Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Mrs. Pantuso's Sample Works Cited Page

Students,

Below are a couple of links; the first is to my example works cited page that we did together in class on Monday. The second is to a website, called the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab), that will tell you everything you need to know about writing a works cited page in MLA format, in case you need to look something up:

Sample Works Cited

Purdue OWL: Works Cited

Friday, April 22, 2016

Monday, April 11, 2016

EXAMPLE INFORMATIVE SPEECH OUTLINE (With Comments)

Click on the following link to view an example informative speech outline on The Titanic. Read my comments along the sidebar! You can use this outline as a guide when writing your own:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/128IQxtHfZ5lSc8toKhz7zCMreYlBkmnOqiJ8tbYajW8/edit?usp=sharing

Monday, April 4, 2016

3 Ways to Incorporate Quoted Material Into Your Writing:

1. DROPPED QUOTES--
Dropped quotes are partial phrases taken from the middle of a piece of text. Dropped quotes are comprised of only a few words and give no direction as to who the speaker is or the content it’s referring to. These must always be introduced within a sentence, and cannot comprise a complete sentence on their own.

Example: As Rembrandt’s skill developed, he began painting landscapes that are “romantic and visionary” (Wallace 96).

2. FULL SENTENCE QUOTES--
As the name implies, full sentence quotes are created by quoting complete sentences that take up less than 4 lines. Although these are complete sentences, they cannot be used as stand-alone sentences in your paper. Introduce them with an additional complete sentence or a signal phrase.

Example: Over the course of time Rembrandt’s work began to change and focus on different themes, but as Wallace points out: "Rembrandt’s great gift as an etcher lay in preserving a sense of spontaneity while scrupulously attending to close detail” (142).

Example: As Wallace states, “Rembrandt’s great gift as an etcher lay in preserving a sense of spontaneity while scrupulously attending to close detail” (142).

3. INDIRECT QUOTES--
Indirect quotes, or paraphrasing, is when you use a sentence from a source but change the wording slightly into your own words. This is useful if you’ve too many direct quotes, or full sentence quotes, in your paper. Be careful to avoid plagiarism though by changing at least 50% of the sentence.
  • Change the structure of the sentence by moving parts around. You can use a thesaurus to exchange words with synonyms.
  • Paraphrasing should only be done if you are certain that you understand the content you are copying. If you are unclear as to the meaning of the quote, you won’t be able to put it adequately into your own words.
  • When you write your paraphrase, don’t look at the quote. Keep the meaning in your head and create a new sentence to match.
Example: 
The original passage:
Students frequently overuse direct quotation in taking notes, and as a result they overuse quotations in the final [research] paper. Probably only about 10% of your final manuscript should appear as directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing of source materials while taking notes. Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers. 2nd ed. (1976): 46-47.
A legitimate paraphrase:
In research papers students often quote excessively, failing to keep quoted material down to a desirable level. Since the problem usually originates during note taking, it is essential to minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester 46-47).
An acceptable summary:
Students should take just a few notes in direct quotation from sources to help minimize the amount of quoted material in a research paper (Lester 46-47).
A plagiarized version:
Students often use too many direct quotations when they take notes, resulting in too many of them in the final research paper. In fact, probably only about 10% of the final copy should consist of directly quoted material. So it is important to limit the amount of source material copied while taking notes.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Sources due Wednesday, March 30!!!

SOURCE REQUIREMENTS
Your four sources must meet the following requirements:

ACCEPTABLE SOURCES include the following: 
     - Print sources (e.g., books, magazines, newspapers, and journals)
     - News stories (e.g., radio, TV, article accessed electronically/online)
     - Interviews (with an expert/qualified person)
     - Academic journals or articles (considered "print sources") via Questia database
     - Official websites (e.g., ---.org, ---.gov, ---.edu)

UNACCEPTABLE SOURCES include the following:
     - Wikipedia
     - Blog or opinion post
     - Interview from a friend, yourself, or any other non-expert
     - Unofficial/unapproved websites
     - Encyclopedia articles (use only as a last resort)


3/28/16: Class Objectives

March 28, 2016
TODAY'S OBJECTIVES:

1. Browse the following links:

"Finding Primary Sources"
http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/primarysources.html

"Finding Secondary Sources"
http://www.library.illinois.edu/ugl/howdoi/secondarysources.html

2. Log on to Questia, the database used by the school--
         a. Go to QuestiaSchool.com
         b. Enter your school email address as your username
         c. Enter "saints" (all lowercase) as your password
         d. Explore the website/browse for articles on your topic
         e. Optional: Watch tutorial videos (with headphones) at the bottom of the home page

3. Start a Google Doc titled "Informative Speech Works Cited" through your school account
         a. Once you've found four sources, submit to Mrs. Pantuso for approval by sharing with her
         b. Use www.easybib.com to put your source citations into the proper format--
             due Wednesday, 3/30