Tuesday, April 27, 2010

BR Ch 4, 5

Critical readers read actively and with an attitude. reading actively means working with a text as you read. It means underlining and highlighting text and responding to information, ideas, and arguments. To develop a thesis statement, brainstorm or freewrite in response to your research question. after reviewing your response, settle on a preliminary thesis statement and use it to guide your critical reading. Mark sources: marking a source to identify key info, ideas, and arguments is a simple yet powerful active-reading strategy. Identify the type of source you are reading: one of the most important things to pay attention to as you read is the type of source you are reading. Most sources, whether they are informative or argumentative, make a main point that you should pay attention to as you read. Once you've identifies a main point, look for key points that support it. Evaluating sources: evaluating a source means examining its relevance, evidence, author, publisher, timeliness, comprehensiveness, and genre. the most important questions you should ask to determine the relevance of a source are about your purpose and audience.

BR Ch. 1,2,3

Getting started can be the hardest part of a research paper. You'll likely find yourself staring at a blank computer screen. confident research writers have a strong personal investment in their research papers. you might be interested in your topic, committed to achieving your purposes as a writer, intrigued by the demands of writing for an audience. the key to investing yourself in a project you wouldnt normally care about is taking ownership of the paper. research writing involves learning about a topic, drawing conclusions about that topic, and sharing your conclusions with your readers. many factors affect how you will accomplish your goals. Almost every paper in college and the workplace involves working with information. to bring these projects to a successful conclusion, you'll need to learn how to identify and locate promising sources, and then how to read, evaluate, take notes on, and decide how to use the information, ideas, and arguments. working with sources includes managing them so that you can easily locate information when you need it.

BR Ch. 19, 20

Documenting your sources can help you achieve your purpose as a writer, such as establishing your authority and persuading your readers. if your readers find that you haven't documented your sources, they'll either suspect that you're careless or decide that you're dishonest. In either case, they won't trust what you have to say. MLA: this style, from the modern language association, is used primarily in the humanities-english phiosophy, linguistics, world languages, and so on. APA: this style, from the american psychological associaion, is used mainly in the social sciences-psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, education, and so on. With the exception of web style, key publication information is usually provided in a works cited list, reference list, or bibliography. these lists appear at the end of the docuent and include the following information about each source. author and / or editor, title, publication date, publisher and city of publication, periodical name, volume, issue, and page number, URL and access date.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

English Conference

There were a lot of things that we went over during my conference. The main thing that i need to do for my research paper is to develop an argument. One thing that i was thinking about for my argument could be what is important about Jackie Robinson. A major topic that Tess wants me to talk about is Branch Rickey. What his angle on picking up Jackie Robinson, who was on his side, and how Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson met, are a few things that i can talk about in my paper. I can talk about why Robinson wanted to play Major League Baseball, who made it possible for him to play, and why did only a few people want him to play in the MLB. There is another issue that i can talk about and that is if Jackie was interested in MLB or if he was happy in the Negro League. I found a great video that i can use for my presentation. It's called Jackie Robinson A Life Story. Here are some of the main point mentioned in the video: Jackie Robinson was a great role model not only for African Americans but all Americans. There is no greater figure in terms of the impact on social history. One of the fiercest competitors that ever played the game. It seemed like everyone was against him even his own teammates. He was a great athlete and a great person to be around.

Field Work Group Project and interview questions

Field Work Group Project: My topic for the field work group project was technology. The library offers access to the latest technologies more than 460 PC workstations 20 Macs, large format scanners, high volume laser printers for use by students and faculty, a vast array of emerging media and digital resources, and a comfortable environment for collaborative and individual work. The number of people coming to the library each day is more than 4,800. The Schwartz Digital Complex will be an innovative, collaborative, and interactive learning and teaching environment with state- of- the- art technology.

Interview: Not everyone in college studies or uses the library to study. However, my roommate Jeff is a very successful student who does study in the library. I interviewed Jeff about his studies to get a better understanding about using the library to be a better student. When I talked with Jeff I found out that he typically goes to the library about four times a week. His reasoning for frequent trips is the close and convenient location. According to Jeff it only takes him about five minutes to walk to the library from dorm. Although Jeff has not been required by any of his classes to go to the library his commitment to his fraternity, SAE, forces him to spend eight hours a week at study tables. Even though he occasionally spends about an hour on facebook or other non-academic things, he still believes that the library is a quiet, good place to study. Jeff says that he is more productive by himself, rather than studying with a study buddy however, he usually goes to the library with a group of people. Jeff enjoys features about the library such as the coffee shop, however he says that sometimes it can become crowded and have poor Internet connection. Even with the negative aspects, Jeff still believes that the library is a good place to study. My interview with my roommate Jeff has helped me better understand why the library is a good place to study. The library is an excellent resource that the university provides for its students.