Wednesday, 9 November 2016
My opinion
At first, we have to have aim of this class. Each of the students have done D and P class in last year. It is natural that each teachers have diffrent styles of the classes and do diffrent classes so that we have the diffrent images for this class. If the object of the class is improving academic paper, we have to know what is the academic paper: why are the academic papers written? how do we approach works. what is the literary theory. At least we do not have enough knowledges and ways to analize. I think it is better to teach students examples of analizing books and then we should practice writing acadepic papers!
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7 comments:
The trouble is we don't have all that much time, and really the only way to learn how to write academic papers is by reading other people's professional papers and then practising writing our own. It's like swimming; we watch other people do it and then try to do it ourselves.
By the way, the Writing Workshop isn't designed to follow on from the D&P class. It's supposed to follow on from the Japanese writing class you had in your first year. That's where you should have learned about things like thesis statements and in-text references!
I am waiting for your reply to my comment...
Oh I am so sorry!
Your reply convinced me so that I thought I did not have to reply!
Thank you!
> Your reply convinced me so that I thought I did not have to reply!
Oh! OK. I thought there might still be a problem, since you said you feel you don't have enough knowledge to write an academic paper.
I thought you made quite a good point when you asked:
> why are the academic papers written? how do we approach works. what is the literary theory.
I do actually agree that you will write much better papers if you understand these points, and I think it is useful feedback for me and for the English Literature Department.
The answer I gave to your first question, "Why are academic papers written?" was:
- To show that you know how to research a topic.
- To present the results of the research in the form of a properly-structured argument.
That's what I've mainly been working on in this class.
Your second question is "How do we approach works?" I haven't spent time directly on this point, because I thought it would have been covered in the D&P and Japanese writing classes last year. However, I have tried to guide you through the texts we are discussing and get you to think about them from a variety of points of view. Is there something else you feel we should be doing? Let me know and I will try to help!
Your last question, "What is literary theory?" is a very big one! It is also quite an advanced question. My feeling is that students should get the basic idea of the preparation and structure of writing an academic paper *before* going deeply into literary theory. I think it is something that should come later on, in your third- or fourth-year classes.
Please try to continue this discussion if you can, Shohei, and please, if other people can also add their opinion it will be very useful. I think discussion of these points can help us to understand what we are trying to achieve in this class and how it can connect with your study of literature over the four years of the course.
I did not realize you reply again!
I will check this page more often.
Ok, I understand mostly.
So you think I have already known "How do we approach works". Mainly I was taught how to write works cited but I have no knowledges about how to pay attention to parts of works. Ok. That means I have to supplement the ways! I will read books about it.
> So you think I have already known "How do we approach works".
This is a very interesting topic. I don't know whether you know about this or not, but I thought it is something that would have come into your first-year Japanese writing classes. So I'm sad when you say
> I was taught how to write works cited but I have no knowledge about how to pay attention to parts of works.
I'm not disappointed in you, but I'm disappointed that this very important question hasn't been addressed in other classes. The list of works cited is just a mechanical task and what you are asking is much more important. Unless you have some feeling that it is worthwhile to look at texts in different ways and discuss their implications a list of works cited is of no importance!
I'm wondering, when we studied Vanity Fair in the D&P class last term, did you just not understand why we discussed that book and why we made presentations about it? Perhaps I assumed you understood that we discussed it because it was fun to share our different ideas about it and we made presentations so we could understand the background and situation of the text in more detail.
If you understood that much, then that is enough for now! If you could feel that it's fun to talk about Becky (in Vanity Fair) or Jane (in Jane Eyre) as if they were real people, to talk about their story as if it was a real story, then you have understood something. And if you can see that it is necessary to understand the background - What was society like at that time? How did people think in those days? - then you have understood the most important points. More technical answers to your questions will probably come into your classes next year and in your final year.
Just talking about works of literature the same way as we would talk about people and events in everyday life is an important starting point. We like what Jane said to Mrs. Reed, or we don't like it, we explain our reasons...
And then, pretty quickly, we find it is not so simple. Just as in real life, someone else says, "What about ...?" or "But did you think that maybe ...?"
We find we need to defend our idea, because other people have a different reaction. So we try to find support for our idea. Maybe we easily find support and we continue to feel that our idea was right. That's fine, and we build up our idea. Or maybe we feel we were wrong and change our original idea. Or maybe we get confused and don't know what we think any more.
Well, all of that is useful! It's useful to gain confidence and develop our ideas. It's useful to realize that we had a mistaken idea and change our minds. And it's useful to realize that sometimes there isn't an easy answer and we are not sure what to think (often, these are the areas where it is useful to write an essay, to try and push ourselves to find some kind of answer when we genuinely don't know what we think the answer is).
In some ways, literature and life are very separate, but in other ways they are two sides of the same thing. If you can talk about Jane, and try to understand her, then maybe it will help you to understand the world around you just that little bit better!
And then you have to find logical reasons to support your idea; you have to do some research and see what professional scholars think; you have to present your ideas in a way that will persuade the reader. This is all very good training for the mind! You are picking up all kinds of useful skills by doing this.
As I say, though, the main focus of this class is based on the assumption that you already understand these points! What I'm focusing on is giving you a chance to practise your skills in this area, based on the supposition that you already know *why* you are doing it.
But if that's a wrong supposition it's very useful for me to know about it; it may be a good starting point for future classes to get them thinking, not about *how* we write about literature but *why* we do it.
Thank you for your feedback!
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