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Reflection on Remediation Assignment

Write a brief reflective essay (200 words) on the challenges of remediating/recomposing your written paper (argument/information) in a different format/medium and how you overcame those challenges. You can use these questions for reflection:

• What is your purpose in your remediation project? How well have you remediated your work from your original purpose to your new purpose? 
• Did your target audience change when you remediated the paper? How did that affect other rhetorical situations, e.g., design, language use, etc? 
• What differences did you find in the two media/format (written and PowerPoint/Prezi/website/video) in terms of their affordances? How did they affect what kinds of resources you utilized (sound, images, text, links, etc.)? 

Bad/Good PowerPoint Slides

Good and Bad Power Point Examples Ed Tech from Lynnylu

Evaluating Effectiveness of a Website

Design:

• Is the design attractive? 
• How difficult is it to find the information? 
• Are fonts, colors, backgrounds, etc. effective, consistent and appropriate to the topic and audience? 
• Are the pages too long for the readers to scroll? 
• Does the website use white space, headings, and other design elements to make reading easier?
• Is there a balance between text and visuals?

Content:

• Is the content organized in a logical way? 
• Are paragraphs short? 
• Is the text free of grammatical errors? 

Peer Review Guidelines for PowerPoint Presentations

Form groups of three and present your research to your group. The presentation should use PowerPoint/Prezi and it should be 8-15 minutes long. After the presentation, give feedback to the presenter based on the following evaluation criteria:

Content:

• Is the information/argument presented in a logical manner? Does the presentation follow a clear structure? 
• Do the slides maintain a balance between text and images? Is there too much text (paragraphs, complete sentences, etc)? 
• Is the presentation free of grammatical errors? 

Design:

• Do the slides display elements of effective design? Are fonts, colors, backgrounds, etc. effective, consistent and appropriate to the topic and audience? Does the slide design enhance the presentation?
• Have animations and/or sounds been used to emphasize important points? Are the slide transitions distracting or flowing? Are the slide transitions too fast or too slow?
• Are the pictures clear?

Presentation:

• Did the presenter look familiar with the material and does he/she not read from slides or rely on notes? 
• Did the presenter speak clearly and slowly enough to be heard by the audience?
• Did the presenter show enthusiasm for the subject matter and encourage interest in audience?
• Did the presenter make eye contact with audience?

Adapted from Hamden site. 

Designing Effective PowerPoint Presentation

Web Design Principles

Basic Web Design Principles
Key Elements of an effective Website

Discussion Questions

•      What is remediation? Discuss three examples.
•      What is the double logic of remediation?
•      What do immediacy and hypermediacy mean? Discuss a few examples.
•      How is every mediation remediation?
•      How are hypermedia and transparent media opposite manifestations of the same desire: the desire to get past the limits of representation to achieve the real?

Reflection_Second Major Assignment

Write about the process of writing your research paper from selecting and narrowing down your topic to the final revision. Focus on the challenges you faced and how you were able to overcome those challenges. What did you learn from the process of writing this research paper?
Compare the second major assignment with the first major assignment. How is research based argument paper different from research based informational paper? 

Citation Game

Williams College Library Citation Game

Citation Styles and Disciplinary Values

Citation Exercise

Make entries for "Works Cited" in MLA format/"References" in APA format for the following sources:

Norton

Transnational Writing Program Administration (Edited Collection)

Text-to-Visual Remediation

GOP Senator's Letter

Emergency Notification

Redefining

Self-Editing

Sample APA Paper

Sample MLA Paper

Danger of a Single Story

The Best Blog Is...

Christopher Smith's English 102 Blog

Other five that stood out are:

Andrew Oyler's knowledge and wisdom

Molly McKenna's English 102 Blog

Phoebe Priel: Eglish 102 blog

Brian Radcliff English 102

CiExpressions- Ciarra Cook

Reflection on First Major Assignment

Write a short essay reflecting on your experience writing first major assignment and the conferences we did on the first draft. Use the following questions to maintain your focus:

1. What did you learn from this assignment? 
2. What were your assumptions about writing in your field and how were they challenged or supported by your research? 
3. What were the challenges in the process of writing this assignment? How did you overcome them? 
4. What did you learn about yourself as a writer? Strengths and weakness? 
5. Did you find group conference useful? Do you want to with it, prefer individual conference, or think it better to discontinue it? Why?

