Umuc effective writing center

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September 28, 2014

Dear Lisa,

Congratulations on your progress in writing this assignment for HUMN 344! You provide important information in your annotations.

My name is Amy, and it’s my pleasure to work with you today. Please click here to listen to a personal message from me. I am excited to help you with your assignment and hopefully with your overall writing skills. (

You are welcome to come to the Effective Writing Center for help at any stage in the writing process, whether you are having trouble understanding an assignment or want feedback on a rough draft. At the EWC we are attentive readers who help you improve as a writer by explaining and modeling effective writing skills. For a more detailed discussion of our services, please visit the Effective Writing Center web site.

If you would like access to more writing support, please consider joining WRIT 001, a WebTycho classroom with additional resources, tutorials, self-assessments, and the opportunity to interact with writing experts and peers. Just email your WebTycho username to writingcenter@umuc.edu. In addition, Effective Writing Center also offers live, one-on-one online advising via teleconference.

Resources to help you revise your writing assignment are hyperlinked within this letter and in the More Resources section at the end. Before reading this advice, please review the writing that you submitted and have a copy handy.

Although we will cover revisions and rules, your professor’s instructions always take precedence over any advice you receive from the EWC. If you have any questions, refer to your assignment guidelines first and don’t hesitate to ask your professor to clarify any unanswered questions.

As we work on your draft, I will show your writing in purple and my revisions in green.

Our goal is to ensure that your paper meets your professor’s assignment requirements as closely as possible. Thank you for submitting the assignment requirements. Below is a table with an overview of your assignment, what you have completed, and what you need to fulfill the requirements.

Assignment Requirement

You Have

You Need

Submit an outline of your paper that includes the headings and an overview of the major areas of discussion/content.

You submitted headings and descriptions.

Do you need to follow a more typical outline format? If so, make sure you do that.

Include an annotated bibliography with your list of sources. Remember you need at least five resources.

You provided annotations for five sources. Great!

Format these so that they meet APA guidelines. You will greatly improve this section by formatting it correctly. Make sure you call this an "Annotated Bibliography" instead of a literature review.

APA formatting.

Some APA formatting.

Follow APA and your professor’s formatting guidelines.

You are asked to submit an outline of your paper that includes the headings and an overview of the major areas of discussion/content. You currently list five headings and provide summaries for each heading. A typical outline look something like this:

I. Introduction

A. Fact that grabs audience attention

B. Background/history of topic

C. Thesis statement

II. Supporting paragraph

A. Topic/claim sentence: make a claim that explains the paragraph is about

B. Evidence that supports/explains the claim (this is often research from secondary sources)

C. Analysis that explains how the evidence support your claim and why this matters to the paper’s thesis statement

III. Supporting paragraph

A. Topic/claim sentence

B. Evidence

C. Analysis

IV. Supporting paragraph

A. Topic/claim sentence

B. Evidence

C. Analysis

V. Conclusion

A. Restate the thesis

B. Summarize the main points

C. What’s the future of the topic?

I am a little confused by your instructions. Your summaries for each heading look good (look for small errors, such as missing quotation marks under 1.1). You provided brief descriptions of what you will include in the paper. I’m wondering if you need to follow a typical outline format.

Your instructions state the following: “Provides a complete outline of the paper that contains all of the relevant headings and overviews of discussions/content; goes down at least 2 levels.”

If you are required to provide a more typical outline, then refer to UMUC’s Prewriting and Outlining Your Essays and skip to the “outlining your paper” section to help you with this process.

Next, you are asked to include an annotated bibliography with your list of sources. You need at least five sources. You have titled this section “Literature review,” but you should call it “Annotated Bibliography” instead.

You include five annotations. Your instructions state the following: “Provides a thorough review of all the identified sources and a thoughtful analysis of how those sources will be used in the paper.” Make sure you explain how all of the sources will be used in your paper.

The main suggestion I have is to format your annotated bibliography so that it meets APA guidelines. This will greatly improve this section of your assignment. We’ll discuss formatting in the next section of this letter.

