INDIVIDUAL WORK (working in the "blind", separated away from all team members) — Research for IE (Individual Essay)

The goal

The goal of the IE is to write an essay that is

• useful and interesting to yourself, of course, but also ...
• useful to the team—by staying within the NDT and other parameters but having an entirely independent line of thought / observation / conclusion, and
• useful to the full room—by making a credible and interesting inquiry along the lines of the themes and goals of the class:
  • exploring the relationships of modern East Asian cultures with their premodern roots on the point of romantic values, and/or
  • speculating on cultural differences between two East Asian countries, again on the point of romantic values, in a way that beats the "average Joe"rule, is credible and interesting
  • with rewards for legitimate exploration of premodern core values, the more difficult of the two lines of analysis described above—but interest trumps this strategy, make that your first goal.

Getting there

This goal is achieved through:

• your efforts in selecting an interesting direction,
• getting to know your objects (well),
• doing outside research that gives you a more sophisticated perspective on the analysis of "love", and
• remaining disciplined in approach (stay with one or two ideas and development them well), including staying within the boundaries of the course.

It is impossible to complete this assignment quickly or in one writing. Since analysis is involved, you need to give it time to develop: you write, think about what you are claiming while rereading, then edit and improve, probably adding further research. Clarity is essential because the ideas we work with are complex, ambiguous & large but good communicability of your ideas to your team and the room is expected.

You will be expected to know your movies very well and so will need to watch them once or twice more, find out all you can about the director and his or her other films (if relevant to understanding those at hand), and locate, whenever possible, outside credible research on the film. Your bibliography should reflect this. Because of the special nature of researching films you may use material that is in Korean, Japanese or Chinese but, when listing it, your annotation should include a convincing note as to why this source should be considered credible.

You will be expected to have exposed yourself to some degree to academic analysis in the field of love relevant to your essay. The match does not have to be perfect. The primary idea here is that you do better than just going with a street-level / commons-sense definition of "jealousy" or whatever. A secondary idea is that if you see how this difficult and vague topic is handled in an academic environment, hopefully it will contribute to the care you also take when writing your essay. At least one, hopefully two or so, of your bibliographic sources should list such works (books or articles) and the work should have an easy to notice influence on your essay (and, if not, you need to annotated it thoroughly, explaining what value it had for you where "thoroughly' means one or two paragraphs of substance).

Research must have an active role in the key areas of the essay. Avoid at all costs just tacking in an idea from an article to have something. Find excellent articles, read them in full, and allow them to give sophistication to your ideas. If you worry that how research helped shape your ideas isn't immediately apparent by my simply reading the essay, footnote to explain or write something after the entry in the bibliography. Begin such a paragraph with "How this source contributed to the ICE:"

Reminder: Your essay should remain aware of films as films (multimedia objects that are collaborative projects with commercial interests and paying audiences), not just as narratives (though of course that is important). Try to stay attentive to, and refer to when useful, cinematography and other sorts of visual elements/messages, use of music (including lyrics) and other sound elements/messages, costume, body language, and so on, as has been discussed in class. And please remember, you should stay aware of "levels"; that is, consider the values of the films characters of course, but also consider what seems to be the attitude of the director and what the film might be suggesting unintentionally about prejudice or particular ways of viewing things.

About NDT boundaries. I am comfortable with you mentioning ideas and directions that are outside your essay boundary. ("If there were space, I would also to explore this odd similarity I found between the two films [stated in a phase or sentence here] but I suppose I should save that for another essay ...." or "I noticed that green seems to be a key color in this film and definitely carries meaning. If I had the space I would explore that a bit more ...") The reason I say this is because the IE is quite short and some of you will worry that you will look to me as if having not thought much about your films because of all the things you noticed, thought, concluded or whatever that don't fit into the length of your essay or the boundaries of the NDT. Phrases like the above allow you to signal to me further interesting thoughts you had that don't really work for the essay at hand.

