Module 6 (April 25-May 1): Writing Time!

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This week, we’ll be drafting our final papers!!!

There are several different due dates within this module, since there are several components. Feel free to turn things in late if you are not able to complete them on time, with no penalty. However, those of you who have chosen to participate in peer review should honor your commitment to your groupmates and prioritize giving them feedback above other work for this course, because that impacts others, not just yourself.

Goals and Learning Objectives

  1. Evaluate different methods of outlining a final paper and create your own
  2. Begin synthesizing information learned through your research into a form appropriate for sharing with others! (In this case, an essay.)
  3. Practice critically evaluating writing through peer review and self-revision
  4. Practice your rhetorical skills by offering feedback to peers in constructive , clear, yet polite ways.

Overview of Tasks

  1. Orient yourself with a Writing Into the Week prompt
  2. Explore examples of real outlines that real undergraduates used to write final papers
  3. Outline your paper using one of the styles you looked at or by inventing your own outline form (due Monday April 27 by the end of the day)
  4. Read or Skim resources on MEAL Plan paragraph structure and incorporating evidence into paragraphs.
  5. Using your outline, begin drafting your paper. Turn in a partial draft via Blackboard. (Due Wednesday April 29 by the end of the day.)
  6. Attend optional Zoom class on Wednesday at 4:30 or watch the recorded video afterwards. I will be discussing introductions and conclusions and answering any questions you may have.
  7. For those of you doing peer review, write feedback for your classmates by the end of Friday May 1st. 
  8. Read about two more rhetorical strategies and post examples/analysis of each. (Due Friday May 1 by the end of the day.)

Step 1: Writing Into the Week

Please write for 5-10 minutes on the following prompts. I encourage you to leave your response as a comment on this post.

  1. What aspects of writing a paper do you often find challenging? (In other words, what are your sticking points?)
  2. What would be helpful to have or think about in advance in order to make these aspects easier?
  3. Are there any particular writing topics (some aspect of grammar, or paragraph structure, style, etc.) that you would like to learn more about/get extra guidance on?

Step 2: Explore Examples of Outlines

Some of you may have already looked at these when I posted them earlier this week. For those who didn’t, please review the examples now. Decide what seems helpful or unhelpful to YOU and how YOU prefer to work as a writer.

If something seems too stressful and overwhelming? Don’t do it. If something seems like it will make writing easier for you? Do it! These are all examples, not the One Right Way to write an outline.

Step 3: Outline Your Paper

Following the instructions, write an outline for your paper. It can take any shape you want. Make something you think will HELP YOU as you begin drafting your paper. If it’s not going to be helpful, what’s the point?

It can be messy. You can write things like “Say something about ______ here.” Whatever works for you.

Step 4: Read Or Skim Resources

Some of you may already feel comfortable structuring paragraphs and incorporating evidence. Great! Some of you may be less sure. Please look over the following resources with the level of detail that you think is necessary:

MEAL Plan Paragraph Structure
Incorporating Evidence

Step 5: Begin Drafting Your Paper

I recommend you write until you feel Stuck, or write until you feel like you need a break and/or some feedback before you can continue. A partial draft can be as many or as few pages as you want, but it should be more substantial than your outline.

If you don’t feel ready to write the intro, that’s okay! Skip to the first body paragraph. Write what you can. This makes less work for yourself later.

When you decide your draft is as done as it’s going to be at this stage, please do the following:

  1. Turn it in using the Partial Draft link on Blackboard.
  2. If you are participating in peer review, share it with your groupmates. The form this takes will depend on the method for peer review your group has chosen. (I will be in touch with everyone who signed up soon about their groupmates and the form that works for everyone.) You may also want to include a note for your readers with specific questions you would like feedback on.

Partial drafts are due by the end of Wednesday, April 29.  This due date is especially important for those doing peer review, so that you give your peers enough time to give you feedback.

Step 6: Attend Optional Zoom Class (Or Watch Video Later)

I will host another optional Zoom class on Wednesday, April 29 at 4:30pm, our usual class time. I will be discussing tips for Introductions and Conclusions as well as answering any questions you have.

I will also post a video of Zoom class to Vimeo for anyone who wants to watch it later.

Step 7: Write Feedback For Your Classmates

I will email suggested peer review prompts when I send out the group information. Please give your feedback to your classmates by the end of the day on Friday May 1, unless you and your groupmate(s) agree on another deadline amongst yourselves.

Step 8: Rhetorical Strategies

Read about the Scarcity Appeal and How To Spot Fake News (as well as any of the links in the sidebar that interest you). Post 2 examples of each one + analysis as a comment on this post.

