english easy course

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Assignment 9: The Research Project: Reading Widely for the Annotated Bibliography

Purpose

1. Experience reading widely in an academic area 2. Exposure to the excellent resources in books, compared to web sites 3. Enhance chances that future research project in college are begun with books. 4. Develop efficient book-skimming skills 5. Continued experience at proper citation mechanics for annotated bibliographies 6. Recognize the difference between scholarship on history of a text and scholarship that interprets that text. 7. Understand the phenomena of scholarly consensus and points of debate

Objectives

1. Submit an annotated bibliography with correct citation mechanics 2. Submit an annotated bibliography with adequate annotation information.

Click on the “Introduction to the Research Project” link in the Assignment 9 folder for a video introduction to the research Project (expand the larger of the two screens for optimal viewing)

Reading Assignments

• Chapter 9 about the Rationale of the project focus: p. 195 - 7 • Special attention on: Process for Skimming Books: 201-3 • Annotated bibliography section: p. 203 • See the several handouts mentioned below (acquired through course links)

Instructor Comments : please read all this material (along with Chapter 9 and 10) before starting research… In fact, print them out so you can easily consult them.

To get you started, I provide below the Library of Congress Numbers for books by scholars who explain the formation of texts that are in the Bible (you will have to find books about non-biblical scriptures and biographies):

Library of Congress Numbers for books on the scholarship on the Bible:

BS1140.2 .C48 1979 - Books called Introduction to OT are grouped around this number

BS2330 - Books called Introduction to NT are grouped around this number

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BS475.3 - A college level textbook on the Bible can be found here

BS475.2 .G39 - Commentaries like Broadman and Interpreter’s Commentary – read articles in them and commentary on specific story if you have one.

ALSO, you will need to find these kinds of books in these areas:

• Books called Introduction to the Bible, to the entire Bible • Books focused on one book of the OT, like a book just on Isaiah, or Job • Books focused on one book of the NT, like the Gospel of Mark, or Book of

Revelation

About the topics that we are researching:

1. With regards to the scholarship on the Bible, you will need to keep reminding yourself that you are NOT looking how to understand the text (either a verse or an entire book of the Bible), or how to interpret the verse. To repeat, you don’t look for information that tells you how to understand (or interpret) the verse.

2. Instead you want to find out the background of that verse or story or book. So when you look at scholarship about the formation of a book in the Bible, you ask yourself the “reporters’ questions” (see p. 197). These are questions that the scholar tries to answer.

3. Caution: these reporters’ questions are not about the scholar, but about the writer that he is discussing. So, for example, if the scholar is looking at Genesis, you want to find out – who wrote Genesis 1 (according to this scholar) and then find out when that writer of Genesis lived, where, etc.

4. When it comes to an influential Western personality, like say Isaac Newton, find out facts about his life, especially the way he became the prominent figure in his field of study. Does the biography discuss who his mentors were, how he was received by the experts of his field, what kinds of friendships he had. Almost any information here is acceptable except one: do not explain how to understand his theories. You can discuss how he came up with his theories.

5. The 3rd area deals with the formation of non-biblical texts that cultures have called inspired. You likely won’t find too many sources on this, so 2 or 3 books on this topic would be fine.

ELEMENTS OF A BIBLIOGRAPHY You already wrote bibliographies for the readings in the Reading Section and now you will write more bibliographies. However, these bibliographies will be of

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books (no web sites are allowed). Please study p. 217 – 8 for the kinds of bibliographies you will need to produce. Based on my own work in this area, you will get these kinds of books

• Works by translators (you need to cite the translator) • Works other than first edition • Works by two or more authors • Two or more works out of an anthology (that is explained in the section “A

Gimmick”) • If you use more than one book by the same author

I have an example of a bibliography for each kind of book listed above, so know what features you need to have in a specific bibliography. For example, if a book has a translator, you need to include it in your bibliography. I have an example for that.

If the book is not the first edition, I have an example of what to cite. So study the kinds of bibliographies I describe and expect to find such creatures among the books.

And just a few more things before you start:

I assume you have read Ch. 9 and completed the Study Guide questions, so I don’t feel you need to do much more preliminary reading: you just want to get to the books!

I will let you know that I’ve had my classroom CWR students do this research project for several years, and every semester, they end the project being very impressed with the project. At first, though, they worried that they might not be able to handle a research project where they could only use books. By the end, most were happy that they were just restricted to books for this research project. They particularly were glad that they learned the process of skimming a book, and found how valuable Indexes are at the end of books.

I mention to them that when I was a freshman at UNI in 1970, for research all we had were hard copy books and hard copy journals. Today, though, many students never use books and journals. While there are positive things about electronic sources, there are good things about books, too, and so for this course, I ask students just use books. After this course, they are free to never use books again.

But there is something kind of humane about a book. Not just because you can put it in your hand and there is no screen whose shimmer after a bit tires the eyes. You can tire of reading a book, too! But there is a sense of completeness and wholeness in a book that you cannot get from a website, even from see an eBook! You can see the end and the beginning when you hold a book. What I consider the most unique aspect of a book is that you can flip from the start of the

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book to the end in a matter of nanoseconds, and that is very efficient when you want to see how the author has made the end to mirror the beginning (or not).

HERE ARE A COUPLE OTHER THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND AS YOU BEGIN:

As you dip into the books, don’t be thinking about what topic to write your research paper on while looking through these books. Think right now in terms of finding out what the scholarship is saying about the formation of texts and people that cultures have called inspired.

Don’t think in terms of finding books that are “easy to read.” You are to accept the books as they are, and not avoid hard to read books. It is good knowledge to know that this or that author is hard to read (for that matter, that a specific book by an author is hard to read, but then another book by the same author is easy to read). Your annotation could mention that a specific text is not easy for the civilian reader, that it is meant strictly for other academics.

In any case, I will not delay your encounter with the books any longer. Below, though, are links to several attachments that can help keep you correctly focused on some key aspects of the research project. I’d encourage you to print those out, too.

Click the link “Books Not Appropriate for Koch CWR Research Project” in the Assignment 9 folder for a list of titles of books that are NOT appropriate for this research project and a list of book titles that would be appropriate.

Click on the link “Koch Example of Annotated Bibliography” in the Assignment 9 folder for several examples of the annotations that would accompany a bibliography.

Click on the “First Page of Annotated Bibliography” link in the Assignment 9 folder to get an example of a first page of an annotated bibliography.

Click on the “Examples of the Kinds of Topic Questions for GIS CWR Research Essays” link in the Assignment 9 folder for a list of possible research questions you could choose from for your research paper.

VIDEO – please access the “End of Instructor Comments on Research” video in the Assignment 9 folder for some information about the nature of the reading for the annotated bibliography and the research paper you will write later. (When half way through the video you’ll see two screens. Enlarger the larger of the two screens.)

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Assignments

Submit the first ten bibligraphies and their annotations so I know you are on the right track