Division of Liberal Arts &
Sciences
Department of English, Foreign
Languages, and Journalism
English 300: Literature for Children
Spring, 2003
Section
01:
12:30 - 1:50 p.m. T, H in 104 Murphy (JGM)
Section
02:
2:00 - 3:20 p.m. T, H in 104 Murphy (JGM)
Dr.
Cadden’s Office: 222-F Eder Hall (SS/C)
Office Hours: 11:00 a.m. -
12:30 p.m. T/Th; 1:30 - 3:30 pm W; and by appointment.
Office
Phone:
271-4576
E-mail: cadden@missouriwestern.edu
Web Page: http://www.missouriwestern.edu/eflj/faculty/cadden.asp (A copy of this syllabus can be found here.)
Course Description:
What makes a good teacher? Richard Ishler writes in "The
Preparation of Elementary School Teachers: A University-Wide
Responsibility":
Persons who will spend their
professional lives as elementary school teachers must be liberally and broadly
educated, more so than individuals with other careers, because of their
positions as role models for our children--positions that are crucial not only
to the students whose lives are directly affected, but to the general society
as well. Other than a student's parents, no other person has such an
opportunity to influence, to motivate, and to inspire a child to value the
intellectual life. In fact, acting as an intellectual role model may well be
the single most significant aspect of the teaching profession.
English 300 is our opportunity for you
to learn about children’s literature as an art form, which will have
implications for your teaching, ultimately; but
the point of the course isn’t to teach you how to teach children; the point of
the course is to teach you about children’s fiction. The two things aren’t at all mutually
exclusive, but they also aren’t necessarily the same.
The course is an introduction to the
genre of literature for children. There
is so much more out there. The course
can’t be an exhaustive look at the whole field. We’ll focus on an introduction to the nature of children’s books.
Through critical examinations of folk
tales, novels, poems, and picture books, we will attempt to understand how
children's literature distinguishes itself from "adult literature”--and
when it doesn’t.
Consider this course the content course
companion to your education methods courses:
EED 320 (Language Arts Methods), EED 360 (Assessing and Individualizing
Reading), EED 380-385 (Reading Approaches), EED 440 (Curriculum Methods and
Materials in Early Childhood Education), and EED 483-4 (Practica in Reading).
Let’s learn together as much as we can
about what makes children’s literature tick.
It is my goal that you’ll leave the course more thoughtful about what
makes children’s literature the interesting and enjoyable genre that it is--for
adults as well as for children.
Prerequisite: Successful completion of ENG 108 or
112. ENG 300 is required in the
Elementary Education program. This
class does not count as an English literature elective for English majors.
Required Texts:
Alexander,
Lloyd. The Book of Three.
Jacobs
& Tunnell. Children’s
Literature, Briefly.
Lowry,
Lois. Number the Stars.
Naylor,
Phyllis Reynolds. Shiloh.
Paulsen,
Gary. Woodsong.
Rowling,
J. K. Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone.
Ryan,
Pam Muñoz. Esperanza Rising.
Evaluation:
Participation: 10%
Midterm (folktales and novels): 20%
Final Exam (poetry and picture books):
20%
Reviews (1 book, 1 journal, 1 website,
1 picture book, 1 chapter book): 25%
Bibliographic Essay: 25%
Attendance:
The
MWSC Policy Guide states that “each
instructor will determine and make known to the class the requirement for
attendance” (45). If you don’t come to
class you will obviously jeopardize your class participation grade. I will not quantify how much presence equals
what grade. I will be judging your
total participation performance, not just presence. I can also tell you that the exams draw heavily from class
work. Also, since you are responsible
for all announcements in class, you run the risk of missing important
information regarding papers; I will not accept absence as an excuse for
ignorance. In short, if you’re not
here, you’re going to suffer through other assignments directly and
indirectly. I will not formally assign
a number of absences to failure; I’ll allow those things will be related
naturally.
Be on time, please.
Academic Dishonesty: All cases in which students pass off others’
work as their own will be referred to the Dean of Student Affairs. Students
also run the risk of failing the assignment as well as the course, depending on
the magnitude and nature of the offense.
If you are unsure about how you are using sources, please check with
me.
Late and Missing Work: I reserve the right to refuse any late
work.
