Week Four 2/18-2/24

  • Fri 2/18: Intro video lesson is live! How to give useful and positive feedback. Introduction to the 750 word Expanded Definition.

Video Lecture #4_1

This takes you through Thursday Feb 24.

Video Lecture #4_2

All about the Expanded Definition

Assignments and Due Dates

  • Mon 2/21:
    • Perusall: Read and annotate DePeter: “Writing Meaningful Peer Response Praise.” Also do the two Activities that are flagged.
    • Google Drive folder: Pick one summary done by one of your classmates, and leave them the kind of meaningful response you practiced in the dePeter article. Here are some of the types of comments you can make: ones that praise and ones that raise questions for a writer to think about when they revise:
      • I liked this part because…
      • I got this from reading your work as a whole:
      • I found this part interesting because…
      • I got confused here because…
      • I wanted to know more about this because…
  • Thur 2/24:
    • OpenLab: Create a new post where you talk about what you feel you need to do to revise your Summary based on the feedback you got from me and from your classmates.
    • Perusall: Read and annotate “Writing Definitions.”
    • Google Drive folder: Upload a draft of your Introduction and Definitions (sections 1 and 2) for the Expanded Definition assignment to the folder labeled “Expanded Definition.”

How to write the 750-1000 word Expanded Definition

Every field has its jargon – the language that is special and specific to that community. Doctors use medical jargon to communicate with each other… and most non-medical people can’t even begin to understand what they’re talking about! Same with engineering or computing.

For this assignment, decide on a term that is used in your own field, and then dig into the history of the term and how it’s used in different contexts/genres: a professional journal article in your field, a professional journal article in a related field, a popular journal article, a blog, etc. The genre is up to you. The idea is to see how one term can be used or defined differently depending on the audience.  

Then find how different sources and genres use the term. The source/genre is up to you, but think about the audiences you’re addressing in the Project – technical people for your report, low- or no-tech people for your proposal. So switch up the genres of your sources and see what happens when you go from professional journal articles to popular journals/newspapers to blogs and social media.

After that, you get to practice using your term for those two audiences: one sentence for each type of audience.

Finally, talk about what you’ve learned about how different sources/genres use the term, whether the “meaning” changes depending on what genre/audience the source is addressing, and what implications this might have for how your team puts together your Technical Report, website, and presentation.

This must be a minimum of 750 words, but don’t go beyond 1000 words.

Here are the specifics of what goes in this Expanded Definition (the bold words should be used as your subheads except, of course, for the Memo Header Block).

Memo Header Block on top left:

To:

From:

Date:

Subject:

Introduction (100-150 words):

Tell us what term you’re investigating and why you chose that term. Then give us a roadmap for what follows in the rest of this Expanded Definition: what sources did you consult, what different definitions you found, who the different audiences would be.

Definitions (150-200 words):

Define the term as it’s used in your field. Give its etymology and history. Find a different definition of the term from another source. If that source includes etymology and history, give that, too. Compare and contrast those definitions: how they are alike, how they are different, who might use one definition versus another. Quote from each source using APA style.

Contexts (350-400 words): This is really an investigation into how the same term can show up in different genres for different audiences, and how it’s used differently in each context. Pick two sources from different genres where your term is used: for example, an academic journal, a magazine or newspaper article, a blog, social media. Set up this section of your ED like this:

  • Introduction: A sentence or two about what genres you chose to look at and why you chose them.
  • Source #1: Start by saying what your source is. Give the quote where the term is used, and make sure to cite it using APA format. Then discuss what it means in that context and to that audience.
  • Source #2: Start by saying what your source is. Give the quote where the term is used, and make sure to cite it using APA format. Then discuss what it means in that context and to that audience.

Conclusion (200-250 words): Write a few sentences about what you noticed when you did this – how did the two different genres/contexts use the word differently or the same? Do you think the meaning changed? What surprised you?

References: An APA-formatted list of your sources.