Scholarly Articles and Annotated Notes

This assignment is strongly influenced by the first-year academic expectations held at Thompson Rivers University. The goal is to develop short, effective notes that summarize articles for your future access. Developing effective note-taking habits will help you in all walks of life, academic or not, and is an expectation of English 12.

For this assignment, you are asked to submit reading notes for four sources pertaining to a subject you are interested in and would like to write about. One of these sources must be considered a scholarly resource -- a published academic paper, article, or book. 

For each reading note, be sure to provide a correct citation, a statement of the author’s argument, a summary of the main points of analysis, and/or your assessment of how well the author developed his or her argument.

Each reading note should be about 200–250 words, excluding the citation. Notes must be submitted in complete sentences in order to be accepted.

1. Consider a topic that interests you, or one that you feel you can reasonably argue. 

2. Conduct research surrounding this topic. Choosing a mix of sources that are for and against your argument is valuable, and makes arguing much easier.

3. Include one scholarly resource. UBC considers a scholarly source to be: 

• written by experts for experts
• based on original research or intellectual inquiry
• provides citations for all sources used
• is usually peer reviewed prior to publication

Please make sure that you indicate which source is your scholarly resource in your notes.

4. Record your citations in MLA format after each note. If you are ever unsure how your resource should be cited, check out this guide. If you are still uncertain or want clarification, call me over to check or to assist.

[Added Oct 26th!] Here are some options for finding scholarly resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_access_journals - Provides a list of journals that you can manually search yourself. Very helpful.

https://doaj.org/

https://www.questia.com/library/academic-journal-articles

This assignment is marked out of 25.

You will be marked as follows:

1 Scholarly Source will provide you with a maximum of 10 marks. 4 marks for a complete MLA citation including all pertinent information and 6 marks will be awarded for well-summarized notes which explicate a meaningful interpretation of the author’s argument, a summary of the main points of analysis, and/or your assessment of how well the author developed his or her argument.

Minimum of 3 "Popular" Sources will provide you with a maximum of 5 marks each for a total of 15 marks. 2 marks will be awarded for each MLA citation including all pertinent information available. 3 marks will be given for well-summarized notes.

After you are done, please print out your notes and submit them to Mr. Bridge. Save these notes to your student account. Next week we will be working on a full-fledged research essay (and you have already done the hardest part).

If you have finished early, and want to work ahead, either find an additional scholarly resource to support/argue against your topic, or begin constructing your thesis statement and the major points that you think will be important to discuss.

You are an awesome human being, thanks for working so hard! It does not go unnoticed, I promise you. I really do appreciate your time and work.

Ideas inspired by TRU Open Learning and UBC resources and publicly accessible expectations.

MLA Guide -- http://library.csun.edu/egarcia/documents/mlacitation_quickguide.pdf

• 3 non-scholarly resources will be marked out of 5.
• 2 marks for a correct citation. (half-mark for each mistake)
• 3 marks for a well-summarized research note, communicating the main idea argument, evidence to support, and attention to how the source conducts their argument.
• 1 scholarly resource will be marked out of 10.
• Pattern follows as above, but 4 marks for the correct citation, including page numbers if applicable, and 6 marks for annotated note.
• Total of 25 marks. Note common errors and address in the following week with a short activity.

Following week, ask students for their observations about the process of taking notes from scholarly sources versus popular sources. Did they find it easier to find aspects like publisher/page numbers/year published/etc. from one more than the other? How did that make it easier? For citations alone, which one is the preferred style, and why do they think so?