Author Archives: Stephen Francoeur

Following Instructions

This seems obvious, but I am always surprised by how often basic instructions get overlooked. If you have questions about the assignment, contact me in advance of the due date; that way, I can not only answer your question but decide if I need to better explain the assignment to the rest of the class as well. As many of you can probably attest, I do check my email seven days a week and respond throughout much of the day and early evening, even on weekends.

Quality of the Writing

Unless I specifically tell you otherwise, I always expect your writing to be in complete sentences, grammatically correct, and to follow standardized spelling. Lots of typos and mistakes suggest to me an overall slapdash approach to the way the whole assignment was handled.

As a general rule, the more you write, the better your grade will be. The more evidence you can offer to me that you read a source or engaged with an idea, the easier my job is to assess what has been learned.

Citations

As we get deeper into the semester, I will expect your use of MLA style in citations to be more consistent and error free. If you are looking for guides to MLA style citations, a good place to begin is at the Online Writing Lab from Purdue University.

Engagement with the Reading

As we read sources for class discussions and as you start to locate sources for your Google-related topic, I expect to see evidence of that reading in all your work. As the semester goes on, we should all gaining expertise in all matters Google; I’ll be looking for an increasing sophistication in your work as it relates to Google.

Credit Given to the Writing of Others

If you borrow the language or phrasing of a source you read, you must cite that source and put quotation marks around the text you used. This is true even in annotated bibliography entries you write; if your annotation mimics the sentence structure of the source you are citing, you’ll need to go back and completely rewrite that sentence in your own words. If you can’t avoid using specific phrasing, then always use quotation marks to indicate that the language is not your own. If you have any questions about this, please ask for help, as unintentional plagiarism is nearly as serious a problem as intentional plagiarism.