Aoyama Gakuin - IE3 Writing - Elvin

Dear students, Today you will do a mini exercise on in-text citations (parenthetical references). Below is a concise and lucid description of such referencing. http://library.williams.edu/citing/styles/mla.php After this exercise, you may carry on with your draft writing. Kind regards, Chris Elvin

Dear students, Transitions link sentences or paragraphs to each other. Here is a useful list: https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/transw.html Kind regards, Chris Elvin

Dear students, You are now probably about to start your first draft. If you are, I have just one suggestion: Write each paragraph on a separate piece of paper. In this way, you will be able to edit more easily later, and your organization will be clear. Kind regards, Chris Elvin

Dear students, Homework D is to write six in-text citations from different media sources in MLA style and to compile a bibliography of these six citations in your works cited. The emphasis on this assignment is to attempt citation from a variety of different sources (for example, book, magazine, newspaper, website). For maximum points, you should include at least five different types of media sources. You may also wish to check your bibliography by using an automatic generator, such as the ones below. http://citationmachine.net/index2.php?reqstyleid=1&newstyle=1&stylebox=1 http://www.bibme.org You can see a few bibliography examples in the file below. http://www.eflclub.com/aogaku/MLA.pdf Kind regards, Chris Elvin

Dear students, Today many of you found it difficult to be entirely original. Please do not despair. There are various ways around this thorny issue. In some respects, an original compilation of other people's ideas could be considered original if it is cleverly done. Alternatively, you may write in the spirit of originality even if your topic may have been covered before. Most of the examples in the textbook you have are not really original, if any, so perhaps I was pushing you too much today. Your outlines are coming along and you should be pleased with what you have done so far. If you persevere, I am sure you will do well. Kind regards, Chris Elvin

Dear students, I want to make sure that you understand what academic writing is. The purpose of academic writing is the presentation of NEW knowledge by reviewing what is already known about a specific topic. You should include an opinion, but your opinion should not be personal; rather it should be a logical conclusion after presenting your evidence to support your thesis. Academic writing is written for scholars by scholars, with all university writers being scholars in this context. Therefore, please make sure that you can justify your topic choice and thesis on the basis that you are presenting information in a new way that would be of interest to fellow scholars. This is very hard, I know. The actual writing is probably the least you have to worry about! Kind regards, Chris Elvin

Dear students, There is some confusion about homework assignments C and D. I am sorry about that. Homework C has a focus on using works written (or spoken) by others in your own essay assignment. There are four basic ways that you can do this: summary, paraphrase, direct and indirect quotation. Summary: A summary is much shorter in the original. I should include only the main points. You should attribute your summary to the original source both in-text and in your works cited. Paraphrase: A paraphrase should be slightly shorter than the original in word count. Again, you should attribute the original source within your text, and in your works cited. Direct quotation: You should use quotation marks, and the quotation should be word for word. You should attribute the source within your work, and also at the end of your essay in your works cited. Use direct quotations when the original quote is impressive, and would be inferior if paraphrased. Indirect quote: Use indirect