AP--notes for submitting papers

Notes for submitting word search papers:

1. Binders: A small (1") binder will do, or a clean folder with pockets, even a manila folder nicely organized. The first thing in the binder you submit will be the grading sheet with your name on it, then the final copy of your paper, then your draft, stamped by me and edited by two peers, and finally a section containing the annotated printouts of all your research materials with sources clearly indicated. Due in class Tuesday January 27 unless you have received an extension from me (those enrolled in both this class and Art of Composition and one or two others)
2. Turnitin: Final drafts must also be submitted by that time to turnitin.com (assignment title: I-Search a Word).
3. Style: Write your paper as a first-person account of your search for the ultimate meaning of your word. Use your sources to make your analysis of the word credible, but connect those sources to your personal quest for the word’s meaning, your previous understanding of the word, and what you learned along the way, both about the word and the research process. You should both summarize and analyze the information you gather from your sources in the body of the paper. Information should be cited parenthetically, linked to a properly formatted list of Works Cited at the end of your paper. If you use a Works Cited web site, pay attention to the details. Don't cite a 13th century manuscript for information you found on a web site.
4. Sources & length: Pay proper attention to the lists of both required and suggested sources. Most papers in the past have cited between 8 and 15 sources. Length of the final draft will be approximately 5 to 7 pages, somewhere close to 2000 words. If you have more material and wish to go slightly longer, I will be happy as long as you are making your search for meaning interesting and lively.

Outline template for Word-Search papers

I-Search a Word: Outline template

(I also published this file on Canvas. I think. Let me know.)

The Beginning

Why I chose my word

What it means to me as I begin to search

 

The Middle

History and major meanings

Origins

Original (oldest) meanings

Evolution over time, significant use in Shakespeare, Bible, other pillars of English literature

Major changes, added meanings over time

Contemporary use and meanings

Most common modern dictionary definition(s)

Related words, major (most interesting) combining forms

Idioms

Slang

Occurrences in art, music, journalism, fashion, politics, famous sayings, etc

Information that was brand new to me or even surprising; discoveries made along the way

 

The Ending

Most important, interesting things I learned

How my search expanded my understanding of a single word

 

I hope this template proves useful. Don’t follow it slavishly as a formula; adapt it creatively and individually to fit the larger patterns of meaning you have learned and the discoveries you have made along the way. If you are genuinely interested in what you are learning, the paper you write will be more interesting as a result.

Art of Composition essay

Art of Comp (Mr. Coon, w/ many thanks to Ms. Decker for ideas and wording)

Essay 1: Identity

Your first full essay of the semester will be your essay on Identity. Essentially, you are writing about yourself. However, you need to write about yourself in such a way that I (the reader) learn something about myself.

Consider: What is it about you that teaches me something about me?

So far, we have plumbed identity by exploring the following:

·      your name and its history and/or significance; your feelings about your name; others’ reactions to your name

·      the food you eat—your idiosyncrasies and obsessions, your rituals and indulgences, your history and your habits, your likes and dislikes

·      An activity you did for the first time and how its success or failure affected you.

·      A description of a place that has some meaning or significance to you

·      An early childhood memory and why it stays in your mind

My hope is that by now, you’re seeing some recurring words, themes, ideas, or questions “swimming under your boat.” We’re trying to circle in on those. The next task is to identify one central idea—an assertion or a question that is crucial to your identity and then write about it.

Of course, this central idea might be big, looming, fuzzy, or abstract. It might be difficult or painful to approach, much less write about, like:

            • love, or the want of it

            • belonging or not belonging to a group or a place

Of course, these “central ideas” don’t all have to be sob stories. Yours might be:

            • pride—in yourself, or where you come from

            • optimism—about where you’re headed

The point is, these are abstractions. It’s hard to sit down and just write about love or optimism or pride or belonging. Also, if you go too abstract and just write about the nature of love or optimism or pride or belonging—or whatever—the result is frequently so broad as to be boring to the reader.

That’s where you come in. What have you lived that tells us something new or unusual or unexpected about these universal experiences that we all share? We’ve all loved, for example, but what in your personal story tells us something new about love we may never have considered before?

If you’ve ever had a teacher tell you that you need a better conclusion, that your writing needs to pass the “so what?” test, this might be what he or she was talking about. We can’t have writing about lofty abstractions without something to ground it, to make it tactile and personal and real. And we don’t want writing about yourself that’s all about you—that’s called “navel gazing.” It’s inaccessible and boring at best and self-indulgent and offensive at worst.

So how do we figure out what you’ve really been writing about—writing at, writing around, writing toward—when you thought you were simply writing about your name and your food and your hobbies?

Step 1: Arrange your four pieces of writing in front of you. Have a highlighter or pen in hand. You’re going to go on a hunt for words or phrases that are common to all (or most) of your pieces. Hint: you’re not looking for “the,” “and,” or “I.” But you might be looking for:

            • proper nouns that pop up with frequency—for example, names of certain people or places. Make a list on a separate sheet of paper.

            • particularly powerful or evocative adjectives. For this one, I might suggest that you simply highlight any adjective that seems loaded and non-neutral and make a list. Then try grouping them into categories to find the running threads.

Step 2: Now look at your list or lists. Does anything emerge? If we wanted to get all psychoanalytic, for example, we might find meaning in a list like this:

Mom (6 occurrences)

Inadequate

Estranged

Longing

OK, that’s a bad example of a good thing. But we can use it, at least for an example. Maybe this poor person really needs to write about her relationship with her mom. If she stops there, it’s therapy and it belongs in her diary. But if she says to herself, “what does my relationship with my mom tell me about mothering, about the place of maternal love in the world?” then she’s on to something.

Freewrite for 10-15 minutes about what you see in your lists and which central ideas seem to have potential. Try not to eliminate or even evaluate any ideas at this point, just point out what seems to be present in the Daily Writings you did and where you could go with it if you wanted to.

We’re going to start this today (in the lab) and it constitutes your homework. For next class, I want you to have steps 1 and 2 done and present in hard copy. This means you’ll also have printouts (highlighted, etc.) of your four Daily Writings, whether you started them in your journal or in electronic format.

Here are the specific, nuts-and-bolts details about this first essay.

Art of Comp Essay #1: Identity

FORMATTING

• Double-spaced, single-sided, typed on 8.5x11 white paper

• Stapled in upper left corner

• Header (name, date, class, instructor name) in upper left corner

• Page numbers in upper right as follows: Last name, 1

• Title centered on line below header

• Traditional paragraph style (first line indented; start first paragraph on line below title)

• Traditional serif font (Times New Roman, Courier, Cambria) in black ink

LENGTH

• No specific length requirements but generally between 1,500 and 3,000 words is “fighting weight” for a personal essay like this.

• No magical “five paragraph essay” rule. Paragraphs are free: Use as many as you need and no more.

VOICE

• First person is fine (and, probably, necessary). Yes, you can use “I.”

• Contractions, slang, etc.—all fine. Consider only audience, effect and effectiveness.

CITATIONS

• This is not academic writing; you will not be using MLA style to cite from textbooks or academic journals. However, you must connect your experience to the experiences of others and/or culture at large, frequently depicted in media (which includes books, movies, television, etc.). So you will quote and/or paraphrase the work of others. Please use MLA endnote style to do this.

           

DUE DATE:

• Mandatory rough draft: January 22 & 23, whichever day you have class. Bring a clean, complete rough draft.

• Final due date: January 26 & 27, whichever day your section meets.

Your essay grade will go down one “notch” (A to A-minus, etc.) for each day that your paper is late after the due date.

SUGGESTION:

• Spend some more time trolling through the “Modern Love” or “Lives” sections of nyt.com (The New York Times website). Like the ones we looked at in class, these pieces are similar in content, purpose, and tone to what I'm asking you to do with this assignment.

AP--online resources for word searches

I-search resources

Biblos, a bible study tool. I suggest in particular comparing the King James (KJV) and American Standard (ASV) bibles to see if and where your word occurs.

Open source Shakespeare, an excellent way to search the plays for individual words.

One Look, a dictionary search engine listing all the online dictionaries in which a word appears. Useful for comparing different definitions. One of their links is for Noah Webster's original 1828 dictionary, the first distinctly "American" dictionary. Check it out.

Dr. Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary.

American Verse Project, part of University of Michigan's vast array of online resources (Go Ohio State!). Its limitation is that it only cites American poems published prior to 1920 (still, very good for Whitman, Dickinson, Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, other 19th century American poets.)

A slightly facetious, but perhaps useful site called word detective.

An online etymological dictionary, not a scholarly work, but a fascinating project being done by an ambitious amateur.

The Middle English Dictionary, another (gulp!) resource from University of Michigan.

Extended definition of a word

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AP English      January 2015      Extended definition assignment

Assignment: Write a paper of 5 to 7 pages containing an extended definition of a single word (see http://grammar.about.com/od/e/g/extendeddefinitionterm.htm), a commonly used word, but one with an abstract or intangible quality to its meaning. While the primary purpose of the essay is to provide information about the history and range of uses of your word, you may also choose to include personal experiences that provide connections for you with the larger meaning of the word.

Sources: Consult the following sources to include all the necessary information in your paper. Not every word will appear in every source, but you should make photocopies of all the information you gather.

1.     The Oxford English Dictionary (20 volume 2^nd edition) in our library—what are the earliest uses and contexts for your word recorded in the English language? What meanings have evolved over time? Which uses are now obsolete? Which ones match your understanding of your word? Which contain surprises?

2.     Webster’s Third International Dictionary (3 volumes) in our library—what key definitions, examples, and other information does the dictionary give for the word? How is the information organized differently from the OED?

