National University of Singapore

UWC2101H: Writing and Critical Thinking: Power, Space and Pleasure

Paper 3

The remainder of this page covers various issues relating to the assignment:

• Requirements Relating to Topic and Sources
• Paper 3 in Relation to Previous Papers
• Brainstorming Topics, Topic Workshops, and Library Instruction Tutorial
• Presentations of Annotated Bibliographies
• Draft Workshops
• Due Dates
• Cover Letters
• Length

[TOP]

Requirements Relating to Topic and Sources

1. The topic should be related to any aspect of our larger module topic: surveillance; privacy; celebrity; the exercise of power as mediated through architecture or the built environment; the pleasure derived from observation; etc.
2. It should be focused enough on a concrete, particular case for you to be able to do justice to it within the scope of the page/word limit. This case should be textual in nature: a particular story, or a film, or (an episode from) a television show, or an image (postcard, poster, photograph, painting) etc. that you find interesting. If you're interested in a particular topic rather than in a particular text, you could of course work the other way around: move from the topic to a particular text which could then be a case study for investigating the topic. You might be interested, say, in the general topic 'celebrity in contemporary Singapore,' but then you'd need to find a particular text on which to focus your investigation of the topic: a particular celebrity, or a text that reveals something about her celebrity.

Please note this very important requirement: You need to make your primary source available to me before submitting your conference draft as I will need to familiarize myself with it. You need to include the text which gives you your motive, and which is the main focus of your analysis, with the conference draft.

3. As in the case of Papers 1 and/or 2, therefore, you should derive your motive from the primary source (or of course the primary source in relation to another primary source). Please note that you may not select as a primary source a text discussed in the module: instead, you need to find your own primary source.

   It may, however, be possible to treat a text discussed in the module as a primary source if and only if you want to compare and contrast it to a primary source of your own choosing from outside the module.

4. In order to make your argument, you need to draw on at least three secondary sources.

• One of these needs to be a text from the module syllabus: this text will help you set up a conceptual frame for your analysis, i.e. act as a lens.
• You need to find a minimum of two other sources independently: they might amplify or qualify your conceptual frame, but they are more likely to help you with context relating to your primary source.
• Please note that these sources need to be academic in nature. That is, they need to have appeared either in a peer-reviewed academic journal or a book. Online sources are fine, as long as they are intellectually rigorously in nature. As long as this condition is fulfilled, it may be possible for you to use an encyclopædia entry or a book/film review. Clarification: of course you are free to use more secondary sources than these two, and the additional sources may well be non-academic in nature. But the two sources that you need to find in the library do need to conform to the requirement of academic rigour.
• If you choose to write a comparative paper, you must choose as one of the primary sources being compared a text with which we dealt in class, and then relate a primary source of your own choosing to it. Please note that, in this case, you still need to use a minimum of three secondary sources, one of which needs to derive from the module syllabus. So you'd end up using two sources from the module syllabus: one additional primary source, and one secondary source that helps provide you with a conceptual frame.

[TOP]

Paper 3 in Relation to Previous Papers

In Paper 1, your assignment was to read closely a single text that presented you with a problem of understanding (and thus with a motive for writing the paper). You then had to present an argument (as expressed in a clearly defined thesis) that presented evidence drawn from the text itself in order to attempt a resolution of this problem.

Paper 2 built on the work you did for Paper 1. In it, you had to do exactly what you did for Paper 1, with the significant difference that you had to read two texts closely. You here had two options:

• You could write a lens analysis in which you used concepts from a secondary source to help you make sense of the primary source. Here your main focus would have been on the primary text. In the case of a lens paper, you had to use evidence not only from the primary, but also from the secondary source. Since the two texts shared a common frame of reference, the secondary source could act as a lens in that it provided you with concepts, as expressed in keyterms, which you could apply to your reading of the primary source.
• Or you could write a more strictly comparative paper (a 'classic compare and contrast'). Here your focus would have been more evently spread between the two sources, and your job would have been to clarify the relation between them because of a significant ground for comparison. In the case of a comparative paper, you had to place the two sources on a more equal footing than if you had written a lens paper. The problem here pertained to the relation between the two sources. Since, if you placed them 'in conversation' (if you read them together), the secondary source disagreed with the primary source, or suggested a discrepancy within it, by e.g. contradicting, complicating, or extending it, you had grounds for comparing them, and thus a motive for writing a comparative paper.