Revision Policy: All written work may be revised any time up
until the revision due date (please see calendar). I require that all revisions be accompanied by the original
graded paper that contains my comments.
Policy on Students with Disabilities: Any student in this course who has a disability which requires different contexts for either evaluation or expression should contact me in the first few weeks of the course so that those needs can be considered.
Calendar (Subject
to Constant and Inexplicable Change):
Novels are to be finished by the first day of the week on
which discussion begins.
1/14:
Introduction to course, critical approaches, and folktale types.
1/16: Critical
approaches and folktales continued; J & T Ch. 7.
1/21: “Red
Riding Hood”—tale types and versions.
1/23: Fable as children’s literature, children’s
literature as fable.
1/28: Lowry; J
& T Ch. 10. Folktale and history meet the children’s novel.
1/30: Lowry; Review #1 Due.
2/4: Ryan; J
& T Ch. 10. Historical fiction and
the question of culture.
2/6: Ryan.
2/11:
Censorship; J & T Ch. 16.
2/13:
Censorship; Review # 2 Due.
2/18: Naylor; J & T Ch. 9. Realism
2/20: Naylor; Bibliographic
Essay book lists due.
2/25:
Alexander; J & T Ch. 8. Modern Fantasy
2/27:
Alexander; Review #3 Due.
3/4:
Mode in Literature (handout).
3/6:
Midterm Exam.
Spring Break
3/18:
Paulsen; J & T Ch. 11; Non-fiction for children. (Mode Discussion in night
class)
3/19: Midterm
Grades Due.
3/20:
Paulsen.
3/25: Poetry:
“for vs. about” children; J & T Ch. 14; Midterm Grades Due.
3/27:
Poetry by children; Review #4 Due.
3/28: Last Day
to Drop Classes.
4/1: Nonsense
poetry.
4/3: No Class
(conference trip). Review poetry
collections.
4/8: Rowling;
J & T Chs. 2 & 3; Review #5 Due.
4/10:
Rowling. A cultural “cross over”
phenomenon
4/15:
Picture Books: the third & fourth dimensions; Bibliographic Essay Due.
4/17: Picture
Books: the placement of words and pictures and their shared narrative meaning
4/22: Picture
book issues above continued; J & T Ch. 4.
4/24: Picture
Books: Peter Rabbit as a case study of technique.
4/29: Picture
book group work; Course Evaluations; all Revisions Due for both sections.
Final Exam:
Section 01: Tuesday, May 6, 11:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m.
Section 02: Thursday, May 1, 2:00 p.m. – 3:50 p.m.
The Final Exam will be held in our regular classroom.
ENG
300: Literature for Children
Review Assignments
Worth: 25%
Length: Approximately one single-spaced page each.
I would like for you to review a web site, a scholarly journal, a book (handbook, theory, criticism, or collection of essays), a children’s chapter book, and a picture book this term. I want you to write a report for me, yourself, and for your peers about each of those five resources. Review sources that are only children’s book-related.
Format for reviewing
a journal, book, and website:
(a
list of books on children’s literature available in the MWSC library can be
found on my webpage and in the library section marked PN 1009; a list of links
to other children’s literature websites is also to be found on my webpage. I provide you with a list of appropriate
journals below. These are all safe bets. When you review a journal, review the
entire journal as a whole rather than a single article. I suggest that you look at a number of
issues so that you don’t mistakenly generalize based on one issue of the
journal)
1. Provide complete citation information for
the video, research source, or web site in question in MLA style.
Book or Journal
Last Name,
First Name. Title of Book: Including Subtitle. Edition.
Place of (indent five spaces after first line) Publication: Publisher,
Year.
Website
1. Name of
author (if given)
2. Title of
page accessed (in quotation marks)
3. Date when
the material was posted (if given)
4. Title of
the database (underlined) (e.g.. New York Times Online or ERIC)
5. Publication
medium (Online)
6. Name of the
computer service (e.g. Netscape Navigator or Lexis or CompuServe)
7. Date of
your access of the material
8. URL (not in
MLA handbook, but something useful for us):
Vandergrift, Kay. "Author Biography and Autobiography
Page." Created January 31, 1996,
Last Updated February 8, 1997. Online.
Netscape Navigator. July 9,
1997.
