English Composition II                                                              Prof. Anca Rosu

Writing Research Papers 135 A                                                            Room 942

Sample                                                                                            Telephone: X3943

Credit Hours: 4                                                                         arosu@ devry.edu

Syllabus

Course Description

This course builds on the conventions and techniques of composition though critical reading requirements and longer, more sophisticated reports, including a library research paper.  Assignments require revising and editing for an intended audience.  Students are also taught search methods for accessing a variety of print and electronic resources.

Prerequisite: ENGL-108

General Purpose of the Course

The purpose of this course is to develop research and writing skills across the curriculum.  A research paper or project is valuable if it develops a new and original idea and makes a significant contribution to a particular field of study.  Research can be performed in the library, in a laboratory, or in an empirical situation.  All these types of research are explorative and become useful and significant only after interpretation.  Interpretation skills can be learned using any type of research. 

Library research is basic for developing such skills, since it is necessary for any research project, whether its focus is empirical or theoretical.  Therefore, research shall be defined here as the process of exploring the context of a particular topic, and finding out what other researchers have said about it.  The purpose of the research paper is to build on the existing research and come up with an original argument that will enrich the field.

Research papers are assigned in college in order to assess the level of knowledge on a subject that the students have reached during a certain class.  In the electives, you will have to deal with short assignments that build up your skills in the respective course, but you most likely will be assigned a research paper at the end.  What your teacher wants to know is whether you master the material taught in the class.  Mastering is more than just knowing: you have to be able to show your own understanding and put your own twist on what you have learned from others.  This same skill applies to business proposals and technical projects.  The research is being used in original and creative ways to achieve a purpose.

At DeVry, all courses are guided by terminal course objectives.  These are the skills that you have to master by the end of the semester.

The Program Goals (Outcomes) of General Education:

1.       Communicate clearly with particular audiences for particular purposes.

2.       Work collaboratively to help achieve individual and group goals.

3.       Apply critical thinking skills in learning, conducting applied research, and defining and solving problems.

4.       Develop tolerance of ambiguity and mature judgment in exploring intellectual issues.

5.       Build on intellectual curiosity with fundamental concepts and methods of inquiry from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to support life-long learning.

6.       Apply mathematical principles and concepts to problem solving and logical reasoning.

7.       Use study and direct experience of the humanities and social sciences to develop a clear perspective on the breadth and diversity, as well as the commonality, of human experience.

8.       Connect general education to the ethical dimensions of issues and to responsible, thoughtful citizenship in a democratic society.

In this course we will achieve General Education objectives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8.

Required Texts:

Winters, Paul and James Schneider.      Frame and Focus. An Anthology for Investigative Writing. 3^rd ed.

Ballanger, Bruce.                                  The Curious Researcher. A Guide to Writing Research Papers 4^th ed.

Books are available shrink-wrapped in the same package at the DeVry University Follett Bookstore.

Project

During the class, we shall attempt to understand and practice various ways of gathering information, but we shall focus mostly on interpreting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions.  Such operations of the mind are essential in the mastery of the material, which in turn leads to generating original ideas.  The writing project covers the whole semester and follows our study of the operations necessary for the completion of a research project.

The ultimate goal is to develop an original interpretation of an historical event (a war, a revolution, a discovery, an invention, etc.).  This interpretation will eventually become the thesis of your research papers.  We shall proceed in steps.

Proposal: choose your historical event and think about the ways in which it has been interpreted.  You may need to do a preliminary research in secondary sources, that is, various interpretations of the event.  You also need to establish a frame of reference that would permit you to interpret the event in an original way.  In order to create an original interpretation, we need a frame of reference or a point of view, from which the topic has not been considered before.  For instance, you can look at a war focusing on the kind of technology used in weaponry, transportation, communications, etc.  Or, you can look at a scientific discovery from the point of view of gender.  You can consider speed in relation to a certain historical event.  The possibilities are endless.