Style issues

I expect standard MLA or similar style, in its basics. You don't have to worry about minor points.

Documentation can be footnotes or in-line citation (parenthetical citation) but should NEVER be both. However, you MUST cite appropriately. I strongly suggest you reread my page on academic honesty to review my definition of what is acceptable paragraphing and not, and etc. I have less tolerance than most instructors I know about mishandling citations and you can considered by me as being academically dishonest for a practice you consider "normal". Since I have published my definition there, you have no defense along the lines of "I didn't know ..."

NOTE for the bibliography: If your source is online, it MUST have a working URL that points to it. Include this under the regular citation, starting with "ACCESS:"

I expect nearly perfect spelling.

I am not as particular about grammar, but the essay should never appear rushed and should definitely give the impression that it has been reread and rewritten at least once, with attention to clarity of expression and overall organization.

The essay follows the methods we have been deploying in class; do not revert to your standard essay-writing mode unless it can embrace these methods.

Special style requirements that are a bit odd:

To help me scan back and forth across multiple essays (I read all group member essays in parallel) I need

• a little more frequent mention of the title than would be elegant writing (think of me dropping into the middle of your essay somewhere and starting to read) with the first mention in the format "English title" (country, year) and all other mentions in the format "English title" (if, in the first mention, you want to include the title in the country's script, include a romanized version of it, like this: Departures [送り人, Okuribito] (Japan, 2004).
• frequent mention of the character name, and always in bold

Since your ability to conduct analysis is at the very heart of this course, plagiarism or enlisting others to help compose or edit the paper will result in an "F" for the course. There will be no second chance offered—there is no time for it. You cannot in this case ask others to read and comment on your work to improve it. You are entirely on your own. I can accept less than perfect English; outside help, on the other hand, breaks the fundament requirement of the assignment—for you to develop your ideas entirely on your own.

Length

Regardless of what I might have said elsewhere, the requirement is between 1300 and 2000 words. (HowTo Wiki: Avoid Going Over an Essay Word Limit. I also highly highly recommend Strunk & White.) You will certainly feel you have not been given enough space. Work towards using your limited space efficiently by

1. staying with just one or two very good ideas,
2. avoiding the standard essay process of arguing your point through example and rhetorical steps,
3. rewriting for clarity and concision, and ABOVE ALL—
4. keep summary to a minimum (this is typically where the grade goes down—summary over analysis).

You will also probably feel that your ideas are unfinished or haven't well captured the topic and so forth. That is the nature of this type of work. You needn't worry about that as long as you have following the above guidelines and given it your best effort.

If interested, here is an earlier class version, and much longer, comment about length issues:

To satisfy this very difficult word requirement—one that is necessary for the success of JES10 and that is much needed by me to grade in time the enormous amount of material that is generated by the class at the end of the term—think not just of what you want to say but, rather, steer you investigation into areas that can be said in that space. It is best to pursue ONE idea. Your goal is NOT to write an impressive essay; it is to produce insights (that is, beat the "average Joe" rule) that your partner will read and which will become the basis for the FJS (Final Joint Segment). Impressing me with how far you went with your ideas works against you, grade-wise, for the ICE, as does taking time to argue thoroughly. If you have other exciting things to say, you can suggest the beginning of them in footnotes (or, better, margin comments on MSWord) but do not complicate the main essay by mixing them in there. Avoid at all costs extended reports, encyclopedic overviews, detailed argumentation, lengthy examples, summaries. You probably will need examples and they probably will need to be "set up" a bit, but keep this AT A MINIMUM. This is not an ordinary essay. It is a presentation of insights, interpretations and such. Stimulating observations and suggestions for interpretation should be your goal. You can write a longer essay, but do this only when you are running with a great idea, and the idea clearly requires that length. If possible separate it from the basic essay and put it in an "Additional Thoughts" section that your partner will not have to respond to. Do not stretch out a paper or allow a paper to be unnecessarily long because it hasn't been edited or rewritten tightly. Control over your ideas is one of the grading criteria of the individual essay.

When it comes time to submit, here's a quick check list that summarizes the key points above:

• Is academically honest (no plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty when working with sources).
• Follows course rules and pursues course goals.
• Strictly stays on-topic (NDT).
• Strictly stays within the word limit.
• Is disciplined in method (per the approach used in this class) and expression (organizing and rewriting for clarity).
• I check for good form (citation form, and such) but this doesn't become a grading factor until a certain level of messy / casual form occurs. However, you MUST follow the title management and character name management requirements.
• Timely submission.

 

INDIVIDUAL WORK (working in the "blind", separated away from all team members) & a report to me —

I require an in-class presentation early in the IE process for these reasons:

• I would like to see cross-over of ideas and approaches among students, so this is a formal opportunity for you to identify the work of others that might be interesting to your own work
• I have a chance early on to adjust the direction of your TCP, if necessary
• It helps subvert the "write it in one night" approach that is all too frequent in student essays and, in this case, will lead to a failed essay

The presentation is, by necessity, extremely short. In Spring 2013 this means: you have 1 minute to speak, I have 3.5 minutes to comment, there is .5 minute transition between each presentation.

In Spring 2013, because of the projection capabilities in the room, I will project on one screen data about your TCP and, on the other, the script you will be reading aloud.

If interested, here's why: I require a written script for time control, to help students whose aural comprehension of English might be limited, and so that I can read your content ahead of time and already have my response thought through. Further, it makes all presentations due at the same time, which is only fair. (Later presenters would have the benefit both of additional time and seeing how I comment on presentations.)

Content

You must use the PPTX supplied. Please try not to convert this to any other program since the formatting might get lost and it might be incompatible with the other student slides, all of which will be imported into a single large PPTX for the day of presentation.

The main components of the submission are:

NDT thumbnail. Your NDT simplified to shorten it into the space allowed and to make for quick reading. It is only to give us a context of your work, and to help other students identify whether you are working on something similar to what they are doing. You do not need to mention the film titles, since they are already on the slide. If you do need to mention them, use a short form, for readability and to save space. (Same thing with regard to character names.)

Bibliography—two lists.

a) For the PPT please present one or two titles that were of particular interest to you. Again, this is to enrich the bibliography list of other students. Therefore, your research in love is more likely to be useful, but only if you thought it was a good source.

b) Down in the comments box you must give the full list, in proper form as best as the comments box allows. You should have completed all of your research by the time of presentation. This means having read it with care, not just skimmed to see if it is useful. This portion is graded. I might ask you about your sources during my comment time, so you should be ready to state the thesis of the article, how it was useful for you, what quality you think it is/why it is credible, how you found it, those sorts of questions.

Script. This is a statement of where you are now and where you are headed. That means, observations, interpretations and/or tentative conclusions that you have made. The space requirement will force you to settle on describing just one or two of these. Do not summarize plotlines at all. If students want a better understanding they can email you. Your IE should be at a halfway point: you've done the research and reading of the research, you've tried out various interpretations and feel you now have something of a thesis but one that will probably change more as you go farther into the work. You will be graded on having achieved the amount of progress, for its credibility, and for its interest. Clarity of presentation is also grade-helpful. You will read this script aloud, slowly. Practice so you can finish in 60 seconds and pre-decide if there is a moment somewhere when you want to embellish.

Further comments. In the comments box of the slide that has the script, you can ask me things, share more ideas that didn't fit onto the slide, whatever. This space is not graded so make sure your best ideas are on the slide and that they show the necessary progress. This is a space for private communication between us, on the progress of the essay and other details about the essay.

Submission

Submit by the deadline using the PPTX that is on bSpace in the TCP folder: ProgressReport02 LASTNAME classname.pptx. Please remember to change the LASTNAME classname to your name before submitting. Attach the PowerPoint to an email using the usual subject line plus the keyword PRTWO.