Assignment Sheet: Annotated Bibliography

Artist Profile Annotated Bibliography Instructions

You’ll be working for the rest of the semester to write an artist profile—an essay focusing on the musical artist of your choice that combines source material with your original thinking to discuss the artist’s life, art, ideas, and public persons with the goal of talking about other important issues or themes in the process. I’ll be giving you the full assignment sheet for the essay itself when the time comes, but we’ll begin by amassing your sources and creating an annotated bibliography.

Your annotated bibliography will amass your five sources for this artist profile, and present each source with proper MLA formatting and short paragraphs summarizing the source and discussing what it contributes to your larger project.

You will begin the bibliography with a ~100 word introduction explaining the project and its themes and goals. You will follow with an entry for each source.

Each entry will follow this format:

·      MLA Citation

·      Summary/Precis of ~100 words

·      ~ Source discussion of ~100 words

·      Set of five keywords from the source

We will follow the Purdue OWL guidelines for MLA-style bibliographies—you can find sample documents there, and we will review the basics in class.

You should amass the following sources for your AB:

·      A scholarly article (I will provide this)

·      An interview with your artist

·      A biographical source about your artist OTHER THAN an encyclopedia or Wikipedia.

·      An image of your artist

·      One of your artist’s social media (or equivalent) accounts

You should also prepare a playlist of five of your artist’s songs or videos. You do not need to do an AB entry for the songs, but you should provide the playlist, with a proper MLA-style entry for each song, at the end of the AB.

The challenge of this project is the push BEYOND the summary of your source and into real original thinking about how your source serves your project. This is the beginning of your CONVERSATION with your sources!

Basics:

·      MLA-style Annotated Biography

·      ~250 words per entry with breakdown described above for each entry

·      Third person (you’ll have the chance to use the first person in the actual essay!)

·      Carefully proofread

Go team!

In-Class Reading: "The House that Hova Built"

Hi, friends!

Next week we'll be reading "The House that Hova Built", by Zadie Smith. Feel free to preview it over the weekend!

Anna

Structural Revision Redux

Structure is the order in which you present your ideas, and the relationship you build between them.

Here's the structural revision process we'll be following in 102:

1. Write a precis of your current draft, trying to look at it with "fresh eyes". Make sure to write your precis of the draft as it IS, not as you WANT IT TO BE.

2. Write a one-sentence summary of each paragraph or chunk of the essay.

3. The above is your reverse outline. Review it, and ask yourself:

• What's missing?
• What can you cut out?
• Is this the best order for your ideas? Should you rearrange the paragraphs in any way?

4. Identify the five most important words in your essay. Write them down in your notes. These are your keywords!

5. Compare you paragraphs, one at a time, to the paragraph sandwich model. For each paragraph, ask yourself:

• What's missing?
• What can you cut out?
• Is this the best order for the paragraph?

6. Try to DOUBLE the number of times you are using your keywords in the paper. Pay special attention to weaving the keywords into the beginnings and ends of paragraphs.

Use your notes from steps 1-6 as a structural revision checklist. Make the changes you've identified one at a time, checking them off as you go. Boom! New draft.

Paragraph Sandwich

As we discussed in class, here are the four essential ingredients of a delicious paragraph:

Topic Sentence (The Bread!)

Introduces the main idea of the paragraph.

Example (The Cheese!)

Illustrates that idea through facts, figures, stories, etc.

Discussion (The Meat!)

Explains the thinking behind the topic sentence and example. Gives the reader insight into the writer’s logic.

Analysis (The Bottom Slice Of bread!)

Connects the main idea of the paragraph back to the paper’s thesis.

Short Paper #2

Prof. Anna Carson DeWitt

Eng 102

Guilford College

Short Paper #2: A Closer Listening

For your second short paper, please DESCRIBE the song of your choice using THREE of the “elements of music” that we discussed in class. Then, end with a conclusion that discusses the overall listening experience that these elements create. How does the song effect the listener? Why does that matter?

 The challenge: write in the THIRD PERSON the whole time.

This is a lot of work to do in 750 words, so your writing should be succinct, a ndshould help the reader imagine a listening experience that combines immediate apprehension and synoptic comprehension.

Other important stuff:

-Strong sense structure (order and connection)

-750 words

-Carefully proofread

-APA formatted (no abstract necessary)