Paper 1.  In the first paper, you will consider the critical sources that you have consulted for your topic.  Before you start making your own point, you need to show what has been said on the topic so far.  In consulting the sources, take note of the relations that you can establish between them, of the points that are most frequently made, and of the perspectives of the authors.  You may want to summarize some of the content, compare the authors, compare their perspectives, detect their biases, etc.  In the end of the paper you should be able to lay the foundations of your own argument.

Paper 2.  In the second paper, we shall deal with sources of a visual nature.  Look for one or several visual representations of the event, and make note of its date in relation to the event.  Visual representations can be photographs, paintings, drawings, sketches, films, etc.  You must differentiate between contemporary and later visual representations.  The later ones may have a different perspective.  In your paper, propose an interpretation of the visual source that contributes to an interpretation of the event you have chosen for your project.  Make use of Scholes’ cues about reading visual materials and include other information that can create a context for your reading of the image.  Since you have selected a framework, you should be able to come up with an original interpretation of the material.

Paper 3.  In the third paper, you will continue the work of interpretation of your topic, this time by considering one or more textual documents.  This time, focus on primary sources.  Make sure the documents you choose are contemporary to the event and that you have a context for them, composed of other documents, both visual and textual, as well as possible interpretations of them.  Again, give the interpretation of your documents a particular slant related to your frame of reference.

Final Paper.  In the final paper, you should be able to bring together the ideas you have developed in the previous papers and launch a more complex interpretation of the event you have chosen to explore, based on the analysis of your sources.  Establish your framework from the beginning and state your interpretation of the event in relation to it.  Here you will be using both primary and secondary sources, and you should be able to make appropriate use of both.

Website and Presentation: After you have finished writing the draft for your paper, you will make up a website, which you will organize in such a way as to convey the same idea as the paper, but taking advantage of the hypertext possibilities to allow a viewer to learn more than you have written in your paper.  You will present your paper in class, using the website as a visual aid.

 Grading

You will receive grades for all your activities in the class.  The grades are weighted so that your improvement during the course should play to your advantage.

Grades follow the following scale:

Policies

Attendance is essential to success in the class.  8 absences or 6 in a row expose you to the risk of failure.  If by week 11 you have not made up all the work missed, you are advised to drop the course to avoid failure or penalty.

Late Papers will not be accepted except under extreme circumstances.  The process of writing demands that you learn from your mistakes.  If you present a paper late, you do not get the feed back necessary in order to do better on the next.  The papers are to be posted in e-College.  While the computer allows you to load papers in the digital drop box at any time, it also marks the time when you have loaded the paper.  Any difference from the specified due date is traceable.  Late assignments will be downgraded on a depreciation scale of one point per day.   Since our scale is ten, in ten days you get a zero.  Revisions required by me are to be presented within a week from the day I require them. 

Class etiquette.  It is not fair to your classmates to come late and disrupt the class.  Make a point of being punctual.  If, because of really exceptional circumstances, you arrive late, take your seat and wait until the break or group work time to ask about what is going on.  If you have questions or issues of a personal nature to discuss, please come to my office and talk.  Do not raise questions or issues that do not regard the whole class during class time.  When in the labor library, obey the lab or library rules and wait your turn if you need specific help with the computer. Always check your instructions first.

Schedule

E-College

Most of you have probably had an experience using e-College.  If you do not know how to use the system, make an appointment and I will show you the basics.  We shall use e-College for threaded discussions which will expand and prolong our class discussions.  Please make sure you post twice, once in response to the main question and once to comment on a classmate’s contribution.  You get a maximum of 2 points, one for each contribution.  You are free to post more than 2, but it is better to make the first two substantial. 

We will also use e-College to submit and return papers.  The papers are to be submitted in the Drop Box by midnight on the date due.  The feedback files will be returned within the week, and it is your obligation to read the feedback that I have given you and use what you have learned in the following paper.

In addition to the above, check the Webliography and the Document sharing area in order to see recommended readings, handouts, etc.  You can also add materials there that you want to share with the class. The e-mail function allows you to write to me or other classmates.  In order to use it efficiently, you should check your profile on the opening page and see if the e-mail address there is correct.  If it is incorrect, you will not receive replies to your message.

Plagiarism:

http://www.georgetown.edu/honor/plagiarism.html

Back to Main Home Page