WWD, p. 94, number 3
An undergraduate paper I have written...I shall choose one from my English 102 class. I enjoyed the class because the teacher was awesome, but I don't know that I learned that much about writing papers. But one paper I had to write for the class I remember well; it was about Darfur, and how WVU, as a school, needed to stand up and do something about the conflict.
I had lots of resources; for a paper like that, you have to have lots of resources or it could be considered highly unlikely that any of my facts were true. I took the position that many have taken: the reports we were hearing here were quite different from what was going on. Some numbers were tiny, while others were monstrous. I created something "novel" by writing something that pertained to many people. My value added was how people could become involved with helping the Darfurians. The sources I used most likely received their information from another source. The teacher was rather interested in finding out the background of every source I used, but he never pushed me to find them out for myself. That was one of the downfalls of the class. I'm sure I didn't help it much, but it was difficult to be motivated when the only critical comment I got was, "nothing!" Critical work helps me! Anyways...after I had turned in the paper, I did some research to find out where the sources were getting sources. Some answers surprised me, while other really didn't. The paper, though, turned out well. I just think that I needed to spend more time actually working on the paper BEFORE it was due.
Anyways...um..yeah...anyways...
1 comment:
You make a really important point here that relates to intertextual analysis -- when you directly or indirectly quote a text, it's important to know what/who that text is quote/referencing itself. You make a nice move here to speak of the "value added" that Bazerman discusses; here you get at the sense of agency that the writer exerts when using intertextual referencing. I'd be interested in hearing some specific description of the decisions you made in terms of what you decided to include (and not include) and why when you were working with your sources, which ones you decided to quote vs. which ones you decided to indirectly quote and why; how you paragraphed and analyzed these texts.
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