Corporate Law

ENGH 302-B63 | Fall 2020 | Worksheet #3 Assignment Guidelines | 1

Worksheet #3: Defining Your Sub-discipline Advanced Composition-Business | ENGH 302-B63 | Fall 2020

Important Date • Due: 7:00 PM, Wednesday, Sept. 9

Overview Having chosen the sub-discipline/sub-field you’ll investigate this semester, including center your literature review research in, our next task is to learn a bit more about that sub-discipline. To this end, you’ll do some research and write an extended definition using a number of definitional strategies described in the Graves and Graves reading, which is the textbook I use when I teach ENGH 388: Professional and Technical Writing.

Before you begin, I suggest you read through the Graves and Graves “Defining, Describing, and Explaining” reading available as a PDF in our Week 2 Readings folder and to look over the guidelines for Mini-project #1: Defining Your Sub-discipline. That will give you the context you need to complete this worksheet, which is designed to help you gather the data you’ll need to complete Mini-project #1.

Assignment To complete the worksheet, please follow the steps below and record any relevant information. Copy and paste the Worksheet #3 Data into a new document and submit that as your assignment.

Before you begin conducting research, take a look at the Worksheet #3 Data section at the end of this assignment so you have an idea of what kinds of information you’ll want to collect as you complete the worksheet.

Note The data section asks you to break up your data by definitional strategies. As you begin collecting your data, don’t worry about categorizing the information you find. Instead:

• Collect what you think is useful information, recording the bibliographic information you need to cite it.

• If you copy and paste rather than paraphrase, make sure to put quotation marks around it to remind yourself what is your words and what is the sources’ words.

• Strongly consider adding any thoughts or comments you have about a source as you record it. If you put quotes around source text, you can easily tell the source from your comments.

• Once you’ve gathered your information, you can slot it into the various categories for the worksheet. In many instances, you might decide that a single source belongs in more than one category. When that’s the case, including it in all the relevant

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categories so that when you go to write the parts of your definition, you have all the relevant sources for each definitional strategy.

Step 1: Identify Your Discipline Identify your chosen sub-discipline/field and include the one-sentence definition you wrote for Worksheet #2.

Step 2: Start With Wikipedia As I noted in last week’s class, Wikipedia, like other references sources is a good place to begin research. Ideally, depending upon the context for your research. Look not just at the entry for your sub-discipline but also for the parent discipline your sub-discipline belongs to.

For this worksheet and for Mini-project #1, you may cite Wikipedia as a source, but your research and the data you cite needs to include much more than just Wikipedia.

Step 3: Use Other Reference Sources As we’ll discuss in a few weeks, every discipline has a variety of specialized encyclopedias, handbooks, and dictionaries that are written for a more specialized than standard general purpose reference works than you’re used to finding in the reference section of a high school or public library. While GMU’s libraries have many of these in print, that doesn’t help us much this semester, so we’ll focus on what we can use: The Gale Virtual Reference Library and the Oxford English Dictionary. Both are available through GMU’s database collections.

• Gale Virtual Reference Library. This database holds more than 7,000 full-text reference titles, so that’s a good place to start.

o To access the Gale Virtual Reference Library, go to library.gmu.edu and select Databases. Either search by name or select the “G” category and scroll down to “Gale Virtual Reference Library.” There are six Gale databases and as I’m writing this worksheet, the Virtual Library database is the sixth entry under “G” and the last of the Gale databases.

• Oxford English Dictionary. For the English language, the OED is the most scholarly and authoritative of dictionaries. It’s the only dictionary I would cite in a scholarly article. And, particularly useful for this assignment, it also provides extensive etymological information and documents historical usage of a word, including its earliest known usage in writing.

o To access the Oxford English Dictionary database, go to library.gmu.edu and select Databases. Either search by name or select the “O” category and scroll down to “Oxford English Dictionary.” Do note that the Oxford English Dictionary is not the same as “Oxford Dictionaries” database. You want the one that describes itself as the classic 22-volume Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition.

• Other Reference Sources. If you go back to the “O” databases, right below the Oxford English Dictionary, you’ll see “Oxford Handbooks Online,” and a few entries below that you’ll see “Oxford Reference.” These databases include reference materials published by Oxford University Press.

o While both of these would be useful databases to check (and since you’re

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there, why not?), but they’re not the only ones. You can skim the various databases and look for other Reference and Handbook databases, and you can look through your discipline’s Library Subject Guide (you skimmed that last week) to find other reference works that might be of use.

o You might also try entering your sub-discipline + handbook and sub- discipline + reference (e.g.: “digital media handbook”) and see what comes up. Googling “digital media handbook,” I see that there are a number of digital media handbooks. I can use those titles to help me check both the GMU library databases and the library catalog to see if we have access to any of them.

Step 4: Search Professional Organizations As I mentioned last week, every discipline has its own professional organization, and often many professional organizations.

• Use your favorite search engine and find organizations for your sub-discipline. Ideally, you did this for Worksheet #2 last week and you already know how to find those organizations. If not, you can also use search terms like “professional organization [sub-discipline]” and “societies [sub-discipline].”

• The Library Subject Guide for your discipline may also list professional organizations for you.

Step 5: Search the Web Your last step in collecting data to write your definition is to use your favorite search engine (or, even better, use multiple search engines because they don’t all give the same results), and use search terms like “definition of [sub-discipline]” and “what is [sub- discipline].” (Try some others as well.) As with any open web search, you’ll get a mix of resources. Look for those created by professionals in the field, by professional organizations, and by educators such as a college professor.

Worksheet #3 Data • Name • Your chosen sub-discipline • A one-sentence definition of your chosen sub-discipline • Based on your research, write a one sentence categorical definition of your sub-

discipline (Graves and Graves, p. 110) • Any data you’ve found that will help you write an operational definition (Graves

and Graves, pp. 111-112). Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

• Any data you’ve found that will help you write a negative definition (Graves and Graves, p. 112). Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

• Any data you’ve found that will help you write a description of parts definition (Graves and Graves, p. 112). Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

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• Any data you’ve found that will help you write a history or background definition (Graves and Graves, p. 112). Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

• Any data you’ve found that will help you write an etymology definition (Graves and Graves, p. 113). Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

• Any data you’ve found that will help you provide examples to support your definition (Graves and Graves, p. 113). Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

• Any data you’ve found that will help you describe your sub-discipline through cause and effect (Graves and Graves, pp. 113-114). (Most sub-disciplines emerge because existing sub-disciplines don’t meet the needs of researchers, so explaining the causes that led to the creation of your chosen sub-discipline (the effect) can be a useful strategy.) Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

• Any data you’ve found that will help you use analogies and comparisons to support your definition (Graves and Graves, pp. 114-115). Make sure to record the bibliographic information you need to cite this information.

• A list of sites you used to conduct your research. Note whether you found the site useful or not.