GUIDELINES FOR PROJECT #2:
WRITING A CAUSAL ARGUMENT & OFFERING A SOLUTION
EN 102 / FALL 2019
ASSIGNMENT PURPOSE:
In your first essay you analyzed a work of literature, focusing on how a text does something. For this next assignment, you will not be
analyzing a literary text; instead, you will craft an argument that demonstrates your comprehension of and engagement with the two
scholarly articles by Rebecca Moore Howard we have discussed in Unit 2.
But, this assignment invites you to draw on your expertise as students as well! Your experiences with and observations of student
writing will be combined with ideas in scholarly articles to craft your essay!
Speaking generally, this Project #2 asks you to:
-
In your introduction, prove that the problem of plagiarism in schools exists and end with a thesis statement that argues the
causes of this problem;
In the body of your essay, argue and offer evidence that there are between 3 and 4 causes of this problem; offer this evidence
in the form of paraphrase to demonstrate your comprehension of scholarly articles;
Conclude by “moving beyond” your thesis: offer a logical solution to the problem.
Importantly, you must engage with both articles by Howard to support your argument.
ASSIGNMENT SPECIFICS:
This essay should be between 5 and 8 paragraphs long; it should be typed and double-spaced in 12-point, Times New Roman
font; it should include in-text citations and a Works Cited page following MLA format; and the essay should follow my Format
for Written Work (see back).
In each body paragraph, I expect you to INTRODUCE or “SET UP,” SMOOTHLY INTEGRATE, CITE, and COMMENT
on EVIDENCE from 2 texts from Unit 2.
You should prioritize paraphrase over quotation to provide examples in your body sections; importantly, you should also
incorporate examples from your personal experience as a student writer in the body of this essay. You must cite ALL
paraphrases.
Finally, aim to incorporate language and sentence structures that are appropriate for a college-level audience.
POINTS POSSIBLE: weighted at 15% of the overall grade
DUE DATE(S):
Thursday, 10/10
Due: Thesis / Beginning of Outline for Project #2
Tuesday, 10/15
MONDAY SCHEDULE ACROSS CAMPUS—Due: Draft of Project #2 (bring at least four welldeveloped paragraphs to class)
Wednesday 10/16 Friday, 10/18
Project #2 Conferences (bring complete typed draft with you; hard copy preferred)
Monday, 10/21
Due: “Publishable” Essay for Project #2 (upload your final copy to Canvas before midnight tonight)
Your Last Name 1
Your First and Last Name
Due Date
EN 102-C / Gaffey
Project #2
Unique, Engaging Title
Introduction: Must Include a Hook, Description of Problem, and Thesis
The introduction of your essay should “hook” your readers, introduce your reader to the identified problem, and provide
evidence that the problem actually exists. The introduction should end with a thesis statement that provides a “roadmap” for
your paper: it should identify the causes of the problem and propose a solution.
Sample Thesis:
Intro….But why do so many instructors offer insufficient feedback on student papers? This problem likely stems from
large class sizes, an over-reliance on adjunct faculty, and too many writing assignments in composition classes.
The simplest initial step to solving this problem would be to only require three major essay assignments each
semester, which would improve instructor feedback and, by extension, increase student reflection and learning.
Body Section 1: Cause #1 of this Problem: Large Class Sizes
1-2 Paras: Evidence from text #1, and/or text #2, and/or my own personal experience to show that this is a cause of the problem
Body Section 2: Cause #2 of this Problem: Over-Reliance on Adjunct Faculty
1-2 Paras: Evidence from text #1, and/or text #2, and/or my own personal experience to show that this is a cause of the problem
Body Section 3: Cause #3 of this Problem: Too Many Writing Assignments
1-2 Paras: Evidence from text #1, and/or text #2, and/or my own personal experience to show that this is a cause of the problem
Conclusion: Offer Solution(s) to this Problem
The conclusion of my essay would move beyond the problem and causes to propose a solution. As noted in the thesis, I would
discuss how lessening the number of formal writing assignments would improve instructor feedback and, by extension, student
learning.