Paper 3 asks you to do all of this again. The major differences are:

1. In this paper you need to write using multiple sources, rather than one (Paper 1) or two sources only (Paper 2).
2. Secondly, you will need to work more independently than in the past: you have more freedom to choose your own topic, one that interests you, but also more responsibility to find sources and construct the argument with reference to them. But don't worry: Unit 3 is designed to offer you comprehensive support in this endeavour, and you will get ample feedback from me and from your classmates as you move through the process of putting the paper together.

[TOP]

Brainstorming Topics, Topic Workshop, and Library Instruction Tutorial (End of Week 9 and Week 10)

To help you find a topic, we will spend time talking about how to identify an area of interest, and how to move from it to a topic by focusing on a specific case (Friday 16 October). In addition, there will be a research topic workshop in which you brainstorm possible topics, receive feedback on your ideas, and in return offer feedback to other students (Tuesday 20 October).

After the topic workshop you will be visiting the Central Library (Friday 23 October) in order to learn how to find sources; the venue is the Training Room, level 6, Central Library. This workshop will be very important since Paper 3 requires you to find at least two secondary sources on your own own. After the library visit, you will need to find and read at least two sources relating to the topic of your paper. You will be presenting these sources (plus the secondary source you have selected from the syllabus) to the class the week after the library visit (see next section).

[TOP]

Presentations of Annotated Bibliographies (Week 11)

You will need to present an annotated bibliography in which you outline how you plan to use at least THREE secondary sources. You will need briefly to summarize them, mention how they relate to your primary source, and outline how they would work in your argument (conceptually and/or contextually). At the start of the presentation, you must announce your topic: this includes highlighting what your motive is by relating it to your primary source as well as announcing your working thesis. There will be time for discussion after your presentation; this discussion will be important, as here the class will in effect act as your peers and provide you with initial feedback on your plans for using the sources in the paper. These presentations will take place on Tuesday 27 and Friday 30 October. You will sign up for either of these dates during the first class meeting of Unit 3, i.e. on 16 October.

[TOP]

Draft Workshops (Week 12)

One week after your presentation, i.e. on either 3 or 6 November, you will get the opportunity to test your progress in a draft workshop. During this workshop, you will work closely with a peer as she or he provides you with feedback on your work. The workshop will be similar to a peer review, with the significant difference that it will take place face-to-face rather than by email. For this reason, it will be quite similar to a paper conference, but with a classmate. (Of course, you will also meet with me for a paper conference towards the end of Unit 3.) Please note that during the second part of the workshop you may be asked to demonstrate to the class as a whole how your paper is progressing.

[TOP]

Due Dates

• Your first draft is due for conferences around 12 days after the date of your presentation: by Monday 9 November, 9 am (if you presented on Tuesday 27 October), or by Wednesday 11 November, 9 am (if you presented on Friday 30 October). Your conference, following the same principle, will take place approximately 1 week after your draft workshop. Upload your first draft to the IVLE Workbin Conference Drafts folder.
• The final draft is due one week after your conference in my box, level 5, Old Admin Building. Please attach your commented first draft. Please also remember to upload a soft copy of your final draft to the Final Drafts folder of the IVLE Workbin. Hard and soft copies are due on the same day.

[TOP]

Cover Letters

For Paper 1, you were required evaluate your writing by means of self-evaluation forms. In the case of Paper 2, you were asked to write a cover letter in which you evaluated each draft. For your third paper, please do this again. Write the self-evaluation as a single-spaced letter (approximately a half- to one-page long). You need to write a new cover letter for each draft: one for your conference draft, and one for your final draft. Please take note of the following requirements that your cover letter must meet in each case:

1. State your essay's motive and thesis, and then include information concerning what you think are the draft's strengths and weaknesses as well as the problems you had writing it. Think of the letter as your way of telling me, your reader, what I should pay attention to. As you are writing this letter, try to use the common vocabulary provided by Gordon Harvey in "Elements of the Essay" (e.g., thesis, motive, analysis, evidence, keyterms), which we have discussed in class.
2. You need to write a new cover letter for, respectively, the conference and final drafts. Since revising forms such an important part of our work in this module, you need to reflect on your own revisions. In the case of the conference draft you should reflect on how your ideas changed after the presentation of your ideas for Paper 3. In the case of the final draft, reflect on how you revised after the conference.

A final point: you need to submit the cover letter with (i.e., at the same time as) each draft.

[TOP]

Length

• 7-10 pp. (1750-3000 words)

Need more help?

Please feel free to mail me or make an appointment, of course, but also remember that the Writing Centre (Blk Admin, #05-13) is available for consultations on all stages of the writing process. When going to the Writing Centre, make sure that you take along a copy of your assignment (that is, a copy of this page), with other relevant course materials. This is so the person at the Writing Centre can be sure what exactly your instructor is expecting of you in the assignment.

[TOP]