Another semester has begun and it’s time to get back to school.

This semester, I am again teaching 2 courses of English 2020. Section 1 starts at 7am on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Section 602 starts at 7pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.

So, if you are taking either of those sections from me, then you have come to the right place.

Also, while you can read past blog posts from previous classes, be aware that the papers and course requirements have changed quite a bit over the summer, so don’t believe everything you read that was posted before this post.

Cheers!

YouTube has changed presentation and communication.

We’ll talk more about this in class, but your job is to comment here and let us know one or two good links relating to our class.

In honor of this day, I give to you an English-class approved joke:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/San_Serriffe/

Here is a good site to help you eradicate sexist language from your writing: http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=201

Just in case you get frustrated, head over to http://www.pmla.org/altsource.html for a good chuckle related to “alternative” source citations.

Another fun article related to plagiarism: http://www.newsweek.com/id/94543/page/1. This just goes to show you that plagiarism is not just something college teachers think about.

The assignment sheet is now up for the Researched Argument assignment. I will a printed version of this for class, but for those of you who want a little jump on things, you can print it yourself here.

There should not be any surprises here, as we have talked about how this works for the entire semester.

To get the file, check out the links for your specific section.

Thesis statements are sorely misunderstood by beginning writers, often exacerbated by well-meaning but inept high school English teachers.

And that is where this horrible Thesis Generator comes in

http://ozline.com/electraguide/thesis.html

Remember, to be truly useful, a thesis must be based on a research question that is problematic and specific. Yes/No questions are much less interesting and result in much more boring papers than those that are based on open-ended questions that involve why, how, what effect, and so forth type questions.

There is no real “magic formula” for generating a winning thesis, contrary to what the above site implies.

Refer to the Resources section and your class section for handouts and information I’ve given in class, if you want more information about why this site is so bad.

We are meeting at the library on Wednesday evening, so go there first.

We will be in room LC 218.

You need to bring a completed printout of the 5 questions available in the PDF for the Intermediate Research lessons. To get the PDF, do the following:

1. Go to the library home page.
2. Click on the Course Materials tab near the top of the page.
3. Click the Intermediate Research link under Library Tutorials.
4. Read the page and start the assignment. You’ll want to answer the questions throughout the tutorial on scratch paper, then print out the PDF at the end of the exercise and fill it in with your answers.

See you all there!

Make sure to turn in the following for your teacher draft, in the indicated order:

1. One page telling how you want me to comment on your paper (all problems or just major ones, all grammar or just repeated problems). Also, include a paragraph or so explaining what you changed (or didn’t change) in your paper because of the peer review, and why.
2. Your teacher draft (stapled only to itself).
3. Peer Review sheets (not stapled to anything).
4. Paper you can the peer reviewers, with their comments on it (stapled only to itself).
5. Print out of the source (stapled only to itself).

Paper clip this all together into a single group.

I’ve found a few interesting sources that talk about research. As usual, I’ve also linked to these on the Resources page.

Here they are, in no particular order:

• Pew Study on Information-Finding Behavior - This blog talks about an interesting study on how and where people get information. You may be surprised by the results!
• Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can’t Do Without - Want to start doing research? Start it online with these great resources. After all, Wikipedia only takes you so far, and with a certain stance.
• Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources - Excellent article on how to really use the internet to do research, and how to avoid lots of the junk.

Of the 20 references beyond Wikipedia, here are some that I really liked:

• Citizendium -  “The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um), a “citizens’ compendium of everything,” is an open wiki project aimed at creating an enormous, free, and reliable encyclopedia. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding “gentle expert oversight” and requiring contributors to use their real names. We have over 4500 articles and hundreds of contributors.”
• Answers - “Answers.com offers free access to millions of topics from the world’s leading publishers.”
• Bartleby - “Publishes the classics of literature, nonfiction, and reference free of charge for the home, classroom, and desktop of each and every Internet participant.”
• Encyclopedia Britannica - The old classic.
• Oxford English Dictionary - Can tell you the origins of every word in the English language. Quite fascinating, really.
• Scholarpedia - “The free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world.”
• Wikiseek - Use it to really search Wikipedia. “Wikiseek utilizes a category refinement technology, providing suggested search refinements based on user tagging and categorization within Wikipedia, making results more relevant than conventional search engines.”
• WikiMindMap - “WikiMindMap is a tool to browse easily and efficiently in Wiki content, inspired by the mindmap technique. Wiki pages in large public wiki’s, such as wikipedia, have become rich and complex documents. Thus, it is not allways straight forward to find the information you are really looking for. This tool aims to support users to get a good structured and easy understandable overview of the topic you are looking for.”