Works Cited (complete the citations below)
Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Forget About Policing Plagiarism. Just Teach.”
- - - . “Plagiarism Pentimento.”
SAMPLE THESIS TEMPLATES FOR PROJECT #2
EN 102 / FALL 2019
1. But why do so many students struggle with _____________________________?
This problem likely stems from
_____________________________, _____________________________, _____________________________, and
_____________________________.
The
simplest
initial
step
to
solving
this
problem
would
be
to
_____________________________.
2. Howard
rightly
points
out
the
problem
of
_______________________________.
I
agree
that
_______________________________ and _______________________________ cause this problem, but she overlooks
_______________________________ and _______________________________ as a causes of this problem as well.
The simplest initial step to solving this problem would be to _____________________________.
3. While I agree with Howard that _______________________________ and _______________________________
contribute
to
the
problem
of
_______________________________,
_______________________________ and _______________________________.
she
overlooks
The simplest initial step to solving
this problem would be to _____________________________.
4. Although I agree with Howard that _____________________________ and _____________________________
contribute to the problem of _______________________________, I do not accept her overall conclusion that
_______________________________. Instead, _________________________________________________________.
Forget About Policing Plagiarism. Just Teach.
REBECCA MOORE HOWARD.The Chronicle of Higher Education; (Nov 16, 2001): B24.
If you are a professor in the United States and you have a pulse, you have heard about the problems of
Internet plagiarism. Exactly what you have heard may vary, depending on what you have read, whom you have
been listening to, and how you have been filtering the information or opinions that you have encountered. But
everyone is worried about it -- and for good reason.
Students can gain easy online access to an astonishing array of ready-made term papers, and for a fee, they
can get custom-written papers within 48 hours from online sites. Send in the assignment and a credit-card
number, download the attachment when the finished paper comes back two days later, print it out, and presto!
Assignment completed. Fifteen-page paper on Plato's attitudes toward Homer? No problem.
Professors cannot always spot plagiarism, especially if a student gets a paper from a closed, subscribers-only
Web site or hires an online ghostwriter. But often, they manage a digitized gotcha. No longer do they need to
spend arduous days in the library, searching for the sources of a suspect paper. In faculty lounges, professors
brag to each other about the speed and ease with which they located downloaded papers.
Actually, a whole gotcha industry has sprung up.
Turnitin.com, Plagiarism.org -- each week brings news of another Web site that will help catch the miscreants.
Never mind that some of the sites fail to distinguish between quoting and unattributed copying; never mind that
they blur the distinctions between omitting quotation marks and downloading an entire paper; never mind that
some require the professor to violate students' intellectual-property rights by contributing students' papers to
the program's database.
What drives all the new sites and the professors' anxiety is the concern that ethics, integrity, and honesty are
flying out the window on digitized wings. That is a legitimate concern to which we must collectively attend.
But professors should also be worried about even more compelling issues. In our stampede to fight what The
New York Times calls a "plague" of plagiarism, we risk becoming the enemies rather than the mentors of our
students; we are replacing the student-teacher relationship with the criminal-police relationship. Further, by
thinking of plagiarism as a unitary act rather than a collection of disparate activities, we risk categorizing all of
our students as criminals. Worst of all, we risk not recognizing that our own pedagogy needs reform. Big
reform.
I use the word "stampede" deliberately. We are in danger of mass hysteria on the plagiarism issue, hysteria
that simplifies categories and reduces multiple choices to binaries. It appears that the Internet is making
cheating easier; hence, it appears that the Internet is encouraging bad morals; hence, it appears that morality
is in precipitous decline. And there we are at the ramparts, trying to hold back the attack. We see ourselves in
a state of siege, holding the line against the enemy.
All those who worked to get advanced academic degrees in order to police young adults, please raise your
hands. No hands? Then let's calm down and get back to the business of teaching.
We like the word "plagiarism" because it seems simple and straightforward: Plagiarism is representing the
words of another as one's own, our college policies say, and we tell ourselves, "There! It's clear. Students are
responsible for reading those policies and observing their guidelines."