Note that emotional news is not the same as fake news, but news may play to your biases/emotions (appeals to pathos!) to convince you of something that is false or misleading.

Instructions for Outline + Examples

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There are many ways to outline a paper. Some are formal and highly structured, and some are very loose, and most are inbetween! An outline can be mostly or entirely textual, or it can include visual elements. An outline can be a graphic organizer for essay writing that you find online and fill in like this, this, or this.

You may have never written an outline before, or not really know what to do for this assignment, so I’ve compiled some examples for you. These are only SOME of the ways you can outline.

An outline might not make sense to someone else who is reading it, because it’s notes the writer is leaving their future selves to help with the drafting process. As long as it makes sense to you, that’s what matters.

Grading

I will just be grading your outline on completion (did you do it) and detail (did you actually put time and effort into this based on your research so far), not on any specific form or formatting. You should make an outline that will help YOU write your paper.

Outlines will be graded out of 6 points. 2 for doing it, 2 for level of detail, 2 free points that would have been for turning it in on time, except there’s a pandemic so whatever.

Example Outlines from Person 1

Okay, I’m Person 1, and these are some of my outlines from my sophomore year of college.

Outline 1: Witchcraft Outline
I like this one because of the color-coding. I wrote the main ideas/section headers in black, all of the things I wanted to talk about in that section in blue, and the names of the authors I wanted to cite in red. I also wrote out my thesis in full at the top to always remind me of what I was trying to argue. It helped keep me focused.

Outline 2: Amanda Palmer Project Outline
In this one, I didn’t use color coding, just loose nests of bullets and main ideas. However, you can tell when I copy/pasted a quote from a source, because the font and coloring is different. I did this to remind myself of what quotes/examples I wanted to use as evidence in each section.

Example Outlines from Person 2

These are from a colleague of mine, also from her early years of college. Notice that she uses a much more formalized structure of headings and subheadings (numbers, capital letters, roman numerals, lowercase letters, etc.) than I do. In one case, she wrote her entire introduction as part of the outline.

Islam outline

ps35, paper1 outline

Example Outline from Person 3

This person uses the standard structure of a scientific paper (Intro/Methods/Results/Discussion) but then added sublevels of bullets to her outline based on her specific topic. (This was for an advanced research course where psychology majors had to design and conduct their own studies.)

APA Study Outline

Once she had her outline, she wrote her paragraphs in the same document underneath each subheading. By the end, she had almost an entire paper and just had to paste the paragraphs into another document and add transitions/formatting.

Same outline with paragraphs: Copy of Outline

Final Paper Instructions and Rubric

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The official instructions and rubric for the final paper are below.

Please remember to fill out the peer review survey so I can put people into groups.

Reminder of Final Paper Schedule:

Annotated Bibliographies due Friday April 24
Outlines due Monday April 27
For those doing peer review, Partial Drafts due Wednesday April 29
Comments for your peers due Friday May 1
For everyone, complete first drafts are due Monday May 4
For those doing peer review, comments for your peers are due Thursday May 7
Final Drafts due Monday May 11

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Module 5 (April 20-24): Just Keep Swimming

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This week you’re just working on your annotated bibliographies and doing another set of rhetorical devices! Thanks to everyone who has turned in their Imaginary Interviews and Cognitive Biases examples.

Please complete the Peer Review Survey asap so I can put people into groups.

Rhetorical Devices Readings:
“Euphemisms” and “Transfer”

Examples/Analysis due as a comment on this post by the end of the day April 24.

Annotated Bibliography Instructions/Rubric
Also due by the end of the day April 24

See Module 4 for instructions on formatting and citations.

As always, you can schedule a time to chat with me here.

Optional: Some Comforting Content

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For my other job, our team is working on a site called Comforting Content for COVID Coping, where we just post nice things that might bring people some brief peace and happiness in the midst of all of this stress and anxiety.

There’s a couple posts from me so far, but most of it is my boss posting pictures of his cats and other animals. Pretty cute.

You can check it out here.

How COVID-19 affected my life

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Most probably one of the worst things the person can do right now is to be selfish and made the world problem about himself. However, this is exactly what I am going to do in this paper.

2019 was a tough year for me. It is started with my legalization process in this country. It started with a different choice I had to make – I needed to refuse my citizenship and apply for asylum here in the United States, which meant I could never go back to my country. I could never walk around the streets I grew up in. Most probably I will never see most of my friends ever again. I will never enter the house I grew up in. Unfortunately, as sad as it is but going back isn’t an option. Despite my family, my friends and some nice childhood memories my country can’t offer me anything else. Especially, it can’t guaranty the most essential thing for a human being – safety. Not only authorities deny protection for people like me, but they also initiate persecution and spread hate among citizens.

