Analyze, interpret, and evaluate a variety of texts for ethical and logical uses of evidence. ? Write in a style that clearly communicates meaning, builds credibility, and inspires belief or action. ? A

Posted: February 25th, 2022

Learning Outcomes: ? Analyze, interpret, and evaluate a variety of texts for ethical and logical uses of evidence. ? Write in a style that clearly communicates meaning, builds credibility, and inspires belief or action. ? Apply the conventions of style manuals for specific academic disciplines (e.g. APA, CMS, MLA, etc.). Conference Review Date: See Course Schedule Objective: The objective of this writing assignment is to revisit and promote the act of summary and basic comprehension of literary criticism over the play. Students will be required to gather a body of data that comments on a chosen theme of Othello. The assignment will help students review/acquire proper MLA conventions vital to their research essay. In addition to summary, students will be required to provide an evaluation/assessment portion where they will “think beyond the text,” deriving meaning from and making connections with the text. For the summary paragraph: a) Students will utilize author lead ins/signal phrases b) Students will familiarize themselves with specific active verbs as they gain understanding of how to utilize familiar language to balance and convey the ideas of the text. For the assessment/evaluation paragraph: a) Students will be asked to deduce meaning and draw conclusions from the text to provide “thinking beyond the text” or some analysis of ideas. Directions: Visit the Angelina College databases to gather a MINIMUM OF FOUR to FIVE academic literary articles that comment on ONE of the themes or major ideas found in Othello. First, you will provide the reader with a citation entry of the source. Next, a summary of the ideas conveyed in the article shall follow in the first paragraph; lastly, an additional “assessment” or evaluation paragraph over the ideas presented will be required. READ the criticism that seasoned critics offer in terms of the chosen theme as reflected in the play; you may need to re-read to comprehend the IDEAS well enough. If you have a particular theme or major idea that interests you from ANY of the those found in Othello, your research of literary articles should show that collection. Possible themes evident in Othello: jealousy, marriage, religion, witchcraft, loyalty, etc. If no theme interests you, then find articles about the play that interest you because they make you think more in depth about it. Do not include articles that only summarize the play for you, obviously. You need real analysis of ideas from the critics, ideas which allow you to expand your OWN thinking. Advice: Students are NOT to assume that they can summarize this article with quoting. Since the first paragraph will focus on summary, I suggest you do NOT quote directly from the articles, unless you are willing to provide MLA parenthetical references; otherwise, you will have plagiarized. Summary means summarize the articles in YOUR OWN words! For paragraph two, students can refer to the questions below for additional inquiry/evaluation of the text and its ideas. You will ask these questions of each of the articles that you read after you have read them and composed your summary. Why does the author make those claims? Why should readers care about the ideas conveyed in the text? For whom is the text written? Why should college students (such as yourself) care about the ideas presented here? How might ignoring this perceived view prove detrimental-if at all- to our understanding of the play as we see it? How does the text allow readers to react? How might this text explain, illustrate, clarify, complicate, or contradict what you have read or experienced? How does considering this text, and others similar to it help you understand the topic or maybe even change your thinking? How might the article be improved? Might the author have ignored or left out something vital to this discussion? How might the writer be correct/incorrect about the ideas he or she poses? Are the writer’s ideas relevant? How so? Who has been left out? How do specific ideas remain different for us and perhaps similar to the writer’s times? What unique ideas apply to us that certainly did not to the writer’s time? In the evaluation, you have the opportunity to break down the author’s content and inspect the overall success of the piece, including its strengths, its weaknesses, YOUR analysis of ideas, and maybe even HOW the source might potentially be useful in a research essay. For paragraph two, you need NOT answer ALL of the questions above, but certainly target as many as you can to formulate a decent evaluation/assessment for this assignment. A two-sentence assessment will simply NOT do here! The more you think (THINK, THINK, THINK) of the questions, the more you may unravel this piece, after all! See example annotated bibliography example provided, but here are key features of your assignment: 1. The full citation entry will appear first. It should be alphabetized by author LAST name OR title of the article, but only when you do NOT have an author. 2. A brief summary paragraph entry for the article will follow below the full citation. The summary needs to reflect the main ideas of the work. It merely conveys the WHAT of the article, assuming the audience has NOT read it. Write the summary in third person, exclusively. When you summarize the ideas of others, you reveal to readers your level of understanding of source information and you show readers how well you truly can voice those ideas in YOUR OWN words. It is vital that you do NOT interject YOUR OPINION in the summary, please. 3. An evaluation paragraph will follow below the summary paragraph by referring to the plethora of questions given for paragraph II, possibly assessing the potential use of the source in a research essay, its strengths, its weaknesses, YOUR analysis of ideas, and please do not feel obligated to answer all the questions, just sufficient to get you analyzing ideas a bit more on your own and weighing the opinions of others in regard to this work. You may find that you disagree with the author, that the author ignores an important idea that you saw in the play, or you may offer a significantly different way to interpret the same idea. Here is where we can begin to formulate our own thinking, by observing carefully what has already been said so that we have a springboard from which to go. Most students find it easier to just agree. Find articles that may give you room to disagree so that if you do have an opinion, you may include it in this paragraph as well. However, I want to “see” your thinking, not just empty words and conclusions that have no merit because you offer no real depth to those thoughts. Note: the JSTOR database and the Gale Literature Resource Center will be great starting points for this assignment. However, when you go to the Angelina College list of databases, you will see that you have far too many to come back and tell me that you “did not find” anything on this major text,