Green Zone (Mar 6-Mar 19): Essays turned in during this time period
will receive comments and 10% extra credit. All discussion messages must be
posted to the Discussion Forum during this time period to receive credit. If
you want response to your Outline before you write the essay, you must post it
to the Discussion Forum during this period. Try to do your work within this
time period as much as possible to get the most out of this class.
Yellow Zone (Mar 20-23): Essays turned in during this time period
will receive feedback and full credit. Nothing posted to the Discussion Forum
from this point onward will receive credit or feedback. At this time, submit
the collection of all Discussion Messages you wrote for this Unit to me via the
Homework Submission Page. Try never to submit your essay later than this
period, as doing so puts your grade in jeopardy.
Since I am not monitoring your performance
on the online exercises, they can be done during any "zone."
Technically, the same is true of the readings and lectures, but the reality is
that you'll need to have read most of these before you can successfully do the
Forum messages and essay.
Unit 2 requires you to write about the
articles of Chapter 9 (Chapter 13 in the 11th edition) once again,
so look at the descriptions of the articles and the Essay and Discussion Forum
assignments below to decide which articles you want to read. You will probably
at least need to read Milgram, Asch, Zimbardo, and Fromm.
Remember that during Unit 5, you'll base your
work on one of the optional novels for this course: Asimov's The Naked Sun,
Benoit Duteutre’s The
Little Girl and the Cigarette or Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. You
may want to begin reading the book of your choice earlier in the semester, as
you will need to finish during or before the twelfth week.
The Research Process
The following links will show you how to locate sources, either in the library or through the Internet.
Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
If you do not properly document your use of outside ideas, you can be charged with plagiarism, which is a crime that can ultimately get you expelled from college. You must document your source whenever you do one of two things: 1) use a direct quote or 2) use an idea, fact, or observation that you got from an outside source EVEN IF YOU DON'T USE THE EXACT WORDS. It's #2 that everyone forgets or ignores. The only time you don't have to document information from an outside source is if the information is such common knowledge that it could have been found in any number of sources, for example, the fact that Sacramento is the capital of California. You can read more about knowing which sources to acknowledge in this tutorial from St. Martin Press
How do you document? There are two steps. First, you create a Works Cited list that goes at the end of the essay. This contains all the details about every book, article, web site, whatever, that you used. Second, after every use of information in the essay, you put a pair of parentheses containing minimal information about where the info came from. These are called Parenthetical Citations. More on this in a minute.
Making the Works Cited list involves very detailed and tedious steps. Luckily, free web software has become good enough that there is really no need to learn the steps yourself. I recommend www.easybib.com, which you can easily learn from their how-to video tutorial. This site will build your Works Cited list for you, and then you can paste it at the end of your essay. If you want to learn what exactly is going on, Diana Hacker’s website explains how to build the list manually. If you look through that site, you'll get an idea of how it works and be very glad you have easybib.com.
As for the parenthetical citations, the concept is actually very simple. In the body of your essay, each time you mention information or a quote from an outside source, you put the author's last name, a space, and the page number, in a pair of parentheses. They go outside the quote marks (if any) and before the period. Example: Studies have shown that "most working mothers suffer from depression" (Smith 142). If you mention the author's name already in the sentence, you don't have to duplicate it in the parenthetical citation. What if you don't know the author's name, or the author has more than one book that you used, or the source is a website with no page numbers? All those details can be learned with the fuller explanation available at Diana Hacker’s site.
These concepts are absolutely crucial for passing English 1A. Make sure you go to the sites listed above and read them carefully and repeatedly!
I have created a web page with an audio file that contains my own explanation and review of how to use parenthetical citations. If after reading the above sites, you're still not sure and want to try hearing the information, try my audio explanation.
Here's a youtube video that also explains mla documentation
A very brief overview (handy for quick reference) of MLA documentation is found on the last two pages of our textbook.
Here are a few last words about plagiarism in case you're still not sure.
You should already have gone to Exercise Central during Unit 1 and registered with your name and email address. If not, go back to the Unit 1 instructions and perform the steps described in the Exercises section.
For Unit 2, only one exercise is assigned: #768.
There are some other exercises that will be very helpful in testing your understanding, though not part of Exercise Central. I highly recommend them, as they give helpful feedback and will ensure your mastery of the topic. They can be found here: Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3.
You should already have gone to the Forum site during Unit 1 and registered with your name and email address. If not, go back to the Unit 1 instructions and perform the steps described in the Discussion Forum section.
Posting Discussion Messages (Required)
Reminder: Follow these directions very precisely. Messages that violate these directions will be deleted and will not receive any credit.
- Each of the questions listed below has its own thread in the Forum discussion board. Click on the question in the Forum and click the Reply button to post your message. You do not need to start new threads.
- Before writing a post, read through ALL the other replies in the thread to make sure that you are writing something new. You don’t get credit for presenting ideas already presented. If you can't think of anything new to say, don't write on that question. Messages that just recap what someone else said get deleted.
- It's more than okay to engage in a debate with one or more students and to post multiple replies to the same thread in which you continue the debate, ALWAYS ASSUMING that you follow basic rules of etiquette for the Internet and the College: use a respectful, professional tone free of personal insults or offensive language.
Questions for Discussion Forum 2
- Research and describe one psychological experiment similar to those described throughout Chapter 9 (Chapter 13 in the 11th edition) that you believe lack validity because the behavior being studied is too dissimilar to or not as complex as real-life situations. You don't need to analyze or comment on the experiment for the discussion board, just describe the experiment. but make sure it's clear what's so problematic about it in your description.
2. Research and describe one psychological experiment similar to those described throughout Chapter 9 (Chapter 13 in the 11th edition) that you believe was unethical. You don't need to analyze or comment on the experiment for the discussion board, just describe the experiment. but make sure it's clear what's so unethical about it in your description. Make sure you choose a psychological experiment, no natural sciences.
3. Erich Fromm's article makes an equation between being obedient and being cowardly. Describe an event from current news that shows a case where obedience can be cowardly, and be sure to both explain the events' details and to make it clear why it shows obedience as a cowardly act.
4. The article by Lopach and Luckowski establishes a difference between civil disobedience rooted in fundamental principles and that rooted in personal preferences -- research and describe the details of one news stories that shows either acceptable or non-acceptable disobedience, and make it clear which category you would place the story in.
You have the option to post an outline for the essay that you'll be writing so that I can give you feedback before you get too far into the writing process. Like anything else posted to the forum, it must be posted during the Green Zone. I will respond as quickly as possible, but you should expect that it may take me a couple of days. Just as importantly, I will only respond to Outlines that follow the directions below...
First, obvious as it may seem, first read through the essay choices at the bottom of this page and decide what you will write about. These aren't suggestions, they are your only options.
HOW TO CREATE AN OUTLINE FOR THIS
CLASS
1.
The outline must begin with your thesis statement, which as
explained above is exactly one sentence and states some kind of argument that
is going to need supporting proof.
2. Beneath it, list three or more major points that you will cover to prove this thesis. EVERY ENTRY IN THE OUTLINE MUST BE A COMPLETE SENTENCE. For example, if you are proving what are the causes of a certain situation, each major point will be one of the causes (e.g.,"One cause of x is y"). If you are writing to prove that something is true, each major point might be one step in your argument (e.g., "We can tell x is true because of y").
3. Finally, beneath each major point, list at least two entries that show what kind of proof or detail you will use to explain that point. For example, if you are proving that one cause of the postal strike is bad working conditions, you would list some examples of these bad conditions. It is acceptable if you are not quite prepared with two entries for every major point when you turn in the outline, but try for as many as possible.