3.     Either or both of the following: Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary (available online) or Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary (available through onelook.com).

4.     A dictionary of etymology, either online or in our library. How does its information compare to that of the OED?

5.     A print or online thesaurus—what are the most important synonyms for your word? Include a list from the thesaurus in the sources section of your folder.

6.     A Concordance to Shakespeare—how frequently does your word occur? Copy a few key speeches containing the word and the plays in which they are found. Give an example of an interesting or original way in which Shakespeare uses the word.

7.     A Concordance to the Bible—list the most important verses containing the word and copy these verses onto a page in your sources section. How do they help you understand the full significance of your word? Pay special attention to the Authorized or King James Version of 1611 (KJV). Compare a key verse to that of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of 1946.

8.     A statement of what the word means to you, both before and after you conduct your research.

9.     Optional sources to round out your understanding: a dictionary of slang, a poem in which the word occurs, a citation from an online quotations list, a work of art or music, a book about words and language, a work of history, a newspaper article, cartoon, television show, or movie.

Process: Gather your findings in a binder. The first thing in the binder you submit will be the final copy of your paper, then your draft, edited by two peers, and a section containing the annotated printouts of all your research materials with sources clearly indicated.

Rationale: According to Edward Jenkinson and Donald Seybold, “it is extremely difficult for anyone to define a word that does not have objective [meaning]. Yet the ideas, feelings, and emotions that are most significant in our lives are conveyed [by such words]. . . .Everyone who uses such words as freedom, rich, or love has slightly different notions about what those words mean, [yet] we frequently act as if we are talking about the same thing when we use such words.” Thus, this assignment is to sift through our assumptions about one abstract word to find relevant historical information about its uses and meanings throughout the history of the English language.

Schedule:

·       Have your word chosen and approved by me by the beginning of class 3 (January 12, preferably sooner).  Everyone must have a different word.

·       We will spend parts of two classes in the library looking at the OED and other source material.

·       Your journal for class 4 will include your previous understanding of the word along with a brief summary of what you have learned so far in your research. It may be incorporated in some fashion into your draft the following week.

·       Class 8 (January 23 & 26), bring your drafts to class, five pages minimum.

·       Binders are due in class 9, January 27. Final drafts must also be submitted by that time to turnitin.com (assignment title: I-Search a Word).

Style: Write your paper as a first-person account of your search for the ultimate meaning of your word. Use your sources to make your analysis of the word credible, but connect those sources to your personal quest for the word’s meaning, your previous understanding of the word, and what you learned along the way, both about the word and the research process. You should both summarize and analyze the information you gather from your sources in the body of the paper. Information should be cited parenthetically, linked to a properly formatted list of Works Cited at the end of your paper.

Words: I’ve brainstormed over 100 words, but you may suggest a word not on this list, as long as it meets the requirements stated above. Everyone must have a different word. Here is my list:

·       Anger

·       Atonement

·       Beauty

·       Belief

·       Bliss

·       Brave

·       Burden

·       Calm

·       Chance

·       Chaos

·       Charity

·       Charm

·       Confusion

·       Courage

·       Courtesy

·       Cruel

·       Cunning

·       Curious

·       Curse

·       Darkness

·       Despair

·       Destiny

·       Doom

·       Doubt

·       Envy

·       Evil

·       Faith

·       Fame

·       Fate

·       Fear

·       Fortune

·       Freedom

·       Friend

·       Generous

·       Genius

·       Glee

·       Glory

·       Glutton

·       Good

·       Grace

·       Greatness

·       Greed

·       Guile

·       Guilt

·       Happiness

·       Hatred

·       Heart

·       Holy

·       Honor

·       Hope

·       Human

·       Idea

·       Ignorant

·       Illusion

·       Imagination

·       Inspiration

·       Jealousy

·       Journey

·       Joy

·       Justice

·       Kindness

·       Knowledge

·       Love

·       Loyalty

·       Luck

·       Lust

·       Mercy

·       Mind

·       Miracle

·       Natural

·       Normal

·       Pain

·       Passion

·       Patriot

·       Peace

·       Pride

·       Quest

·       Rational

·       Reality

·       Reason

·       Redemption

·       Revenge

·       Riches

·       Righteous

·       Romance

·       Sacrifice

·       Savage

·       Serene

·       Shame

·       Sin

·       Sorrow

·       Soul

·       Spirit

·       Sublime

·       Success

·       Terror

·       Trust

·       Truth

·       Valor

·       Vanity

·       Wealth

·       Weird

·       Wisdom

·       Wonder

What word interests you sufficiently to spend two weeks researching and writing about its history and most important meanings? After we review this assignment during  class 1 for both sections, I will accept requests for words beginning after lunch Wednesday January 7.. By class 2 (January 8), everyone must have selected a word to work with.