English 102
jlnastal@uwm.edu
Bio
I am a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric & Composition program at UWM and hold Master's degrees in English Literary & Cultural Studies from Saint Louis University and the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. I've taught a number of Composition and Intensive English courses in Spain and Milwaukee.
Some of my research interests include composition pedagogy, second language writing, writing assessment, agency, globalization and translingual writing, effects of war on writing and rhetoric, and the intersection of politics and popular media.
On a personal level, I love traveling, cooking, reading, live music, and the Chicago Bears.
Please click here for my CV.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This is an outline for a presentation I’m giving at a national conference in a few weeks. I thought sharing it might be helpful for you to see how I arrange my ideas in a way that begins to answer a research question. As you can see, I’ve organized it based on IDEAS, not SOURCES. Let me know if you have questions.
Please review these instructions V E R Y C A R E F U L L Y. Let me know if you have questions. Submit your assignment in your dropbox folder by 8 am on Tuesday. If you do not fulfill the requirements, or submit the assignment late, it will negatively affect your grade.
If you run into trouble, let me know as soon as possible — not on Monday evening.
Please RE-WRITE or revise your Annotations #1 (ONE peer reviewed article) and #2 (ONE article from a popular source). Make sure you have answered each of the required parts. Submit your annotations before class on Thursday.
If you have questions about developing your research questions, read the text “From Topics to Questions” and email/meet with me. If you have questions about analyzing your sources, read “How to Read Like a Writer” and email/meet with me. I also recommend going to the Writing Center for any of the research/reading/writing/revising/reflecting process.
Essentially, you need to:
1. Provide a citation
2. Provide the rhetorical situation (REQUIRED). State the purpose, context, and audience, as well as any important strategies you see the author(s) use. Provide a little more information about that rhetorical situation by answering whichever of the questions listed you can.
3. Summarize the text in two parts: A. a brief explanation in your own words of the text as a whole and B. an explanation of how the text specifically relates to your project.
4. Analyze the text. This is the most important part of your assignment. Try to provide me with a deeper understanding than I could get if I read the text on my own. What do you think is important, interesting, confusing, wrong, etc. and why? Be critical. You are NOT using these texts for background information. You are using them to think about your project in a new way. Evaluate your sources. What biases do they show? What arguments do you have? What have they explained well? How do your different sources talk about the same ideas? The questions I’ve listed are not comprehensive — they are meant to get you started thinking about the different ways to interpret and analyze a text.
5. Think about where you want to go from here, and explain that to me. What new ideas do you have? What questions are still not answered? What sources sound interesting in this text? How do you plan to use the ideas you’ve considered in the future?
Upload your second annotation in your dropbox folder before 6am on Tuesday 2/21. That way, it will be waiting for me when I wake up so I can bring in samples to class.
Annotation #2 is the same as #1 except I want you to find popular sources. These are sources like newspapers, magazines, news stations or websites, etc.
Remember: you must complete each separate part of the assignment. If you do not, it will be incomplete and you will need to re-do it.
PLEASE NOTE: this is NOT an essay!
As always, let me know if you have questions. You can also look at the sample text page for an annotation example with my comments from the fall.
This article is not required reading for our class. I do think it can be helpful as you begin your first annotation. Mike Bunn provides his suggestions for how to read a text for its style and techniques instead of just reading for information.
Once you find an interesting peer-reviewed journal for your homework, I think reading this and trying to follow his guidelines might help you write an even stronger annotation!
Please remember your conferences are being held next week in the EAST WING of the library. You’ll need to submit your annotation before the conference in your dropbox folder so I can read it before we meet.
You’ll need to bring your ideas for research questions, problems/questions you have, and anything else you want to talk about. You’re in charge of our discussion!
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A note on dropbox:
You do not need to download the software (you might want to; it’s pretty wonderful). Here’s how to upload your submissions:
- click on your personal folder
- click on the “upload” button
- click on “choose files” to find the file you want to submit
- click on “start upload”
Click here for a map of where we’ll meet (in Room A). Office hours will be held in the Grind on Thursday.
For homework, please draft some research questions and take notes on why you care about/are interested in the question. Keep in mind the following ideas:
- Choose a question that is interesting and that other people care about
- Try to create a question that has many possible answers, not just “yes” or “no”
- Consider questions about “why,” “how,” or an impact/affect on society
- CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU CARE ABOUT!
This speech describes some of my favorite writing suggestions.
