MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

into the hell of finals.

First, please read this web exhibit on inclusive/bias sensitive language.  I want to call attention to a special case in science:

male/female v. men and women

(study distancing?  People v. animals; animal model v. clinical applications)

Here is another web guidance document, with a focus on gender particularly. 

Why this discussion?  In professional settings, we follow the norms tacitly agreed to, with some reference to language experts, including cognitive linguists.  This work is a kind of audience sensitivity.

Now, THEIR.  Is this a singular or plural pronoun?  Guess what: this usage is changing rapidly, in response to spoken speech as well as gendered pronoun awkwardness

Please consider affect and effect.  Read this web guide on choosing the best word for this common connumdrum in science. for Friday.  Consider also the problem of impact and impacted.

We need to go back to consider audiences.  I believe we missed talking about this saliva case set of examples. 

NO OFFICE HOURS TODAY! I am at the Gemstone Thesis Conference all afternoon. Go TEAM SILVER.

We have spoken already about the audience analysis work sheet.  I passed out a hard copy, but you can chose the digital version linked in the previous sentence. DUE NEXT FRIDAY in HARD COPY.

For next week, please take some time to consider the last two upcoming small assignments: 

structure and arguments

250-word abstract and (difficult) reader's response 

Back to the audience analysis work sheet:  think about all the "elements of style" choices you have in your tool kit to support your audience with the context and purpose.  Think also on how, taken together, these choices can creature a tone:

• warm and encouraging, yet trustworthy (patient guide)
• neutral and objective tone (aka the voice of science!) (literature review; grad school writing sample)
• lively and engaging (curriculum guide; lay audience communication of technical topic)
• serious and cautionary (safety guide; some SOPs,...public policy communication)
• OTHER?

Tasks for today, writing on your hard copy annotated bibligraphy, address these choices.

Using the image at the topic of this class journal entry, indicate where your document is going regarding

• what to know (review of the literature; exposition; elaborated definition)
• what to do (proposal; guidance; policy document)
• how to do (directions; SOPs, manual; how to)

Tell me a source type you now need to secure, based on the total invention thus far of your annotated bibliography.

• Use Lexis-Nexis
• Use Science Daily or Physics.org

For now, do you think your audience prefers

• natural language citation
• formal, scholarly citation; which type?  (APA, CBE, IEEE, the physics options by subfield -- numbers driving by LaTex?)

Tone?  What tone will you aim for?

---

Science Culture:

Excellent ScienceFriday on NPR for us: old science films as a way to understand communication of complexity to lay audiences. Oliver Gaycken of the UMD English Department is featured.

Questioning everything: a way of being and knowing in science. Breaking news on knuckle cracking. (question: how do we source this information? What would Aristotle do?)

due to me on Friday. I will not keep office hours on Friday because I want to attend a Gemstone thesis presentation.

Let's enjoy some lay audience communication with Peeps. Yes, Peeps:

First, the physics of Peeps, on calcuating the speed of light.

Now, instructions in a classic website from circa 2002:  Peeps Surgery.

For next week, you will fill out the audience analysis sheet.  Let's prepare for that task by considering audiences for saliva.  

to me by 11:59 this evening.

UPDATE on assessment: we are eliminating the argument/evidence portion of the assessment. This means that will work on these items:

Purpose

Audience

Genre

Counterpoint 

Please mark a hard copy of your revised document before Friday of evidence in the review that shows you understand the purpose, the audience, and the genre.  In class on Friday, we will answer questions and mark the counterpoint (your commentary and critique).

Here is a capsule of dates:

This week, we will revise your two-article reviews in support of the campus wide assessment on student learning.  Bring a digital copy of your review AND the marked copy I handed back. This week -- in class and in office hours -- you can spend some time revising, with my support.  On Friday, please bring a HARD COPY to class.  We will mark the final version to turn in to me, with two kinds of commentary BY YOU:

• highlight passages that support an item in the assessment rubric (another direction from campus TBD)
• margin note on which item in the assessment rubric this marked material meets

We are "piloting this" as I have said in class. Bottom line for you? You have a rewrite opportunity and chance at two grades for this two-article review.

We need to anticipate the final project and the small assignments spread over the next month, so that you write the final project in stages.  In other words, you do not write the paper two days before the end of term.  

Final project discussion sheet here:

• what to KNOW
• what to DO
• how to DO