Evolving Communication, Fall 2007:

Writing Assignments

All Writing in this program should be in Academic English* We are interested in helping you develop your writing because writing is a very useful way of thinking and because it is an essential component of your college experience. Good writers are sought after in the workplace as well. Please write several drafts of your essays so that you always submit your best work.

1. Seminar Essays are very brief academic essays analyzing the seminar text. You need to think through your ideas and use good time management so that we read a clear expression of those ideas. We expect these essays to be very compact; that is, you will need to choose your words and your sentence structures carefully in order to make a strong argument. Writing: Each week prior to seminar, you will write a 250-300 word expository essay on the reading. This essay should examine major points in the text(s). Your essay should have a thesis and evidence to support that thesis drawn from the text or from other texts in the program. A thesis can be a statement or a question, and your evidence can be paraphrases (not quotations) from the text, with the citation in parentheses. (See below) Submission: You will publish these essays on our program web page in the password protected Forum section by 7:00 pm the evening before the seminar. You will also submit this essay to your faculty sponsor via email by the deadline. Naturally, because you will want to read other students’ essays before class, it is best for all concerned if everyone submits their essay earlier in the day or earlier in the week. The purpose of writing the short essay is to begin reflecting on the material prior to our seminar discussion. We do expect your ideas to change and/or become more developed as you learn more. The purpose of publishing your essay (for students and faculty in our program only) is to share your ideas and create a basis for our conversation the following day. Because these essays will be published each week electronically, you will not include them in your portfolio. You must have an Evergreen email address established to log on to our web site and to submit your essays to the Forum.

When you send a copy of your paper to your faculty, use the following methods:

For students in Heather's seminar, please follow the following protocol to submit seminar papers. Email a .doc (preferred) or .rtf (acceptable) attachment to her at heyingh@evergreen.edu [1]. Name your file in the following format: "Last name, first name sempap1.doc". Future seminar essays should follow the same naming format. Also, please include your name in two additional places as well: in the text of the file itself, and in the subject line of the email message.
For students in Susan’s seminar, please paste your essay into the message and begin it with your name. Send to fiksdals@evergreen.edu [2] In the subject line of your email message, please put your name and the number of the seminar essay.

2. Short Essays for Synthesis Discussions. Every Monday our first scheduled activity is a synthesis discussion. This discussion will be based on a set of questions handed out the week before by your faculty. The questions require short essay responses and careful thought. You will bring these, typed, to our discussions, and later include them in your portfolio for evaluation purposes.

3. Final Project Paper. Please refer to the Project Guidelines for information about this final paper. This paper is due Thursday, Nov. 29.

4. Other Writing as Assigned: Our few field trips will be accompanied with writing assignments, as may other activities. These will be submitted electronically, via Email, to your faculty sponsor.

*Academic English refers to the choice of appropriate words, use of clear sentence structure, and articulate expression of your ideas. Use the terminology you are learning in our program and avoid verb + particle combinations (“He puts a lot of thought into his writing” can be changed to “He writes thoughtfully”). Using complete sentences is essential, and it is important to vary your sentence structure so that you do not begin each one with the subject and verb. Finally, the content will be on a topic that is fruitful and relevant to our program themes. The comments you receive on your writing each week will address both the form and content of your essay.

Citing page numbers: We ask that you cite the page number if you paraphrase; otherwise you are plagiarizing. For information on using APA citations, go to this URL: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c09_s1.html [3]For citing references at the end of your paper, go to this URL: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c09_s2.html [4]To find these URL’s online, go to the Writing Center website:http://www.evergreen.edu/writingcenter/Please note: If you know you have difficulty writing, take your rough draft to the writing center for help along with this explanation.