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/special/kay/authorbios.html
For more
specific detail on some of the subtleties of citation:
Gibaldi,
Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of
Research Papers. 5th ed. New York:
The Modern Language Association of America, 1999.
This text is
available in the library and in my office.
2. Summarize what the source offers the viewer/reader
as thoroughly as you can in about a
third of a page, single-spaced. What is provided? How is it arranged or organized? Remember, you are providing yourself (and possibly your
classmates) a review that will enable the reader to visualize the source as
well as possible in print. This is to
be useful to someone who has not seen the text.
3.
Explain for whom this site/source might be of most use and why. If you think that more than one audience is
implied, identify them and why you think so. Why might it be better for
childcare workers or parents or teachers or siblings or the child him or
herself? You need to make a case for a
particular implied audience—don’t generalize.
Please don’t simply assume that
the source is for teachers just because most of you in the class are education
majors.
4. Provide a critique of the site/source. Given the information you've provided in # 2
& 3 above, how successful is this resource? How well does it do what it seems to want to do? Is it something you think you'd return
to? Could you improve it somehow? Would you only use part of it? Give us a sense of the strengths and
weaknesses of this resource so that when you look back on it later you can
remember what you thought of it. Try to
give a thoughtful response to this resource beyond "I liked it" or
"I didn't like it." Start
with those reactions as you review and ask yourself "why?" and move
on to details.
Format for reviewing
a picture book and a chapter book:
You
may not review a book we have featured in class, nor may you use a
reviewed book in your bibliographic essay.
1. Provide complete citation information in MLA
style (see above).
2. Summarize the story as briefly as you can. Remember: you are
providing yourself a review that will enable you to have a complete sense of
the story later when you refer to this.
Don’t hold back on the ending; it’s not a TV Guide listing or
something for the back of the book!
Provide roughly one-third of a single-spaced page.
3. Focus on one (two tops) textual feature that the book employs. Focus on one thing to do with the use of character, plot,
setting, narrative perspective, language, arrangement of chapters, pictures (be
specific about some aspect of the pictures if you go this route) or anything
structural. What do you notice that is
interesting and why is it significant?
Don’t choose something that you don’t have a comment about.
4. Focus on one subtextual issue in the book.
What idea, message, issue, or concept does the book contain? Don’t feel the need to comment on the
“moral” here; don’t reduce it to fable, in other words. It’s necessarily the case that the story
will have multiple subtexts; don’t, however, feel the need to touch on them
all.
5.
Focus on a single context
in which this book might prove useful or interesting (reader); or consider the
implications for the context of the writing (something about the author, the
place and era in which it was written, etc.)
6. Provide a critique of the site/source. Given the information you've provided in #
3-5 above, how successful is this book?
Is it something you think you'd return to? Could you improve it somehow?
Would you only use part of it?
Give us a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of this resource so that
when you look back on it later you can remember what you thought of it. Try to give a thoughtful response to this
resource beyond "I liked it" or "I didn't like it." Start with those reactions as you review and
ask yourself "why?" and move on to details.
All
reviews should be about one side of
one page, single-spaced. A bit more or
less is not a problem, though much less is likely going to be indicative of
incomplete development.
Please
proof-read the page before submitting it.
I will want it to be as professional-looking as it can be in case we
should decide to distribute these to each other. Language is
important. I expect that your work will
be carefully proof-read and edited before you give it to me.
A
Note on Revision: If you are submitting a revised copy of your review,
please resubmit the original copy that has my written comments (staple or
paper-clip the old to the new).
The act of revision does not guarantee
an improved grade. Editing isn’t the
same thing as revision. If you would
like feedback beyond that which I have written on the original, you may visit
me to discuss revision strategies at any time prior to submitting a
revision.
--Compiled by
Wally Hastings; enhanced and annotated by Michael Scott Joseph 1/20/98
(*Those to be
found at MWSC library are preceded by an asterisk)
*ALAN Review. Athens, Ga.: Assembly on Literature for
Adolescents, National Council of Teachers of English, 1979-
MWSC HOLDINGS:
v. 6- (1979- ), BOUND.
Ariel: A Review of International English
Literature. Calgary:
University of Calgary, 1970-.
Bookbird: Dortmund : One Man Edition, 1982-
Booklist. Chicago : The Association, Sept. 1969.
