It’s hard to believe that the semester is just about over.  I know that it hasn’t been easy, so give yourselves credit for hanging in there and making it to the end!  Just a few reminders below for tying up the last loose ends for our course.

I hope that you are all making plans for some rest, relaxation, reflection, and restoration over the next few weeks.  As I told you on Monday, my door (both literal and metaphoric) is always open, so don’t hesitate to reach out – even if it’s just to say hello and update me on what’s going on in your lives.  Wishing all of us a peaceful and healthy 2022!

• –End of Semester Reflection. You can access the form HERE.  This is an opportunity to reflect on the work you’ve done this semester and to suggest the grade you believe you’ve earned.  Take the time to do this thoroughly and in a detailed way.  If you only offer up a sentence or two to explain the grade you’re proposing, I will have a hard time accepting your recommendation.  Please complete these forms by December 20th.  I won’t be able to file grades for the class until all of you have completed this form.
• Missing Work.  The last day to submit missing work is Monday, Dec. 20th.  Don’t forget to email me to let me know that you have added something to the blog or to Google Docs.
• Analytical Research Papers.  A few of you are still completing your papers.  If you have not uploaded your paper, you should have emailed me by now to discuss plans for completing the course.  In the absence of any communication, I will assume that you have unofficially withdrawn from the course.

• Presentations – Thank you to those of you who shared your research with us on Wednesday!  It was great to see how varied your interests are, and I appreciated the supportive and thoughtful feedback you gave one another.  On Monday, Dec. 13th, we will be hearing from numbers #12 – #22.  If you are presenting on Monday, please try to arrive a few minutes early, so we can get your technology organized before we begin.  Don’t forget to bring your Feedback Forms with you to class.  I will be collecting them at the end of our session.

• Analytical Research Paper – DUE BY WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15TH.   To receive credit for this assignment, your paper must be submitted by the 15th. Scroll down for a list of things to keep in mind as you complete your research paper.

• End of Semester Reflection and Grade Proposal.  Your final assignment for this course is an opportunity to reflect on the semester and consider what grade you have earned in the course.  You can find this assignment HERE.  Please set aside some time to respond to the questions thoroughly and thoughtfully.  You can begin this reflection any time after you’ve submitted your Analytical Research Paper.  Please complete your reflection by Monday, December 20th.  

• Missing Work.. If you are intending to submit any missing work before the end of the semester, please be aware that I will not be accepting anything beyond December 20th.  Additionally, if you submit any late work via the blog, you will also need to email me to let me know exactly what you have submitted, so that I can go back and review your work.   Without that email, it is quite likely that I will not see your work, and you won’t receive credit for its completion.

Analytical Research Paper – Reminders

• Your completed essay must be placed in your personal ENG2100 folder by Wed. Dec. 15th.
• Give your essay a title that reveals something about your topic.
• Your introduction should lay out the question you are exploring and offer a “road map” to the body of the essay.
• Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence that articulates the main idea of that paragraph.
• Don’t forget to anticipate a reader who hears about your research and asks, “So what? Why is this important?”  Build an answer to this “so what” question into your essay.  Your conclusion is a good place to explain what you think the significance of your findings is.
• Each time you use words or ideas that you have encountered through your research, you must include a parenthetical citation identifying the source.  Be very vigilant about this; including words or ideas you’ve found elsewhere and presenting them in your paper without citation is plagiarism.  Papers that present someone else’s ideas or words as their own will receive an F; their authors will receive a failing grade in the course, and they will be referred to the Dean of Students.  If you’re not sure about whether or not you need to cite something, play it safe and include the citation!!!
• Your Works Cited List should be the last page of your paper.  Format your list  according to the MLA Guidelines we reviewed in class.  Use the link at the top of the page for information about these guidelines.  Remember that this list should include only those works that you have actually quoted from or referred to in your paper.

• Analytical Research Paper Drafts – Your drafts were due on December 1st.  If your draft has already been placed in the appropriate sub-folder inside our shared class folder on your Google Drive, great!  If your draft isn’t in our folder yet, it is late.  Don’t kid yourself into thinking that, because we are using an alternative grading system in this course, late assignments don’t matter.  They do.  When you do your final evaluation for this course, you will need to take lateness into account. Obviously, it’s not possible to argue that you have earned an A, for example, when you haven’t met the most basic aspect of an assignment – on time submission!  If your draft wasn’t uploaded to our folder yesterday, I should already have received an email from you explaining why your work is late and letting me know when it will be completed.  
• Peer Review – We will be using the same peer review process for the Analytical Research Paper that we used for your previous essays.  You can find the Peer Review Worksheet in the same folder you’ve placed your drafts.  Copy and paste it to the bottom of each essay that you are reviewing.  In order to receive credit for this assignment, your peer reviews must be completed by Sunday, December 5th.  Obviously, you can only review drafts that have been uploaded, so please reach out to me if you have questions or concerns about missing drafts.
• Conferences –  On Monday, December 6th, each writing group will have a short meeting with me.  This will be an opportunity to check in about your progress on the Analytical Research Paper and your Presentation.  Please come to this meeting prepared to discuss both of these assignments.  These meetings are a required part of our course and take place during our scheduled class time.  Missing a scheduled Monday conference is the same as missing a Wednesday class.  These conferences will take place in our classroom.