Peer-review Guidelines

Peer-review Guidelines

Use this guidelines to respond to your peers' drafts.

1.     Read the essay quickly and see if you clearly understand the main points. Did the paper flow well on your first reading? Briefly describe what part(s) of the essay flowed well and what part(s) seemed choppy or incoherent. What strategy(ies) are used to organize the information gathered from a variety of sources? Suggest some ways to improve the overall organization of the paper.

2.     Now read slowly. Read the essay up until you identify the writer's thesis.  Stop reading at this point and answer the following questions:

a.     Does the introduction give you enough background to understand the thesis?

b.     Is the background too broad or merely tangentially relevant to the thesis?

c.     Does the intro provide relevant background about writing in a particular profession or discipline and identify a problem or gap?

d.     Does it provide a brief description of the methods used to gather relevant information to address the problem and develop an informational report?

e.     Is the thesis clear? Does it make an argument/claim or does it state the most important information about writing in a profession/discipline?

                        Provide suggestions for improving the introductory material.

3.     Now read through the paper, using the point-predict method.  Pause every 1-2 sentences or so and summarize the writer's main argument and predict what will come next.  Clearly identify any places on the paper where your expectations as a reader were not met or where you were unclear on the writer's point.  If possible, indicate what you were expecting.

4.     Does each paragraph adhere to a single main idea?  Note any paragraphs that seem to have multiple topics competing for attention.

5.     Are paragraphs connected with transitions?  Identify any places where transitions between paragraphs can be improved.

6.     Do paragraphs make good use of repetition of key ideas?  Note any places where the writer might improve coherence by repeating a key term or synonym.

7.     Does the writer provide sufficient evidence for each of the main points?  Note any places where you would like to see more evidence.  Make suggestions for what type of evidence the writer might include.

8.     Does the writer use quotations and paraphrases of sources effectively?  Are the quotations relevant?

9.     Is the overall order of paragraphs in the paper logical?  Do the paragraphs in the body of the paper follow the order suggested by the thesis?   Does the overall organization seem to have some sort of ordering principle—such as comparison and contrast, steps/processes, etc?

10.  Does the author focus on features of writing or the aspects of writing process in analyzing written sources? How could he/she improve the analysis?

11.  How well does the writer integrate the information gathered from interviews with the information drawn from analyses of the writings?

12.  Does the essay have an interesting conclusion that does not simply repeat the main points of the essay?

13.  Does the writer include a correctly documented works cited page?

14.  Do you see any pattern errors (grammatical) that the author is making? Can you offer some suggestions to improve?

15.  In what particular aspect(s) of the paper has the author done an excellent job?

16.  What are the three most significant changes the writer could make to improve this paper?

After reading and analyzing your peers’ papers, write a review for each of the papers focusing on the following aspects:

1.     What is your overall impression?

2.     What are the 3-5 most important areas for improvement?

Your review should be at least 3 paragraphs (300 words). After you finish writing, post it as a comment to your peer's blog.

For the group conference with the instructor, you will have to bring at least 4 main suggestions on your peer’s paper. These suggestions have to be concrete and specific. That means, you cannot simply make general comments like you can improve the organization of your essay or you need to improve transition. You need to show where and provide some concrete ways  for improvement.

Also, bring at least three questions that you want to ask your instructor and your peer about your own paper.

Group Work

Class Discussion:

•     Groups of three
•     In your group, discuss the information from the interview and the ideas from other sources.
•     First, the writer talks about how he/she wants to develop and organize the information gathered from both types of sources (interview and written sources). Also talk about any confusions or problems, if you have any, so that you can get some inputs from your friends.
•     Then the other two group members provide suggestions to both develop ideas and to organize them.
•     Take at least 5 minutes to discuss one student’s writing.
•     Then every student needs to reflect on the suggestions and her/his plan and write down at least four most important points she/he learned from today’s discussion.
•     Post that to your blog.
•     Then you will report to the class.