Then, when a "plague" of plagiarism comes along and we believe academic integrity itself is under attack,
things get even simpler. Encouraged by digital dualisms, we forget that plagiarism means many different
things: downloading a term paper, failing to give proper credit to the source of an idea, copying extensive
passages without attribution, inserting someone else's phrases or sentences -- perhaps with small changes -into your own prose, and forgetting to supply a set of quotation marks.
If we ignore those distinctions, we fail to see that most of us have violated the plagiarism injunctions in one way
or another, large or small, intentionally or inadvertently, at one time or another. The distinctions are just not that
crisp. We have to pull back from the mass hysteria and remember that the P-word covers a wide variety of
behaviors, circumstances, and motivations. Accidentally omitting a set of quotation marks is not the same as
submitting a downloaded paper.
Now, a downloaded paper is something that no professor should tolerate. It has to be punished. We assign
papers so that our students will learn from the experience of writing them; if they do not write them, they do not
learn. We have to protect education; we have to demand that our students learn. But even as we're catching
and punishing plagiarists in our classes, we have to ask ourselves why they are plagiarizing. Some of the
possible answers to that question are not very appealing. But just as we cannot ignore students' plagiarism, we
cannot ignore these possibilities, either:
* It is possible that students are cheating because they don't value the opportunity of learning in our classes.
Some of that is cultural, of course. Today's students are likely to change jobs many times before they retire, so
they must earn credentials for an array of job possibilities, rather than immersing themselves in a focused,
unchanging area of expertise. The fact that many of them are working long hours at outside jobs only
exacerbates the problem.
* It is possible that our pedagogy has not adjusted to contemporary circumstances as readily as have our
students. Rather than assigning tasks that have meaning, we may be assuming that students will find meaning
in performing assigned tasks. How else can one explain giving the same paper assignment semester after
semester to a lecture class of 100 students? Such assignments expect that students will gain something from
the act of writing, but they do not respond to the needs and interests of the students in a particular section of
the class. They are, in that sense, inauthentic assignments.
We expect authentic writing from our students, yet we do not write authentic assignments for them. We beg our
students to cheat if we assign a major paper and then have no further involvement with the project until the
students turn in their work. Assigning and grading a paper leaves out a crucial middle: working and talking with
students while they draft those papers. You're too busy? Then what about dividing your students into small
groups that you, a teaching assistant, or a tutor can meet with, or that can respond to their members' work
before the papers reach you?
We deprive our students of an authentic audience if we assign papers that are due at the end of the term and
that the students never see again. We deprive them of an interested audience if we scrawl a grade and "good
work" on a paper -- and nothing else. We deprive them of a respectful audience if we tear apart the style,
grammar, and mechanics of their papers, marking every error and accusing them of illiteracy for their split
infinitives, without ever talking with them about what they were trying to accomplish, how they might achieve
their goals, and why all the style, grammar, and mechanics matter anyhow.
I raise those possibilities for myself as well as for my colleagues. I have not only witnessed those practices; I
have engaged in them. They are, in fact, temptations to which we regularly succumb, just as our students may
succumb to the temptation to plagiarize.
Do professors' shortcomings excuse students' textual transgressions? No. But they do demand that we
recognize and reform pedagogy that encourages plagiarism because it discourages learning. We have to be
ethical, too.
So do our institutions. If professors' working conditions are such that they cannot give, work with students on,
and respond to authentic writing assignments, then the working conditions need to change -- whether that
means cutting class size, reducing teaching load, or placing more emphasis on teaching in decisions about
hiring and promotion. Writing is an invaluable means of learning. Professors must demand that their students
do the writing that they are submitting as their own; professors must assign essays that foster learning; and
institutions must ensure that their professors' working conditions make good teaching possible.
Rebecca Moore Howard is an associate professor of writing and rhetoric, and director of the writing program, at Syracuse University.
Name: ___________________________________________________
Due: Read and annotate this text before ________.
This academic article was published in 1992 in the Journal of Teaching and Writing, volume 11, number 2.
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