Your assignment requirement is to use APA style formatting. Be sure to always follow any specific formatting instructions your professor provides you. Here at the EWC, we have two important tools that can help you with APA style. They include:

· intro to APA - a brief guide to using APA style formatting

· basic APA manuscript style – step-by-step formatting instructions

It’s important that you format the annotated bibliography correctly. First, you need to format the source information. All lines after the first line of each entry in your reference list should be indented one-half inch from the left margin. This is called hanging indentation. Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the first author of each work.

Here are examples of a website, book, and periodical:

American Heart Association. (2009). Learn you levels. Retrieved from http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=513

Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Wooldridge, M. B., & Shapka, J. (2012). Playing with technology: Mother-toddler interaction scores lower during play with electronic toys. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 33(5), 211-218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2012.05.005

You should then follow the source information with your summaries/evaluations. Here is an example that I took from Purdue OWL: Annotated Bibliographies.

Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting by in America. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

In this book of nonfiction based on the journalist's experiential research, Ehrenreich attempts to ascertain whether it is currently possible for an individual to live on a minimum-wage in America. Taking jobs as a waitress, a maid in a cleaning service, and a Walmart sales employee, the author summarizes and reflects on her work, her relationships with fellow workers, and her financial struggles in each situation. An experienced journalist, Ehrenreich is aware of the limitations of her experiment and the ethical implications of her experiential research tactics and reflects on these issues in the text. The author is forthcoming about her methods and supplements her experiences with scholarly research on her places of employment, the economy, and the rising cost of living in America. Ehrenreich’s project is timely, descriptive, and well-researched.

You included a bibliography at the end of the paper. This is typically titled “References” in APA papers. Usually these aren’t required with annotated bibliographies because you already provided this information. However, if it is required for this assignment, be sure to include it and follow APA guidelines. Refer to Purdue’s reference list to make sure you follow APA guidelines.

Many times professors have a hybrid set of rules that I cannot see. I strongly suggest checking your professor’s instructions and using these links and videos to check your work for accuracy. As you continue to format your paper, refer to an APA annotated bibliography samples.

Overall your sentences look good. The only suggestion I have is to look for small errors. For example, the wording of these two sentences is a little awkward. Read through your paper out loud and make small changes to improve the wording.

The reason for the creation was for humankind to toil and enjoy from the sweat, referred as slavery of mankind to work.

In this source, the author looks at what challenges that humankind face in the future.

Proofreading your paper is an important component of the writing process. Reading your paper out loud is particularly helpful for many things, including sentence clarity, grammar, punctuation, and tone. It is also helpful to have another person read over your paper to check for proofreading errors. A little extra time editing and proofreading your paper will help you to catch mistakes and polish your paper. Refer to the EWC’s proofreading checklist.

For more specific help with grammar, please go to the grammar help page.

Lisa, it was a pleasure to work with you on your assignment. ( Good luck! As you continue your work on this assignment, be sure to:

1. Make sure you follow your instructions about the outline. If you need to organize it so that it follows a traditional outline format, be sure to do so.

2. Make sure each annotation includes an analysis of how the source will be used in your paper.

3. Follow APA and your professor’s formatting guidelines. Pay attention to the format of the annotations and references section. Refer to the samples and links I provided.

4. Proofread your paper.

Writing Advisor:

Amy

The Effective Writing Center

www.umuc.edu/ewc

University of Maryland University College

3501 University Boulevard East, Adelphi, Maryland 20783

UMUC Effective Writing Center

www.umuc.edu/ewc

EWC Live Advising

http://polaris.umuc.edu/ewc/web/live_advising.html

UNC Writing Center

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos

Purdue Online Writing Lab

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/sitemap/

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Writing Advice�

Effective Writing Center

UMUC

Please note

Advisors may not be experts in the topic your paper covers.�

Advisors will not make any judgment about the grade your paper may receive.�

Advisors do no copyedit papers. Sections of your paper will be used to model the editing you should do.�

Advisors know only as much about the assignment as you share. Please provide an assignment description in the submission form.

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