Quotation Exercise

INCORPORATING QUOTATIONS

When integrating direct quotations into a paper it is important to move smoothly from the source information to your own thoughts (and vice-versa). If quotations are simply dropped into a paper without significant warning, a reader may become confused as to the appropriateness and relevance of that particular quotation. 

Rank these passages from best to worst in terms of how they use quotations.  Be prepared to discuss what each passage does well and what it does poorly.  How would you revise the passages that you ranked as making poor use of quotations?

               A.  The son and father's reactions to the mother's death further indicate how little they value her.  When they realize that she is dead and that there is nothing they can do, they “poured her on the couch” and “waited and watched TV”.  Using the word “poured” instead of “laid” or “put” makes the mother more of an object than a person, implying that she really isn’t as important to them as she should be, and instead of crying and grieving, they simply sit and watch TV.

            B.  Of equal importance was the young officer's reliance on rationality. He chose a bicycle as transportation, because it symbolized humanities mastery over nature, concurrently emphasizing his reliance on rationality over emotion. "To ride a bicycle is itself some protection against superstitious fear…" (299). The false protection rationality provides leads the officer up to, and through, the chateau’s door, and eventually to his death in WWI.

            C.  Snow White's beauty was a type of seduction which forced the prince to take her to his castle. Moreover, along the way when the prince’s men carried the “glass coffin, they stumbled and dropped it and the chunk of apple flew out of her throat and she woke up miraculously (lines 132-134).” Their love was shared at a wedding in which the Queen arrived and had to wear “red-hot iron shoes and eventually dances herself to death (line 139).”

            D. Leota also frequently refers to her husband in unflattering terms. She calls him a "shrimp" (48), even though he is hardly short at 5 feet 10 inches tall. Similarly, she tells Mrs. Fletcher that if she ever asked Fred’s advice, they would be “floatin’ down the Yazoo River on a houseboat or something,’” insinuating that he is lazy and foolish (48).

Some Possible Interview Questions

•  How long have you worked at your current job?  How long have you worked in                   this profession overall?
•  What types of writing do you produce? When do you produce them?  In what                     situations? Where are they produced?  In school or workplace? 
•  Who are the typical readers? 
•  How much time do you spend writing different types of writings?
•  How important are the various types of writing? Why do you produce them?
•  Did the writing you did in school prepare you for the writing demands of your job?  Why or why not?  What writing assignments were most useful in preparing you for your job?
• What is the number one thing you know about writing now that you wish you had known when you started this career?
• Think back to the most difficult document or email you ever had to write.  What made it difficult?  Why was it important?  How long did it take you to write it?
• What is the most common writing activity you perform?  Who reads this?  What do you have to consider as you write this genre?  Can you name a particularly good or bad example of this type of writing?  What made it good or bad?
• How much time do you approximately spend writing per day (including email)? 
• How much revision do you do? Do you revise all types of writing you do? If not, what type of writing you revise most? Can you tell me more about the process of revision? 
• Do you collaborate with others when you produce certain types of writing? How do you divide work? Is it normal in your discipline to have more than two authors for scholarly publications? 
• Do you also revise some other types of writings? What is the purpose of revision?
• We talked about different types of writing, their conventions, and the processes of writing them. Now, can you tell me what role writing plays in your profession in general? Some researchers claim that writing shapes the culture of an institution as much as the culture of the institution shapes writing produced in that institution. Do you see any such relationships between the culture of your workplace and the writings produced/used here?

https://hempaudel.youcanbook.me/

https://hempaudel.youcanbook.me/

Welcome to English 102

This course teaches you how to analyze and produce multiple genres of writing and helps you understand writing conventions of the academic discipline of your interest. You will

•  Practice writing in a variety of genres
•  Learn how to summarize, evaluate, and synthesize information from different  sources
• Work with primary as well as secondary research
• Learn the conventions of different methods of citation