So, as hard as it was – I started my asylum application, which surprisingly didn’t last long. In the middle of March, I already got approval and now was the time to make my American dream come true.

I don’t want to go deep into the details since it should be about the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affected me, but I want the reader to understand my position better.

After eight months of changing different minimal wage jobs, several panic attacks and taking control over my PTSD, I finally have been accepted to college! One step closer to my goal. In the last weeks of 2019, I made a list – well, not even a list more of a guideline – what I am going to do in 2020 and the upcoming decade in general. I promised myself to enjoy life, take as many opportunities as I can, be social, take care of my health – both physical and mental, take care of my look, start to dress stylish and many other things that I didn’t do in 2019. And, well, generally before.

And the first three months of 2020 I truly did my best to follow this guideline.

But the universe had a different plan for us all. The year started with a rumor about World War Three. And then not long after we heard about the novel coronavirus spreading around chine and slowly going out of it to other countries. We all remember the bird flu, swine flu, Ebola outbreaks so at that time no one expected what is going to happen. And while the novel virus was spreading around the Old World, we didn’t pay attention to that. We were going to school, work, events, parties, etc.

I remember the virus got my attention in mid- February when it started to spread over Iran. Since my country located in the North-Western border of Iran – I realized it is a matter of time when the virus is going to knock on the doors of people I care about. However, following the news about the spread of the virus in Europe and Asia didn’t give me any closure to see what is about to happen.

I remember receiving an email on Tuesday around 11 PM that classes on Wednesday are canceled. Then on Wednesday governor gave the order to switch into distance learning mode till the rest of the semester. Less than a week later – I received an email from my boxing gym that they are going to be closed. And in one day all the bars, cafes and restaurants have closed their doors. Some of them still deliver food, some of them won’t open ever again.

I was afraid that staying locked at home with this uncertainty of the future may trigger my PTSD. Thankfully it didn’t. At least for now. But I live in constant fear of the returning of my nightmares and painful flashbacks.

Despite all that mess in the world and my head, I am still focused on my long-term goal. I am being on top of my classes. Doing as much of my assignments as I possibly can. I even registered for summer courses in order to graduate faster. My short yet full of different events life had taught me – while our body has physical limitations, our mind doesn’t. So, the virus might be aggressive, dangerous and deadly but I won’t give up on life. I won’t let fear, anxiety, and uncertainty take over my life ever again.

Survey: Peer Review for Final Paper

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Originally, we were going to do mandatory peer review for the final paper during the last week of April. Now, that idea just seems unfeasible, given the global situation and the various ways it might be impacting everyone’s lives.

However, because I believe peer review can be a very useful tool (both in terms of getting feedback AND in terms of practicing analyzing others’ writing), I still want to offer that opportunity to anyone who wants it.

Therefore, please fill out the survey below to tell me what you would like to do!

For everyone who says they would like to be in a peer review group, I will split you into groups of 2 or 3 based on your topic and let you know who you are paired with. I will send peer review instructions/prompts next week.

**Please fill it out even if you do not want to participate in peer review.**

Final Paper Peer Review

    "Work for you" means you have the technological capacity AND feel comfortable using this method, even if it is not your first choice. Please check all that apply.

APA Lesson and Master Doc

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This post is a repeat of everything from my Blackboard emails– repeating just because different people have different notifications/email settings, and I want to make sure everyone has access.

The link to the APA Lesson (recorded Zoom class) is here: https://vimeo.com/408178104

It will ask you for a password. The password is in your Blackboard announcements– I’m not posting it here because our site is public and the video is private since the faces of the people who attended live class are shown.

I’m also attaching below a “Master Doc” of all online activities/assignments/rubrics that we’ve done since CUNY closed down, in case you want to download that and find it easier to navigate than the course site.

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Research Progress

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I feel like my research project could be at a more advanced stage, however, I do not want to beat myself up since I am trying to manage home, work, and school. Trying to do all of this and trying to have a normal life during this pandemic and lockdown is not the best for someone who constantly goes through anxiety and panic attacks— is the worst experience ever.

Everything related to writing in English has always resulted difficult for me, due to the fact that my native language is Spanish. Yet, researching I feel like I can be more open about certain writing techniques I like to use, and I get to show the vocabulary I have learned and feel proud of it. To do this research project I chose a topic close to home, and I admit I am glad I did, since I am learning new things about it, and I hope to keep on learning.

I hope everybody is staying home and being safe!