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  In the absence of any communication, I will assume that you have unofficially withdrawn from the course.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

• Textual Analysis Essays – Due Friday, November 5th.  Please submit your essays by midnight on Friday by placing your document in the folder that contains your Literacy Narrative.  Your essay should have a title that reveals something about its content, but the file should be named “Your Name / Textual Analysis Essay”.   If you have any problems meeting this deadline, you need to reach out to me BEFORE the essay is due, not after the deadline has passed.  Don’t forget to proofread your essay before you submit it, being careful to use the present tense when you discuss your text and checking to see that you you have inserted your quotations smoothly into your writing.
• Dear Reader Letter:  As you did for the Literacy Narrative, you will be taking some time to reflect on the process of writing your Textual Analysis Essay.  In your “Dear Reader” letter, you may want to consider the following:  What are you especially proud of in this essay?  What do you wish you had done better?  What did you learn from. your ‘deep dive’ into your chosen text?  How did the process of planning, drafting, peer review, and revision go for you? What did you change about your essay between your first draft and your final draft? How did you feel about “loosening up” your language and writing in a more natural, authentic voice? What did you learn from reading your partners’ essays?  What got in the way of your progress on this essay? Why?  What else would you like your reader to know before he/she reads your essay?  These letters should be a minimum of 300 words and should be added to your folder by Monday, November 8th.
• Chimamanda Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story”: Please watch Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie’s talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.”  You can find a link to the video under the “Texts” tab above.  Once you have watched the video, please share a response to it in the form of a comment on this post.  In your response, please share an example of a “single story” you have encountered in your own life.  This could be a time when you have been on the receiving end of someone else’s “single story” about YOU; it could be an example in which you found yourself having a “single story” about someone else; or it could be a time when you have encountered a “single story” being promoted in the media.  Please share your comments by Tuesday, November 9th.
• Representation:  You may remember that our course is called “Language, Identity, and Representation.”  We have talked a lot about language, and we’ve talked a lot of identity, but we haven’t addressed representation yet.  By representation, I mean the way that individuals, groups, and experiences are depicted, written about, and presented to us.  To begin thinking about representation, I would like you to find a piece of media whose representation of a particular identity strikes you as being exactly right, totally problematic, or somewhere in-between, and be prepared to share it in class on Wednesday.   The term “media” is very broad; your selection could be an advertisement, a music video, a television show, a meme, a newspaper story or headline, a comedy routine, a film, a character in a novel, etc….   Think about something you’ve seen that you have had a strong reaction to – either because it handles representation in a way that you really like and appreciate or because you found it offensive or troubling.  In advance of class, please create a new post and share the piece of media you have selected.   If you have selected something long like a tv show, please select and share a short clip that would illustrate what you have in mind.  Please reach out to me via email or stop by my office hours on Monday if you have questions about this assignment.  Please post by 11:30 am on Wednesday, November 10th to receive credit for this assignment.

Hi Everyone,

This week we will once again be focussed on our Textual Analysis Essays.

• Office Hours:  You can sign up HERE to meet with me on Monday.  Don’t forget to specify whether you will be meeting with me in person or via Zoom.  Please be sure that you have updated your draft since our class on Wednesday and that your revised draft is in our shared drafts folder.  You are welcome to sign up individually or as a Writing Group for these office hours.  If you are coming with your Writing Group, feel free to sign up for two back-to-back appointments.
• Feedback:  If you aren’t able to meet with me on Monday, but still want feedback on your draft, I am happy to communicate with you via email over the weekend.  Simply send me an email with any questions or concerns you have and attach your draft.
• Wednesday’s class:  Please bring a printed out draft of your essay with you to class on Wednesday, November 3rd.
• Textual Analysis Due:  As you know, your Textual Analysis Essay is due on Friday, November 5th.   You will submit it by placing it in the same Google Docs folder you used to submit your Literacy Narrative.  Your essay should have an inviting title that relates in some way to your topic, but the file you submit should have a name that includes your first and last name plus the words “Textual Analysis.”
• Recommendation Feedback – A gentle reminder that your feedback on your peers’ Recommendation posts should be shared on the blog by today, Friday, October 29th.
• Happy Halloween to those of. you who celebrated, and don’t forget that Tuesday is Election Day.  Happy voting if you are a registered voter in New York!

