Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.–Rachel Carson
Good morning, good evening. Hope you all have been well since last we met.
Today's classwork focuses on using sources to generate essay ideas and perspectives. There are two basic kinds of sources used in conducting research, primary and secondary. Primary sources are defined as those whose information comes firsthand to the writer or researcher, such as original experiments you conduct, field notes and observations you make, interviews, eyewitness accounts, and works of art or artifacts you examine and evaluate, including photographs and films, sound recordings and historical documents (letters, diaries, records of all sorts, speeches, etc.). Secondary sources are the descriptions, interpretations, and research work and conclusions others have done on a given subject of inquiry, be it a work of art or an artist, natural phenomena such as hurricanes or volcanos, human biology, cancer, etc. News reports, reviews, biographies, encyclopedia articles, among others, fall in this category. Often research projects involve use of both kinds of sources, primary and secondary.
Research is basic to many of our daily activities and decisions. We want to see a movie, a good movie, so we read the reviews of recent releases and make a decision one way or another. We want to buy a new car, computer, whatever, and so we gather information about the products available, learn their relative merits as compared to others in their class, then test run them, try them firsthand before we commit ourselves to a purchase. Your purpose in research is ordinarily defined by your interest in a subject. In college writing, the central goal of research is to develop and show a clear understanding of a particular subject. Perhaps you are asked to explain a problem, and to illustrate measures being taken to address the problem; at last, you find yourself arguing a position or advocating a certain course of action. Having made a thorough review of the most timely, authoritative literature on your subject, you are, presumably, an expert, and in a position to advance a position or claim and to support it with reference to your various sources.
As a class we'll look at a topic of general interest–our life on this planet and our relationship to this planet in an essay called "The Voyagers"–which discusses, in part what it means to be human, our relationships with each other, and our yearning for connection . Your essay assignment involves summary description or definition of a problem, perhaps its causes and/or effects, and the measures being taken to assess and address the problem by those working in the field. Your audience will be your classmates and all those who might justifiably find the subject interesting and important. Look at a number of online sources, including photo sources, if you wish, and draw from these the information to make a considered claim about your chosen subject. You must develop your own slant, as with any original essay work.
Assignment (#7): Summarize in a 350- word essay/response some of the central concerns of Linda Hogan's essay. Include direct quotation of material from the title article, and your own thoughts on some portion of what she writes about. Title the essay.
The opening paragraph may look something like the following, which introduces the text by title and author, and provides a brief summary with one quotation to illustrate:
In Linda Hogan’s essay “The Voyagers,” she reminds us that this planet we call home is unlike any the universe has yet revealed to us, and all the more precious because of that fact. While we dream of other worlds and all the possibilities of space travel, we have yet to take full stock of earth’s treasures. The Interstellar Record, traveling aboard one of the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977, and now sailing the far reaches of space, is one measure of our desire to catalogue and preserve some of the treasures of life on earth, and to share them with others. It contains greetings from people around the world, “the peaceful chirping of frogs and crickets,” “the undeciphered language of whales,” the comforting sound of a heartbeat taking us back to the red house of our mother’s body,” “Blind Willie Johnson’s slide guitar,” and other artifacts of our existence on earth.
Sentence Pattern: Additive or cumulative structure:
The couple reconciled after several years, having realized that their problems and differences were not as great as their desire to be together.
The trunks of the trees were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust that they raised powdered the trees. –Ernest Hemingway
He drove the car carefully, his shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk.
