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last.updated 1.31.08

Progressive Annotated Bibliography

Purpose

Throughout the semester the instructor has provided you with readings that cover the history and breadth of L2 writing. As you become immersed in both these discussions and the profession, you will want to pursue other perspectives or focus on specific issues (e.g., linguistic diversity, grammar, World Englishes, dialect).

The Progressive Annotated Bibliography gives you the opportunity to expand yours and your peers' knowledge of L2 writing. You will want to use these sources to both enrich your contribution to class discussions and to support the documents that you draft for this class. Likewise, you will be posting your entry to a public space on Blackboard, which will allow your peers to see other perspectives in these fields. The progressive nature of these submissions allows you to use the instructor's comments on previous submissions to decide how you will compose latter submissions.

Instructions-Choosing Articles

For your entries, you will want to find five academic, refereed articles or chapters about L2 writing. Refereed scholarship has been judged worthy of publication by other experts in fields related to L2 writing. Texts that qualify include...

• academic journal articles
• chapters from an edited collection
• chapters from an academic monographs (no more than two chapters per book)

Texts that do not qualify include...

• most popular publications, such as certain magazines and web pages (consult instructor)
• newsletters
• book reviews
• academics' websites

These list, of course, are not exhaustive. If you have any questions whether an article or chapter qualifies, consult the instructor.

You should choose the texts...

• based upon issues that you are interested in learning more about
• based upon positions/philosophies that you want to both support and refute
• that are fairly recent (1990-2008), unless you are working with seminal pieces
• that have not been annotated by your peers in previous weeks; one purpose of this assignment is to develop a extensive resource for the class.

Variations from these parameters are acceptable, but consult the instructor first.

Instructions-Writing (Progressive Submissions)

For each annotation entry, you will want to...

• Compose a bibliographic citation for the article you have read. You should use MLA or APA formatting; be consistent.
• Under each citation write a 250 word annotation for that article. For each entry...
  
  • identify the author's argument (sometimes it will be explicit; other times it will be inferred)
  • briefly summarize the main points that the author makes to support the argument
  • briefly review the article: Would you recommend this article to your peers? Why or why not? Or under what circumstances would you make the recommendation? (You are encouraged to use the first-person singular pronoun to distinguish your voice from the author(s) you are reviewing)

While these three points need to be addressed, this list does not define the order in which these points need to be presented.

When you post the PAB to the Blackboard "Discussion Board," cut and paste your entries into the body of the form field; do not try to attach a file. The program may shift some of the formatting and change some characters if you cut and paste from MS Word; do not sweat this.

To help your peers use your entry as a resource provide a title that identifies the author and article. Use the titles listed on the calendar as a model.

Criteria

Logistic:

• no more than 250 words per entry; this is an exercise in writing brief, yet detailed texts
• single spaced

• The five submission deadlines for the annotated bibliography are...

  • January 30, 2008
  • February 13, 2008
  • February 20 , 2008
  • February 27, 2008
  • March 5 , 2008

  Use the Blackboard "Discussion Board" to post your entry to the instructor and the class. You will submit all of your entries in the body of a discussion board post.

• The PAB assignment will cumulatively be worth 50 points. All students will start with 40 points and your grade will be adjusted according to the evaluation of each of the five entries. Each entry will be graded using the following scale...

  check (or 0) = You did the work satisfactorily and on time. If it is an earlier entry, use the instructor's comments to guide how you compose future entries

  +1, +2= You demonstrated various degrees of engagement with the ideas and you turned it in on time. Use features that the instructor liked as a model for future entries

  –1, -2= Your work demonstrates a misunderstanding of the assignment or minimal effort, shows that you do not understand what an academic text entails, or was not turned in on time.

  - 4 = No submission

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, the instructor will be looking for evidence of...

• a sense of audience–do you provide enough information and detail about the article that your audience of peers gets a clear sense of the article's content? Likewise do you only highlight important information?
• an informed understanding and discussion of L2 writing, as well as other topics the text covers
• do you provide a substantiated opinion of the text?
• appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting