ENGLISH 145Week # 28/30 & 9/2

Announcements

ISU festival! September 2 from 10 am to 4 pm.

Bonus POINTS: http://mediarelations.illinoisstate.edu/report/1011/aug24/speakerseries.asp

Discussion Sign-up sheet is ready! Please sign up by Thursday!

Agenda

Reading Social Diversity Entries

McIntosh’s Color-line experiment

On being curious about the world

Class exercise on research inventory

Individual research inventory

Potential Social Action Projects (SAP)

Mark Jacob: Interested in racism and classism in police force. What are the situations when police act racist?

Derek: Border patrol between USA and Mexico. Financial and social aspect of it? Gabino is interested in immigration issues. A fact– highest unemployment rates among African Americans and Hispanics. E.g. one quarter of AA and 40 percent of Hispanics do not hold high school degrees

Paige: Abortion, drug use and suicide in schools.

Hillary and Maggie: Women rights, equality among genders.

Lindsey: Equal rights for GLBT and child abuse.

Being Privileged McIntosh (1999) says: “I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.”

Discussion Question: What are some of the privileges you have as a college student? What are the daily effects of these privileges?

An activity on social diversity: Developing

liberatory Consciousness Color-line experiment: This is an

experiment which aims to help individuals raise their awareness on the impact of race on everyday experience.

Building an Interest Inventory

CR P. 29.

Create a couple of columns on a piece of paper (CONTROVERSIES, HISTORY, TRENDS AND OTHER TITLES THAT YOU MAY LIKE TO FOCUS)

Brainstorm a list of words that come to your mind.

Circle the item (s) that interests you the most.

For the item you circled, generate a list of questions as many as you can.

Other ways to find social action projects

See what the community needs: Go to www.deadofstudents.ilstu.edu

Attend the service fair on September 2nd 10 am-4 pm on the Quad. Speak with the volunteers for social justice/diversity needs of different organizations

Consider current political and social topics that inspires you (e.g. war in Iraq, BP Oil leakage, racism in school system, Building a community center in NYC, Islamophobia in the USA etc.)

Look close at home: Think about important social issues you or your loved ones encountered (e.g. sexism, racism, disability rights, GLBT issues, family abuse, class issues in college)

So, what is a good Social Action Project

(SAP) topic?A good SAP topic should

Raise more questions

Be intellectually challenging

Include a personal aspect

Increase one’s curiosity

Be meaningful, applicable and useful to you and to your community

What makes a question researchable?

It should be clear and narrow (not too big, not too small)

It interests the researcher

It raises questions, and the answer might not be simple.

It focuses on a topic about which something has been said before.

Cont.

It should be intellectually challenging

It should have some contribution.

It should relate to the class theme.

You should find resources for your topic easily.

CLASS ACTIVITY

Get into groups of three and get one picture of an image from your instructor

Brainstorm a list of possible questions about this visual (possibly interesting questions!)

Choose a recorder who will write the questions on the poster. Questions might address the history of the visual, its social impact on people or history etc.

Read CR PP. 40-50

Continue brainstorming potential SAP topics after you finish reading CR—Feel writing: to Use your blogs to post websites, share your developing SAP ideas, type possible research questions!

Agenda

Evaluating research questions based on the CR rubric

Narrowing SAP topics

Free writing on your SAP research questions

Wikipedia Research: Advantages and disadvantages

Reading “ Shitty First Drafts” by Lamott (if time allows)

ISU festival—report back on Monday!

What makes a question researchable?

1. Is it too big or too small? Is it specific enough?

2. Is it socially/culturally/politically significant? Does it have an impact on the most people?

3. Does it focus on a specific aspect of a topic about which something has been said?

4. Does it interest the researcher?

5. Does it raise more sub-questions?

NARROW DOWN THE QUESTIONS (see the next slide)

Narrowing your subject(CR 52)

TIME—limit the time frame of your project

PLACE–- anchor a large topic to a particular location

PERSON– use a particulars of a person/a group of people

STORY– ground a larger story in the specifics of a “smaller” one.

Pg. 52

The main purpose of any kinds of research is

to…EXPLORE

Your research should have a thesis and a research question. Your question will be answered through your research.

ARGUE

You need to be convincing. Your purpose is to explain a central claim and explain it through evidence

ANALYZE-IMPORTANT!

Collect data and examine it closely

Developing a working knowledge

Online sources

Internet

Library

Encyclopedias

Academic Search engines

Page 46 in CR

Google scholar

Fields of knowledge

Academic index

Librarian’s index

Any volunteers who would like to share your results?

WIKIPEDIA

Hawaiian word for “fast”

Class ideas about Wikipedia

Advantages for research Disadvantages for research

Academic Search engines

Page 46 in CR

Google scholar

Fields of knowledge

Academic index

Librarian’s index

Any volunteers who would like to share your results?

Circling the lighthouse

The challenge is not to find a unique topic but to find an angle on a familiar topic that helps readers to see what they haven't noticed before.

Take the ownership of your research and

writingChoose a topic that..

You can write/speak about passionately

You can tell the audience the importance of it (why does it matter to YOU and to your larger COMMUNITY)

You can conduct fieldwork, get involved with organizations, interview people etc.

You can take the authority and incorporate your own voice in it.

You can share your original ideas.

You can examine and understand the disciplinary conversation

Finding the relationship

What is the relationship between your topic and something else?

(e. g., What is the relationship between gender and media, what is the relationship between education and diversity? What is the relationship between anorexia and advertising)

Finding the focusing question

Ex. 1.5 (p. 50)

Step 1: Write the one question that you think would be the most interesting focus for your paper?—This will be your “Research question”

Step 2: Generate new set of questions under the first question. What are additional questions that most interest you and might help you discover the answers to your research? (See the example on page 50) You can use the Time, Place, Person and Story

Reading Strategically

Differences between literary text and academic text.

--academic writing is usually explicit.

--academic writing uses specialized language and conventions.

--the rhetorical conventions are accessible.

--Non-linear reading-- It’s often not necessary to read an academic article from the beginning to the end

Assignments

Read CR 61-85 Developing a research strategy

In your blogs, identify three “working research questions” that you would like to address in your SAPs this semester. The direction of these questions may change after your library visit/research.