ENGL 2284: Literature and the Environment
FIELDWORK QUESTIONS:
With Quiz 3, your task will be to analyze selected readings, as well as to conduct research beyond those readings at both a national and international level. The idea here is to use the reading as a springboard into the issues it discusses. By permitting the essays you choose to lead you into research, then, you force yourself to open your eyes to the larger issues at hand.
Step One: Essay Selections
First, you will choose one reading from Week Nine; you may choose any reading you wish to choose. You will also choose one reading from Week Eleven, and, again, your options are completely open.
To guide your choices, read the steps below, which explain the process of investigation you will use to explore the readings. Further, there does NOT need to be a connection between your choices, for you will be composing two separate ½’s of the assignment here. To have to make a connection between the readings limits your choices, and it is hard to accomplish. So, just as you did with the last assignment, Writing Assignment 1, you will have a Part A of the assignment, which will address your first reading choice; and a Part B of the assignment, which will address your second reading choice.
WITH EACH OF THE ESSAYS YOU CHOOSE, YOU WILL COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING STEPS. AND AS ADVISED ABOVE, YOU WILL BE COMPOSING A TWO-PART ASSIGNMENT.
Step Two: In-Depth Essay Analysis
You need to analyze the reading itself, by presenting your understanding of it. Remember the helpful list provided to you on the Writing Assignment 1 handout; that list offers you many ways to investigate a text. This list is NOT duplicated here, but the investigative points it contains should serve you well, once again, in your process of analysis.
Many of you need to be more mindful of using the essay itself as part of your analysis. You need to use paraphrase and small direct quotes as a means to offer evidence from the essay within your arguments. The material from the essay, then, is your proof; it is the evidence you use to support the points you raise about the text. What you are seeking is a balance: you need your own points in your own words, but you also need direct material from the essay along with your points. In short, use not only your voice; and use not only the essay’s voice; what you need is a blend of the two elements.
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Step Three: Researching the Issue at a National Level
Your task here is to go beyond the selected text. Find an issue or issues raised within your chosen essay, and spend some time researching and note-taking. Use the internet; use the library; use other pieces within either our reader or other texts. You are encouraged to take this assignment in any direction you wish, provided that you are digging deep and being specific.
Next it is time to compose and revise. You then need to repeat the process numerous times: researching again, composing again, and revising again. Remember that adding depth and development to your report becomes much more possible when you take the time to read something twice, watch something twice, and, in this case, research somewhere twice. Using a process such as this ALWAYS ENABLES YOU TO IMPROVE UPON YOUR REFLECTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS.
Step Four: Researching the Issue at an International Level:
What you are doing here is taking the issue or issues, as applicable, and offering a take other than a US viewpoint upon the matter. What could be very interesting here would be to investigate the ways in which the issue is viewed differently, and perhaps the ways in which the issue is a source of controversy between countries.
Once, again, you need to compose and revise. And once again, you need to repeat the process of researching, composing, and revising until suitable depth and development are accomplished.
Suggested format:
-Rather than setting your answer up in essay form, use the categories provided within the this assignment sheet to form sections for your report. Within your sections, you may choose to use paragraphs or bullets, as you prefer, but do make sure you have depth and development to your observations.
-Be wary of falling into the SINGLE paragraph trap; this, as you all should well know by now, will find you coming up VERY SHORT with depth.
-Be wary further of the no first-draft rule: you can never do you best work if you lower yourself to submitting this kind of unpolished and incomplete submission.
-MORE IS MORE HERE!! GIVE YOURSELF ENOUGH SPACE TO OFFER THE READER COMPLETENESS.
-Take note that this assignment, given its range and depth, comprises the entire Quiz 3; there are NO additional reading-based questions to answer.
-Again, this is a unique—and perhaps even somewhat fun or interesting—assignment, one that asks you to examine carefully two selected essays unto themselves, as well as to investigate the national and international context of each of the pieces/issues
