar for you. All you have to do is you fill in your start date and your due date. It's an amazing program!
Finally, this week, you will be working on semicolons and colons in LaunchPad. We hope by the end of the week, you’ll know how to use a semicolon for more than inserting a winky face in your text messages.
As always, please let your instructor know right away if you have any questions or concerns this week. Thanks for listening!
Welcome to week 6 everyone! This week, you will be reflecting on the feedback you received on your draft of Essay 1 and reviewing an essential video tutorial on how to improve your draft. While this video is slightly over 11 minutes in length and thus you may be tempted to skip it, I promise that this video is very much worth your time. In the video you will learn specifics on how to improve your introduction, your thesis statement, your analysis paragraphs, and your conclusion. You will also review critical assignment requirements that could cause you lose major points on your grade if you ignore. As you finalize your first major essay of the assignment, which again is worth 15% of your overall course grade, you will also be thinking about answering the big “So what?” question of your essay. Yes, you analyzed how an author went about making an argument, but so what? Why does your analysis matter? Why is it important to understand how arguments are made? Finally, I also ask that you watch the video tutorial on effective proofreading strategies. I think you will be surprised by some of my suggestions! As always, if you have any questions or concerns as you work your way through this week’s module, send me an email right away. Best of luck to everyone this week!
Welcome to Week 5 everyone! This week, you will be reviewing how to format your essay in MLA and how to cite your chosen article for Essay 1 in MLA. Depending on your previous experience in a college-level writing course, such as ENG111, you may be very familiar with these concepts. However, I have many students who are returning to college after many years in my class, and I know they need to really study and learn MLA for this first assignment. In addition, you will be participating in your first peer response workshop. Please remember the most important key to success in a peer response workshop: give your classmates the same quality and quantity of constructive feedback that you hope to receive. While I understand that you may think you don’t qualify as a good enough writer to tell others how they should be writing, the truth is you don’t have to be an excellent writer to be an excellent reviewer. I’m simply asking you to carefully read your classmates’ essays and honestly assess whether or not the essay is meeting the criteria of the assignment. And I do provide specific questions for you to answer to help you organize your feedback. Finally, please note that I’ve included a video tutorial in this week’s lesson module to show you how to post your draft in your peer response group, so please make sure you watch that short video tutorial before you post your draft. As always if you have any questions or concerns as you work your way through this week’s lesson module, send me an email right away. Hoping all goes well this week! Professor Martin