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last.updated 8.6.07

 

Progressive Annotated Bibliography

Purpose

Throughout the semester the instructor has provided you with readings that present the breadth of the language arts field. As you become immersed in both this discipline and profession, you will want to pursue other perspectives or focus on specific issues (e.g., grammar, voice, technology, testing).

The Progressive Annotated Bibliography gives you the opportunity to expand your knowledge of language arts. You will want to use these sources to both enrich your contribution to class discussions and to support the documents that you draft for your portfolio. The progressive nature of these submissions allows you to use the instructor's comments on previous submissions to decide how you will compose later submissions.

Instructions-Choosing Articles

Find four refereed journal or edited collection articles from language arts or composition oriented journals (see resources for a list of some of these journals). Refereed articles are articles in your field of study that have been judged worthy of publication by other scholars in this field. Articles from newsletters and book reviews in journals do not qualify. If you have any questions whether an article 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 support or refute
  • that are fairly recent (1999-2007)
  • that has not been annotated by your peers in a previous week

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 the MLA or APA format.
  • Under each citation write a 250 word annotation for that article. For each entry...
    • identify the author's argument–whether it is implicit or inferred
    • summarize the main points that the author makes to support the argument
    • provide a brief review that explains your perceived value of this text. Because you will be providing your opinion, using the first person pronoun, "I," is acceptable, and probably preferred as a means to distinguish your voice from the text's author(s)

Use the Blackboard Discussion Board to post your entries; the public publication of your work is meant to generate a resource that you and your peers can use throughout the semester. If you compose your entry outside of Blackboard and paste it into the Discussion Board, the program may shift some of the formatting; do not sweat this.

Instructions-Writing (Final Submission)

For the Teaching Portfolio, you will do the following to the Annotated Bibliography:

  • revise the entries
  • compile the entries
  • compose a 300 word introduction in which you explain what an audience would learn from reading your annotated bibliography. Rather than summarizing (restating what each entry is about), use this opportunity to synthesize (find important threads that run through all of the sources or explain how the sources "talk" to each other) the works. In this discussion you should also explain how these four sources were collectively relevant to your inquiry–what you wanted to learn from this research.
  • print the evaluated entries


Criteria

Logistic:

The revised final draft with the introduction is due in the teaching portfolio on December 10th .

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 gets a clear sense of its content? Likewise do you only highlight important information?
  • an ability to synthesize all four articles (for final submission)
  • an informed understanding and discussion of language arts and related issues
  • appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting