Friday March 7th Class

Hey all!

Before my quick recap of Friday's class, I'll just clarify that we did NOT have class on Wednesday the 5th due to HSPA testing, and on Thursday the 6th we had a substitute teacher (thus there were no blog posts for those days.) Friday the 7th was the day we resumed regular classroom activities.

So, we got our Toulmin sentences back on Friday! (One of the first steps of the long journey to the research paper's completion.) They were "decent" overall, but Laz mentioned that there were a few errors regarding warrants and rebuttals. Don't allow your warrant to have too narrow of a focus, and do not confuse the rebuttal with the reservation (i.e. the exception / qualifier of sorts)

After Toulmin sentences were returned to their respective authors, we continued our discussion of the research paper. We are to turn in 20 notecards of sources on March 18th. It might be best to start basic research now. Head to the library or Borders, etc. and investigate some sources - pick a source that mentions your topic, review it to determine whether or not it is a genuinely helpful bit of evidence, and record where you found it. We must turn in only 20 cards, so if you've looked in to more than 20 and are trying to select which cards to submit, focus on the value of the 20 best.

When the discussion of notecards was finished, we moved on and reviewed a practice worksheet for using MLA format. (This was given to us by the substitute on Thursday. If you weren't here, ask Laz for an extra copy of the worksheet / answer key.) A few quick words on MLA - you will NEVER have to memorize it, so do not panic. But you MUST familiarize yourself with it and come to understand it. If you are steadfastly against "properly" documenting your sources in this laborious and tedious manner- too bad. It may be time consuming to organize your bibliography in MLA format, but it is necessary. MLA format is commonly recognized among writers; if someone wants to go and verify your data, but they are not able to because they do not understand the way you have formatted your source data, they are going to doubt your credibility and you are not going to be able to effectively persuade them. Plus - you will fail the paper. Just do it.

So, the long list of common mistakes on the worksheet -
*Put the author's last name before their first name.
*Put article titles in quotations.
*Underline or italicize magazine titles or book titles
*When using online information, the date of access IS important, because websites are constantly being updated. The information you gleaned today may not be on the site by tomorrow, and is someone (read Laz) wants to verify your data, but your information isn't a part of the site, you will again be subject to suspicion. You must also use the proper URL for online data (i.e. not with the search engine's title in it.)
*You must use abbreviations. E.g. a publisher called"University of Chicago Press" is actually "U of Chicago P" (university related presses use this form).
*If multiple press locations are listed, just list the first city as the publisher. (Because obviously a book can only be published in one place.) If the city name is well known and unique e.g. Philadelphia, it is not necessary to list the state. If there are multiple cities with the same name, e.g. Cambridge, you must list the state.
*"Continuous pagination" refers to a journal that is published at different intervals throughout the year and is finally bound into an entire volume of issues that use the same page number sequence. (So if a journal is published quarterly, the first issue would begin on page 1 and end on page 120, say. The second issue would begin on page 121, etc.)
"Non-Continuous Pagination" means that each issue of a journal, magazine etc. will begin with page 1.
*Edition numbers matter
*Film / performance sources are a bit more adjustable as far as documentation goes, dependent upon what you are referencing. (Director's portion, lead actress's role, etc.)