Bulletin of the Center for Children's
Books (BCCB): Chicago:
University of Chicago Press for
Homepage:
http://edfu.lis.uiuc.edu/puboff/bccb/
Canadian Children's Literature (CCL): Guelph, Ont.: Canadian Children's
Press, 1975-
Homepage:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/englit/ccl/
*Children's Literature (CL): New Haven [etc.] Yale University
Press, 1972-
STACKS PN1009 .A1 C536 1972 v.
1- (1972- )
*Children's Literature Abstracts (CLA): [Birmingham, Eng.]: Sub-section
on Library Work with Children of the International Federation of Library
Associations, 1973-
MWSC
HOLDINGS: v. 64- (1989- ), BOUND.
*Children's Literature Association
Quarterly (ChLAQ).
Winnipeg, Man.: The Association, 1988-
MWSC HOLDINGS: v. 7- (1982- ), BOUND.
*Children's Literature in Education (CLE). New York, etc., Agathon Press,
etc., 1971.
MWSC
HOLDINGS: no. 1-23 (March 1970-Winter
1976), v. 8-12 (Spring
1977-Winter
1981) MICROFILM; v. 13- (Spring 1982-) BOUND.
Children's Literature Review (CLR). Detroit, Gale Research, 1976-
*Elementary English.
MWSC
HOLDINGS: v. 24-45 (1947-1968),
MICROFILM;
v. 46-52
(1969-May 1975), BOUND.
*Elementary English Review.
MWSC
HOLDINGS: v. 1-23 (March 1924-1946),
MICROFILM.
SEE ALSO: Elementary English.
Five Owls (FO): Minneapolis: The Five Owls, c1986-
*Horn Book.
MWSC HOLDINGS:
v. 1-2 (October 1924-March 1926), v. 20-21 (May/June
1944-March/April
1945), MICROFILM.
SEE ALSO: Horn
book magazine.
*Horn Book Guide to Children's and Young
Adult Books.
MWSC HOLDINGS:
v. 1- (July-December 1989- ), BOUND.
*Horn Book Magazine (HB). [Boston, Horn Book, inc., etc.],
1924-
MWSC HOLDINGS:
v. 2-20 (June 1926-March/April 1944),
v. 53- (1977- ),
BOUND.
Journal of Children's Literature (JCL): University Park, Penn.:
Children's Literature Assembly, 1994- (Continues: CLA bulletin (Children's
Literature Assembly))
Journal of Youth Services in Libraries (JOYS). Chicago, IL : American Library
Association, c1987-
Library Trends (LT). Urbana, Ill.: University of
Illinois Library School, 1952-
Access from
campus or login via Rutgers account. http://www.umi.com/pqdauto
*Lion and Unicorn (L&U): Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins
UP, 1987-
Homepage:
http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/lion_and_the_unicorn/
MWSC HOLDINGS:
v. 21- (1997- ), BOUND.
Magpies (Australia)
Marvels and Tales : Journal of Fairy-Tale
Studies. (MT): Detroit,
MI : Wayne State University Press, 1997-
Homepage:
http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/MarvelsHome/Marvels_Tales.html
Multicultural Review. (MR): Westport, CT : Greenwood Pub.
Group, c1992-
*New Advocate
MWSC HOLDINGS:
v. 5- (1992- ) BOUND
New Review of Children's Literature and
Librarianship. (NRCLL) :
London: Taylor Graham, c1995-
Orana (Australia) . [S.l.] : Library Association of Australia.
School & Children's Libraries Sections, 1977?
Papers (Australia)
Para*doxa : Studies in World Literary
Genres. (Para) : Vashon
Island, WA : Delta Productions, 1995-
*School Library Journal (SLJ). New York, Bowker, 1975-
MWSC HOLDINGS:
v. 22- (September 1975- ), BOUND.
*Signal:
Approaches to Children’s Books.
New York, N.Y.: Brownstone Press, 1963.
MWSC HOLDINGS:
nos. 49-79 (1986-January 1996), BOUND.
TALL (Teaching and Learning Literature with Children and Young
Adults)
Viewpoints (Australia)
VOYA: Voices of Youth Advocates (VOYA). New Brunswick, NJ, etc., D. M.
