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Here you'll find links to
various readings and course information.
Grammar and Taking Notes | Supplemental Reading | Credible Sources | Essay
1 | Essay 2 | Essay 3 | Essay
4 | Media Literacy/Evaluating
Sources
Grammar and General How-To Notes Below you'll find a series of links and online videos that provide info on various grammar and essay topics.
Supplemental Reading
You'll find a
wealth
of additional readings -- both general and connected to the essay
topics -- on the Supplemental
Reading page.
Thinking: Food
for Thought
Sources
- Media Sources: sites for credible
information
Below is a listing of my own top choices -- which aligned pretty closely with the blog above
Writing and Logic
Computer Tips
Course Work
First
Day
What You'll Learn
(in class handout with Lessing on life et al.)
Academic writing v.
journalism
Course
Introduction
Essay #1
Assigned Readings
| Unassigned
readings | Planning
Essay 1 | Revising Essay
1
Writer's Notes
Copy and paste the below into a document to organize
your notes from the readings for essay 1. This is also in I&C
-- check table of contents).
Writer's Notes
At the top of each set of notes, write a works cited
entry.
Remember that all works cited entries begin with the author's last name
and then the title, etc. Check the
library's web site and The Little Seagull
(110+) for citing instructions.
Works Cited Entry
List all the different ways this essay
identifies and describes the role of college in America
How does college help with career prep?
Why do the writers feel career prep is important?
How does college help with intellectual growth -- Why do the writers
feel intellectual growth is important?
How does college help with personal growth -- Why do the writers
feel this growth is important?
How does college foster democracy? Why do the writers feel creating
citizens is important?
How does college help __ -- Why is this important?
General information on colleges
Connections to previous readings
Higher education discourse --
word list for this topic (see I&C 18 "Discourse" for
more on this)
Assigned
Readings
- Louis Menand, The New Yorker, "Live
and Learn"
- Chronicle of Higher Education, What is College For?
- Nicolas Kristof, New York Times
"Starving for Wisdom"
- Andrew Delbanco from College: What it Was, Is,
and Should Be.
- Hart Research Associates It Takes More Than a Major
- Richard Kahlenberg, Chronicle of Higher
Education "The
Purposes of Higher Education"
- Donald Murray The
Maker's Eye
- "Writing and Learning to Write" a
Writing Director reflects on college level writing
- The Examined Life -- Film we
viewed on the first day of class; longer transcript of their conversation
See Supplemental Readings for additional sources on the purpose of college.
Radio Essays on Higher Ed
Planning
your essay
Revising
your essay
Majors v. Careers from Katherine Brooks' You Majored in What?
These are pretty expected.
This is the reality.
From Steven Pinker’s “The Trouble with Harvard” in The
New Republic, September 4, 2014.
A great description of what a college education should provide students
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119321/harvard-ivy-league-should-judge-students-standardized-tests
It seems to me that educated people should know something about the
13-billion-year prehistory of our species and the basic laws governing
the physical and living world, including our bodies and brains. They
should grasp the timeline of human history from the dawn of agriculture
to the present. They should be exposed to the diversity of human
cultures, and the major systems of belief and value with which they
have made sense of their lives. They should know about the formative
events in human history, including the blunders we can hope not to
repeat. They should understand the principles behind democratic
governance and the rule of law. They should know how to appreciate
works of fiction and art as sources of aesthetic pleasure and as
impetuses to reflect on the human condition.
On top of this knowledge, a liberal education should make certain
habits of rationality second nature. Educated people should be able to
express complex ideas in clear writing and speech. They should
appreciate that objective knowledge is a precious commodity, and know
how to distinguish vetted fact from superstition, rumor, and unexamined
conventional wisdom. They should know how to reason logically and
statistically, avoiding the fallacies and biases to which the untutored
human mind is vulnerable. They should think causally rather than
magically, and know what it takes to distinguish causation from
correlation and coincidence. They should be acutely aware of human
fallibility, most notably their own, and appreciate that people who
disagree with them are not stupid or evil. Accordingly, they should
appreciate the value of trying to change minds by persuasion rather
than intimidation or demagoguery.
I believe (and believe I can persuade you) that the more deeply a
society cultivates this knowledge and mindset, the more it will
flourish. The conviction that they are teachable gets me out of bed in
the morning. Laying the foundations in just four years is a formidable
challenge.
Essay
#2
Assigned Readings
- Michael Kinsley "The
Intellectual Free Lunch" No Writer's notes for this one. Read
and decide why, out of the millions of essays I could have assigned,
this is the first essay you read before making an argument.
- From CQ Researcher Death
Penalty Update ; same essay in HTML for easier
copying and pasting: (don't print this one: it will use more paper). Death
Penalty Update
For essays 2, 3, and 4 below
If the links for the Opposing
Viewpoints do not work 1) click on
the "Library Link" from the menu on the left, 2) go to "Opposing
Viewpoints," 3) click on "Advanced Search" from the upper right of the
screen, 4) click down on the inverted triangle next to the word
"Keyword" and from the list click "Document Number" 5) paste the
document number of the essay into the "Search for" box and click enter.
3.
From
Opposing Viewpoints online The
Death Penalty Deters Crime (Be sure to click on the
graphs at the end of
the document) (Document Number: EJ3010119227)
4.
From
Opposing Viewpoints online The
Death Penalty Does Not Deter Crime (Document
number: EJ3010119228)
5.
From
Proquest Victims
Not of One Voice On Execution of McVeigh
Sara Rimer. New York Times (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.:
Apr 25, 2001. p. A.1
Evaluating
Sources
Examine these three things to determine the authority of the source:
- Credentials of the writers (what special training
have they had? What in their work experience prepares them?)
- Where the essay appeared/who published the
book/information?
- Sources and the facts/arguments in the essay (range
of sources? Obvious logical flaws?)
See page 92 in Little Seagull Handbook for more detail
Writing Suggestions
Suggested Essays
See the
Supplemental
Reading page for additional readings on this topic.
Essay #3
Assignment
Planning and Revision:
Essay 3
General readings/information
Scroll through
the Essay 3 section of Supplemental Reading for additional
readings on these topics.
Essay #4
General Readings/Information
Media Literacy/Evaluating Sources
Evaluating
Sources
Examine these three things to determine the authority of the source:
- Credentials of the writers (what special training
have they had? What in their work experience prepares them?)
- Where the essay appeared/who published the
book/information?
- Sources and the facts/arguments in the essay (range
of sources? Obvious logical flaws?)
See page 92 in Little Seagull Handbook for more detail
Other sites that
discuss Media Literacy
- How come people don't
believe in science? Climate change as avoidance.
- Interesting topic: Pacific
Northwest Tree Octopus; more on this topic can be found here
- Manufacturing
Consent (short version 50 min)
- Terms to know for the movie
- dissent
- consent
- propaganda "information, especially of a biased
or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of
view" OED
- Indoctrinated: You believe the propaganda
- Sound bite
- marginalize
"Web
readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is
trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and
technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look
at a spoof Web site (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/) about a mythical
species known as the "Pacific Northwest tree octopus." Nearly 90
percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source"
(Motoko).
Evaluating Web Sites
Last revised 4 December 2018
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