• Office Hours: I will be holding my regular office hours on Monday, October 25th.  Sign up HERE if you’d like to meet with me.  Be sure to specify whether our appointment will be in-person or via Zoom.
• Drafts Due:. Complete a draft of your Textual Analysis Essay by Monday, October 25th.  Give your draft file the name: ” Your Name Textual Analysis Draft”, and place it in the appropriate folder inside our class Google Docs folder.
•  Peer Review:  We will be following the same procedure for peer review that we used for the Literacy Narrative.  Once your drafts have been placed in our shared folder, you will go into the folder and read and comment on two of your Writing Group members drafts.  If you are in a three person group, you’ll be reading the drafts of the other two members of your group.  If you are in a four person group, make sure that each draft gets two sets of comments.  Use the instructions on the document Textual Analysis Peer Review located in our shared folder to conduct your peer review.  To receive credit for this assignment, complete both your peer reviews by Tuesday, October 26th. 

Writing Groups

Group 1:  Andrew, Karanjot, Fatima C., Helen

Group 2: Ashley, Mia, Yerica

Group 3: Fatima B., Julian, Yousra, Khushpreet

Group 4: Yair, Stefany, Rachelle, Kevin M.P.

Group 5: Janice, Michelle, Raul, Steve

Group 6: Ilaisher, Michael, Destiny

• Recommendation Responses:  Read through the Recommendation posts from last week and respond to any three of your classmates’ posts.  Do your best to ensure that everyone gets some feedback.  Please do this by Friday, October 29th.
• Writing Workshop:  We will be working with our drafts in class on Wednesday, October 27th.  Please bring a hard copy of your draft essay with you to class and be sure that you can access the text you’re writing about – either on paper or electronically.
• Reminder:. Don’t forget to complete any unfinished work you have from Week #9 or earlier in the semester.  Your Mid-Semester Reflections should be completed by Friday, October 22nd.

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are all doing well.  Here are our assignments for the coming week!  As I’ve said before, prioritize the current week’s work, then go back and complete any assignments you’ve missed along the way!

• Office Hours:  Sign up HERE if you would like to meet with me on Monday (in person or virtually) to discuss your Literacy Narrative, your general progress in the course, or anything else that is on your mind.
• Recommendation Round-Up:  Your main writing assignment this week is to choose something you’d like to recommend to the class.  It could be a tv show, a song, a video, a recipe, an experience, a restaurant, a class…you name it.  The only requirement is that it be something you personally love and can recommend enthusiastically.  In a post on our blog, share your recommendation, and where appropriate, provide a link to the thing you are recommending.  Your recommendation post should be approximately 500 words (one page typed, single spaced) and it must utilize more than one of the “languages” you have at your disposal.. In thinking about how to craft your recommendation, keep in mind that your readers are your peers in this course.  As you experiment with writing this piece, I encourage you to try to access your “authentic” voice as much as possible and to work with the sentence structures and vocabularies that come most naturally to you.   Your goal is not to impress me with your fancy language; it’s to make your classmates want to try out whatever it is that you are recommending.  Your posts must be shared by Tuesday, October 19th.
• Mid-Semester Reflection – We are at the halfway point of our semester.  Please take some time to complete this Mid-Semester Reflection.  This will give you a chance to evaluate your progress thus far and to think about your goals for the remainder of the semester.  Please complete the reflection by Friday, October, 22nd.
• Textual Analysis Essay – Your next formal essay will be a close textual analysis of one of the readings we’ve done for the course.  We will be discussing the assignment in detail on Wednesday, but in the meantime, please identify the reading you would be most interested in re-visiting for this assignment.  It could be any of the readings you’ve been assigned thus far  (including Jamila Lyiscott’s TED talk).  Before Wednesday’s class, please print-out the text you’ve decided to write about and re-read it, highlighting important passages and making notes in the margins. ( I have linked to a transcript of Lyiscott’s TED talk under the “texts” tab above, in case any of you choose that as your text.).   Once you’ve done that, I have created a shared document for us to record our preliminary thoughts about our text. You can find that document HERE.  Please scroll down to the first available blank page and record your responses to the questions you find there.  Complete this form by 11:30 am on Wednesday, October 20th, so that I can read your responses before class.   Bring a hard copy of the text you’ve selected with you to class on Wednesday!