Conference Schedule

12:00 – 12:20  Ilaisher, Michael, Destiny

12:20 – 12:40  Janice, Michelle, Raul, Steve

12:40 – 1:00  Yair, Stefany, Rachelle, Kevin

1:00 – 1:20  Fatima B., Julian, Khushpreet, Yousra

1:20 – 1:40  Ashley, Mia, Jerica

1:40 – 2:00  Andrew, Karanjot, Fatima C., Helen

• Presentations –  I have shared our Presentation schedule in a separate post.  Please be sure that you understand what is expected of you.  On the day of your presentation, please plan to arrive in class a few minutes early, especially if you will be using any technology during your presentation.  We have two days of presentations – December 8th and 13th.  Please be aware that attendance is mandatory on both dates.
• End of Semester Business – As we approach the end of the semester, now is the time to review whether you have any missing work to complete.  We have two major assignments, the Analytical Research Paper and the Presentation, still to complete, but some of you have other assignments still missing.  No one can pass ENG2100 without, at minimum, satisfactory completion of the three required formal essays and the presentation.   If you have questions about your status in the course, please reach out to me to discuss your situation.
• Week #15 – I’m posting this a day early (on Thursday rather than Friday), but wanted to remind you that one of the items on last week’s post  (the reading in Join the Conversation which relates directly to research paper you’re working on) is due by Friday, Dec. 3rd.

Hi Everyone,

I hope that you had a good Thanksgiving and are enjoying some time at home with your families.  This week we are continuing to move forward with our Analytical Research Papers.  Please make sure that you are up to date on the assignments.  You should already have submitted your Research Proposal and placed a Preliminary Source List into your ENG2100 folder.  The plan for this week is as follows:

• Office Hours:  I will be holding extended office hours on Monday.  You can sign-up for an appointment HERE.  If all available slots fill up, feel free to sign up together with someone else.  I am happy to meet with you in small groups.
• Drafts Due:  Your first drafts are due on Wed. Dec. 1st.   I suggest that as you take notes on your sources, you are already identifying sources you want to include in the body of your paper.  Remember that each body paragraph should be organized around a single idea about your topic that you will be exploring in that paragraph, so make sure that you are beginning each body paragraph with a topic sentence that lays out that idea..   Please print out your draft on Wednesday and bring 3 hard copies of your draft with you to class.
• Reading:. Please take a look at the sections in Join the Conversation titled “Using Sources” (pp.167-182) and “Plagiarism and Academic Integrity” (pp.183-188).  Think about how you can incorporate some of their suggestions into your research paper process.  In a comment on this post, please share one piece of good advice you found in the reading.  Do this by Friday, Dec. 3rd.

This is an important week for moving forward and making progress on your Analytical Research Paper!

• Research Proposals – Your Research Proposals were due on Wednesday.  You cannot move forward without submitting a proposal.  If you have not yet uploaded your proposal, this is the very first thing that you need to do!  As I explained in class, your proposal is simply a spelling out of the major question that you are seeking to answer through your research plus either a list of possible sub-questions, a preliminary outline, or simply a paragraph explaining what it is that you are interested in exploring and where you see this paper heading.  Your proposal should be composed as a word document or google doc and added to the folder “Analytical Research Papers” which you can find inside our main class folder “Language, Identity, and Representation”.
• Conferences – Half of you are scheduled to meet with me on Monday with your Writing Groups.  Please see the schedule below in last week’s assignment post.  These conferences will take place in our regular classroom and are mandatory.
• NO CLASS ON WEDNESDAY 11/24 – Enjoy your Thanksgiving!
• Source List – Building on the work we did in class on Wednesday, you will continue to compile a list of sources for your research.  By Wednesday, November 24th, please add a preliminary source list to your personal English 2100 folder.  Give your file the title “Your Name Preliminary Bibliography”.   This should include sources that you have already looked at and have determined are relevant to your specific topic – not just works that came up on the screen when you did your search on Wednesday.

Here is the schedule for this week:

• Post Three Ideas:  Building on the brainstorming that we did on Wednesday, please come up with three paper topic ideas.   These should be ideas that genuinely interest YOU.  You will be most successful with this project if you settle on a topic that you feel passionately about, so you may need to do some reflection to figure out what you are naturally drawn to.  Express each topic in the form of a question and post them to the blog in a new blog post.  Your topics must be shared by Sunday, November 14th.
• Conferences: You will be meeting with me in writing groups on Monday, November 15th and Monday, November 22nd.  These meetings will take place in our classroom.  Half of you are meeting with me this week, and half are meeting with me on the 22nd.  See the schedule below.  Come to your conference prepared to discuss your research topic.
• Computer Session: Our class on Wednesday, November 17th will be held in a computer lab on campus.  I am still waiting to hear back to find out which room they’ve assigned us.  Once I find out, I will post the room here on the blog.  During this class, we will be learning how to use Baruch’s Newman Library’s online resources to conduct our research.  This is a session you won’t want to miss!!!
• Proposals Due:. Once you have settled on a topic, your next step will be writing a Research Proposal.  This is a document in which you lay out the central question you will be exploring and then identify the sub-topics or sub-questions you’d like to look at in your research.  Your proposal could look like a traditional outline, a bulleted list of ideas, or a few paragraphs describing what interests you about your topic.  Please post your proposal to our shared folder by Wednesday, November 17th and give the file the name “Your Name Research Proposal.”  Don’t worry if you later discover that you need to modify your proposal.

You can link to the information about the Analytical Research Paper and Presentation that I distributed in class on Wednesday HERE.

Writing Group Conferences

Monday, November 15th

12:30 – 1:00. Ilaisher, Michael, Destiny

1:00 – 1:30. Janice, Michelle, Raul, Steve

1:30 – 2:00  Yair, Stefany, Rachelle, Kevin

Monday, November 22nd

12:30 – 1:00. Fatima B., Julian, Yousra, Khushpreet

1:00 – 1:30. Ashley, Mia, Yerica

1:30 – 2:00  Andrew, Karanjot, Fatima C., Helen