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last.updated 1.7.12

Research Blog

Purpose

There are four primary purposes for the blog entry assignment:

• First, to supplement the assigned reading for the course by giving the individual students an opportunity to do research on the topic(s) that you will be focused on for the rest of the course projects. Therefore, it is recommended that you focus your choices around a single, relatively narrow topic
• Second, this is a writing in the disciplines exercise in which you will be given some generic expectations and parameters to follow. By following these guidelines you are practicing the production of scholarship within the discourse community of second language writing
• Third, this is a writing to learn exercise in which the process of writing up the blog entry helps you understand the content and how to articulate this understanding to the discourse community. The instructor's feedback will help you with this goal
• Fourth, because your entries will be made public to scholars within the field of second language writing, you will have the opportunity to practice interacting with the discourse community. Not only are you providing a resource for yourself and your peers, but you are providing one for scholars and other neophytes in the field

Instructions–Initial Entry

For the initial blog, you will in 200-300 words introduce yourself to your audience. You will include...

• your name
• your status & emphasis
• your experience with multilingualism (as a speaker and/or instructor) and/or writing instruction
• the issues of second language writing that interest you

This entry will only be graded completion and not for content.

Instructions–Choosing Articles

For each entry, you will want to find one academic, refereed article or chapter about a L2 writing-related topic that you plan to be the focus of your course projects. Thus you will find a total of five articles (not five per week). These texts...

• should be based upon issues that you are interested in learning more about
• should be based upon ideas that you want to both support and refute
• cannot be text assigned for the class
• cannot be texts your peers have already discussed in a Blog Entry for this class

Refereed scholarship has been judged worthy of publication by other experts in fields related to L2 writing. Consult the resource page for a list of L2 writing-related journals; additionally consult various edited collections.

Other 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

This list, of course, is not exhaustive. If you have any questions whether an article or chapter qualifies, consult the instructor. Entries for texts that do not qualify will not get credit.

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

Instructions-Writing

For each blog 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 300-500 word review of one 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 or scholars in the field? 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. Also do not feel confined to just words to make your point, you can appropriately use elements, such as links, sound, images, and video to enhance your entries.

After you compose your first entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message. Because of the list below you do not need to submit subsequent messages; you just need to have your entry posted by the beginning of class.

Instructions-State of the Field Entry

After you establish a blog presence for this class with the initial entry, the instructor will send a message to the L2 writing listserv (slw_cccc) with the URL of your blogs in the message and an invitation to follow your posts throughout the course of the semester. These scholars and practitioners will be invited to comment on your blog entries, and you are encouraged to politely engage respond to their engagement.

Likewise, you are encouraged to follow your peers' entries and comment on them. The fourth reason for the blogs is to create a resource that all of the students in this class can use. Therefore you are encouraged to take advantage of the application's affordances by reading your peers' entries and using the comment feature to engage them in discussion.

At the end of the blog assignment, you will be required to respond to the pool of resources that you and your peers have developed. Since this pool of resources arguably represents a cross-section of the field, at the very least at the local level, use it to discuss the issues that emerging scholars and practitioners are interested in, and how your inquiry fits into to this state of field.

In 1000-1250 words, write a blog entry that...

• based upon your peers' entries argues what the state of the field is
• supports this argument with evidence from your peers' entries
• explains, based upon the course readings, why this might be the the field's interests
• argues how your inquiry either converses with the current conversations in the field or can lead the conversation in a more productive direction

[Note that this will all be helpful for thinking through both the Literature Review and the Demonstation of Application]

Blogs as Class Resource

The following is a list of the each students' blog site:

Criteria

Logistic:

• between 300-500 words per entry; this is an exercise in writing brief, yet detailed texts
• single spaced

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

  • January 18, 2012 (Initial Entry)
  • February 25, 2012
  • February 8, 2012
  • February 15 , 2012
  • February 22, 2012
  • February 29, 2012

After you compose your entry send an email to the instructor directing him to your post by placing the URL in the body of a message.

• The Research Blog assignment will cumulatively be worth 50 points. All students will start with 50 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

  Logistics for State of the Field entry:

  • 100-12500 w0rds
  • single-spaced
  • posted to your blog by the beginning of class on March 14, 2012
  • 50 points

In addition to the general evaluation criteria, for all parts of the assignment, 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?
• a professional persona and an understanding of the discourse community
• appropriate use of conventions, including MLA or APA citation formatting