Broderick and M.K. Chelton], 1978-
English 300:
Children’s Literature Dr. Cadden
Bibliographic Essay
Worth: 25%
Length: ~10-15 pages.
The Task
You
will choose a particular author, theme, or genre in children’s literature
in order to investigate it further. You
will choose a number of representative works by that person, relevant to the
idea/theme, or in the genre in question.
The number of books will vary according to your project, but seven to
ten is the usual range depending on the availability of books. The goal here is
to become well acquainted with one small piece of the big picture of children’s
literature.
Who or What?
Author: It would be wise of you to choose someone
who is a good fit for the readers you’ll encounter in the grades you want to
teach. I also encourage you to start early looking for a writer you think
you’d like to learn more about. I would
like for you to investigate as many different writers and illustrators as you
can. If I think your choice is either
inappropriate or if I just don’t know the name, I’ll likely talk to you about
it.
An alternative to picking one author is
to choose another context of origin to examine. You might look at books written by people from a particular place
(region, country), ethnicity, tradition, or belief system. Books by Japanese-American writers (as
opposed to simply being about Japanese-Americans, which might be written by a
non-member of that ethnic group).
Theme/idea: You might
decide that you want to look at older and recent books about orphans, poverty,
AIDS, divorce, death, circuses, animal characters, environmentalism,
Christianity, gay-lesbian issues, talented/challenged characters, immigration,
dance, homelessness, birthdays, dragons, etc.
Genre/mode: Adventure
stories, folktale sub-genres (creation myths, Marchen tales, trickster tales,
etc.), picture books (though this would have to be paired with another genre or
theme or author/illustrator), comedy, tragedy, irony/satire, parody,
coming-of-age stories, mysteries, travel, historical fiction, dream stories,
poetry (of various sorts), science fiction, diaries/journal-forms,
utopia/dystopia, etc.
Where?
Where
to find names or ideas from which to choose?
Other than your own or your child’s reading histories, I suggest that
you pore over the bibliography information that I handed you, the websites
listed on my links page (http://www.missouriwestern.edu/~cadden/), the list of resources
on children’s and young adult literature at our library (link on my web page;
see Jim Mulder or any other reference librarian at the MWSC library), the local
library’s children’s section, local bookstores. I’ll be very glad and interested in talking about possible
choices for you depending on interests you might have. Start looking at options right away so that
you can begin reading and taking notes.
I may have some ideas about books that fit your interests as well and
may be able to steer you toward a more manageable focus within your chosen
area, so please don’t hesitate to employ me as a bibliographic resource!
How?
I
don’t give models. Why? Well, because I find that people tend to
take the model and push the content into that container whether it fits or not. Rather, I’ll describe what I want and you
try to provide that making whatever organizational decisions you need to make
to accomplish the task.
Let’s
consider a sense of format that also deals with matters of focus. I won’t give you a page limit here, but you
might consider that in terms of double-spaced pages, you could devote a page or
two to introductory materials (see below), a couple of pages for each book, a
couple of pages of conclusions, and a works cited page. This might mean that you have ten to twenty
pages.
The
introductory material: briefly tell us a bit about the author/theme/genre that
you’ve chosen. What interests you in
the subject and what exactly will we be discussing? What have you ruled out in the course of defining this focus? Then tell us a bit about the main
connections you’ll be covering across the books--the “thread(s)” that ties them
together. If I’ve chosen Gary Paulsen,
for instance, I’ll probably note that he tends to write about boys in
adventurous outdoor circumstances.
There are other links, too. Give
us a sense of focus that you’ll be pursuing throughout the paper.
The
body of the essay is devoted to discussing each book in turn, focusing on the
thread(s) that connect(s) each to the others, but also explaining other observations about the book that might not
have anything to do with the other books.
Begin your discussion of each book as you do a review: summarize the
book for us as briefly as you can
(brevity here is tough!) What makes a
bibliographic essay distinctive from other essays is that the writer assumes
that the reader isn’t familiar with
the books. Be mindful of proportion—the
summary shouldn’t be most of your discussion, and you should be careful to
include commentary on the idea that links the books as well as on other
noteworthy things you’ve discovered that are contextual, textual, and/or
subtextual. If most of what you have is summary and you don’t have much
commentary, there will be problems.
Be
style-conscious: if your transitions suffer from a formulaic approach for
discussing each book, play around with each mini-discussion. Don’t feel the need to make each book one
paragraph of discussion; it may take a couple of paragraphs to discuss each
book.
The
conclusion of the essay is very important, and is not simply a formality in
which you sum up what you’ve said. The
conclusion should be where you share, in more detail, what you think makes this
study interesting, significant, and useful, and where it might be taken from
here. Dwell further on the threads that
unite them. Feel free to point out
shortcomings or problems. What, after
having looked at these books in comparison, is your thoughts about trends,
limitations, successes in the area of study?
Draw thoughtful conclusions about all of these books, their
relationships to each other, and the implications they have for young
readers.
You
should include a bibliography that cites the primary and any secondary
materials used. You aren’t required to
use a certain number of (or any) secondary materials, just what suits your
task. You may have consulted a website,
biography, journal article . . . cite those. Please use MLA style
(available on line--http://www.mla.org or in the MLA Handbook available in my
office or the library). Be sure to cite any material quoted or
paraphrased from another source.
There
are several sources which will give bibliographies of books published by an
author including: Something About
the Author (Ref. PN 451 .S696), Contemporary Authors (Ready Ref. Z
1224 .C761 .A1), and the Dictionary of Literary Biography (Ref. PS 221
.D554). There also were several other biographical sources mentioned on the
MWSC bibliography linked to my web page, but some of them are getting quite
old. For additional sources of
biographical information you may want to consult the following index: Biography and Genealogy Master Index
(Available on the computers, and on Index Table 5).
A
word of caution. No published list of
an author’s work is completely current.
You need to check the date of publication of the volume which contains
the bibliography they find. Often the
bibliography will not include the author's works published during the previous
year or two.
For
more recent information on new books published, you should consult the various
periodicals mentioned on the bibliography and more general periodicals such as Publisher's
Weekly. Many of these periodicals
are indexed through the Reader's Guide Abstracts, Humanities Index, or
Masterfile Elite on the library computers.
Another
source of more recent information is the Baker & Taylor CD-ROM, available
on most of the computers in the Reference room. It lists books that are being published, as well as many which
have gone out of print. You can search by author, therefore this would be a
good place to look for updating most of the printed bibliographies. This is not a reviewing source as it gives
only citations.
You’ll
find lots to comment on as you read. I
suggest that you read each book with a pen and paper handy, and even plan on
returning to books as you read the others (Reread?! Heavens!) I think that
with the pieces of this assignment, the number of books, and the many links,
you’ll be able to generate a lot of interesting material.
Before
you submit this assignment be sure that you have done some careful
proof-reading and editing. Good
language use isn’t “extra”—it’s inseparable from what you are saying.
I
hope that you will share these final copies with each other when you’re
done! Good luck!
Grading Criteria for
Writing in Dr. Cadden’s English Courses:
“A”:
General
Qualitative Description: Excellent, Superior, Outstanding.
Conception: Your idea should contain some new, perhaps surprising, element, some angle that is uncommonly thoughtful and insightful. You are not rehearsing other people's ideas, and you are going beyond an average reading. You expose and challenge the explicit and implicit assumptions of the text. If you are incorporating research, you will have WORKED your sources--using what supports your argument, and acknowledging and dealing with what challenges it.
Organization: Your
organization should be flawless and should match your content. You should
anticipate, address, and work through opposition to your argument and build a
strong case for your own. You should
employ evidence with regularity and in appropriate circumstances. If you are
incorporating research, you will spend some time positioning your argument in
the context of the larger conversation.
Style: Your
presentation should be artful. You have obviously paid attention to the way
your language sounds as well as what it says.
You have found a way to make your presentation style match the content
of your paper (other than a groovy font style!), perhaps through a sustained
metaphor, or a particularly apt example that you carry through and refer to in
the entire paper.
Grammar
and Mechanics: Your paper should be absolutely clean and free of
grammatical and mechanical errors of a rudimentary nature, though you may have
a few problems with complex functions of grammar. You should never avoid complex language in order to avoid errors,
in other words.
“B”:
General
Qualitative Description: Above average,
Good, Commendable.
Conception: Your idea
will be better than average, but you may have overlooked or not
acknowledged or interrogated the assumptions that inform it. The claim/idea is ambitious and, for that reason, may have gotten away from you. You will be rewarded for being ambitious even if you fall a bit short.
Organization: Your
organization will be strong, but the signaling might still be a bit
Awkward;
you may find yourself using a lot of directional phrases because your argument
doesn't flow naturally. (Ex. "As I said earlier..." "Firstly,
secondly, thirdly...") Here too
the organization will match the content rather than being formulaic.
Style: It's clean,
readable, there's a consistent sense of voice, and there aren't any places
where
a reader has to go back and reread a sentence just to understand its structure.
Grammar/Mechanics: Very few
(almost no) errors of a rudimentary nature.
“ C”:
General
Qualitative Description: Competent,
Average, Fine.
Conception: Your idea for your paper should reflect
that you have read, thought about, and paid attention to the way we have talked
in class about similar issues. Your main point should be clearly stated and
defended with appropriate evidence. You should remain focused on your topic
throughout your paper, and you should have thoroughly examined the aspects of
your topic from your perspective. Your ideas should be internally
consistent. There won’t be anything
terribly surprising, daring, or unusual here.
Organization: Your paper
should have a logical, clearly identifiable organization. Each
paragraph
should address only one aspect of your topic, and when you change aspects, you
start a new paragraph. Transitions
between paragraphs should be competently handled. Your strategy, that is, how
you manage the interweaving of your idea and your organization, should be
standard and straightforward. For
instance, if you follow a traditional pattern of an introduction that includes
a flagged thesis statement ("in this paper I will..."), then proceed
with evidence and close with a restatement of the initial problem. That's a
standard, straightforward organization--a C strategy.
Style: Your style
should be clear and readable.
Grammar
and Mechanics: Your paper should not contain many distracting errors in
grammar or mechanics. Minimally, you
should have run a spell-check program, and you should know the difference
between a complete sentence, a fragment, and a run-on.
“D”:
General
Qualitative Description: Incompetent,
Inadequate, Below Average.
Conception: Your idea will be immediately obvious to a casual reader--a no-brainer—yet it will be presented as news. It will likely also be not quite clear what it is that you are really saying. Split focus on more than one thesis or issue is likely.
Organization: Perhaps you split your focus (which
means you start out talking about one thing and shift to another) which means
that you are covering several or many issues in short paragraphs. You jump from one idea to the next with no
logical strategy or transitions. If there is no plan, or if you don't stick to
the plan, this is faulty organization.
It may be evident that there wasn’t ever really a structural strategy at
all.
Style: Unclear
language, usually. This may also be a
matter of using the wrong words for your ideas. Simply put, the language is in bad shape.
Grammar/Mechanics: Consistent
problems in sentence structure with little sign of proof-reading.
“F”:
General
Qualitative Description: Unacceptable.
(The
most common cause of an F is a failure to adequately address the assignment.
For instance, if I specify that this assignment is to be researched, or if it
is to address a certain topic in a certain way, you have to at least complete
the assignment.)
Conception: No clear
idea governs the words on the page.
Organization: No plan is
evident, much less achieved.
Style:
Incomprehensible most or all of the time.
Grammar/Mechanics: Consistent
problems with rudimentary mechanical matters.
*******************
The four major
areas of concern discussed above (conception, organization, style, and
mechanics) will be considered separately, when that is possible. I may find that it is difficult or even
impossible to assess conception if the style and mechanics are at the “F” or
“D” levels. It may well be the case
that your organization is a real problem while conception, style, and mechanics
are all quite good. The ultimate
assessment, then, will be the combined consideration of all four areas. Any challenges to my assessments need to
employ the above issues in those challenges.
I cannot assess
effort. Note that I do not say that I will
not assess effort; nobody can assess
effort unless, perhaps, he or she is there watching you work. I assume that you all work very hard on your writing. I can only assess the final product.
I do not give
grades based on your perceived needs.
If you need a “B” in the course to keep your GPA up for a scholarship,
loans, or admittance into a program, then be sure you perform at a “B”
level.
I do not give grades on the basis of your sense of identity or personal academic history. I assess each piece of work on its own merits. Just because you consider yourself an “A” student does not mean that you will do “A” work each time; just because you consider yourself a “C” student doesn’t mean that you won’t do “A” work. Try to put some distance between your performance and your identity.