response and analysis

ENGL 301A Fall 2019

Reading Response Journals

As we talked about in class, one of the core principles of academic writing is that arguments or explorations in academic writing are always made by situating your information within the larger on-going conversations taking place in the academic discourse community.

(Reminder: academic discourse community or ADC is the name used for the real audience of most academic writing The academic discourse community is the term used to describe the conversation among students, faculty, administrators, and staff who are part of the community at colleges and universities.)

In many academic writing assignments, part of the writing process involves reading what others have to say before you start making your own arguments. In many assignments, being able to summarize effectively helps novice writers make their own arguments stronger. For example, strong summary skills are key to writing effective thesis statements that avoid listing. At the same time, effective summary skills help writers skillfully subjugate sources to their own arguments so that the voice of the author remains in control of the paper instead of allowing the voices of the sources to take over.

In addition, regular reading will help build the broad base of knowledge that makes writing any piece easier. Also, regular reading often helps develop your “ear” for what is correct in your own writing.

To that end, for the rest of the semester, we’re going to focus on developing a regular, effective reading practice.

You will be asked to complete a set number of reading response journals; the exact number may be revised down from what is stated in the thesis, but it will be clearly stated in the final version of this assignment sheet.

Some of your reading response journals (RRJs) will involve readings from our reader, Language Awareness.

Others can be in response to newspaper articles from reputable English-langauge newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Financial Times, or The Los Angeles Times or magazines, including any non-advice, non-satire column or article in Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, The Smithsonian, or Scientific American.

Please remember that most articles in these publications are available through the library database.

Alternatively, you may pick any essay in Language Awareness that has not already been assigned as a reading for an out-of-class or impromptu essay.

See the daily schedule for due dates.

The first one, however, we’re going to write together with your favorite reading from A1 so that I can beta test this assignment.

Requirements:

Each Reading Response Journal submitted must still follow MLA formatting and citation rules, although if the reading comes from Language Awareness you do not need to draft a work cited page.

The final response must be typed. I strongly suggest using Word.

The final response should be between 350 and 700 words. Word count runs from the first word of the first paragraph to the last word of the last paragraph. Reading response journals that fail to meet the minimum word count will not count toward the minimum number needed for that portion of your semester grade. Also remember, however, that you have about a page of wiggle room on the upper end (in other words, you could go up to about 1050 words total).

Titles, headers, footers, and any work or works cited entries do not count toward the word count.

RRJs turned in late will likely be returned substantially later than the class set. Late penalties as outlined in the syllabus apply for all late work, including RRJs.

The RRJ should still follow paragraph guidelines as outlined in the rubric and paragraph handout. (That is to say, no paragraphs should be longer than about ½ or, at most, 2/3 of a page.)

The first paragraph of each RRJ should introduce the source as required by MLA guidelines for sources. It’s generally good form when writing for the academic discourse community (ADC) to give a brief summary of the main argument or thesis and one or two important supporting ideas that are relevant to your writing in the first paragraph.

No more than the first paragraph should be primarily summary. (Obviously, you can include brief summary in the following paragraphs if that summary is necessary to make the response or analysis that you focus on in that paragraph.)

Body paragraphs after the first paragraph of the RRJ should primarily contain response and/or analysis.

At least one paragraph should, ideally, be almost exculsively analysis. If you have a shorter RRJ with longer paragraphs, that means you may end up with one paragraph that is primarily summary, and one longish (at least ½ a page) paragraph that is half response and half analysis.

Papers that do not have at least ¼ of a page of analysis will not count toward the total number of RRJ needed to attain a certain grade for that portion of your class grade. Reading response journals that have more than one paragraph of summary (no more than 2/3 of a page long in proper MLA formatting) will also not count toward the total number needed to attain a specific grade.