Tips for your papers

Tips for your papers

Except for the last paper, please number your answers – don’t try to make one long essay out of all the questions unless the directions say otherwise!

Adapted from “They say, I say: The moves that matter in academic writing,” Graff and Birkenstein, 2017.

Good papers will have a balance of two parts:  Your SUMMARY and your RESPONSE (which includes responses to imaginary critics).

Your SUMMARY of the original reading(s) should be concise and accurate.

• You should strive to keep your emotion out of it. At the same time, your experiences will be very important in the response.
• Your summary should include why the issue at hand is important. Think, “Who cares?” and “So what?”
• Watch out! Are you summarizing what the author ACTUALLY wrote, or what you THINK they wrote?  A common mistake is to assume the author was saying something that fits your own beliefs or stereotypes.

Your RESPONSE should be logical, coherent, and kind.

• Sometimes, it is scary to respond to an expert. “Who am I,” you might wonder, “to question?”  You are a person with unique perspectives and experiences!  Environmental science is multidisciplinary, which means we NEED unique perspectives and experiences blended together to find solutions!  In other words, we need you to develop your voice and help solve these problems.  Plus, this is my favorite part of the paper to read.
• You have a choice when responding: You can agree, disagree, or be conflicted.  You won’t be graded based on your opinion.  If there were only one way to think about environmental science, we would have solved all the problems by now.

• You WILL be graded based on how well you explain why you agree, disagree, or feel conflicted. Good evidence includes using claims from other readings or your own experience.  Watch out though – is your own experience or knowledge correct?  Might you have bad information or bias?

• You should argue for at least one solution you can live with, even if it’s not perfect. We must make real decisions to act on environmental problems, or we have no hope for a better future.

• Excellent essays in this class will anticipate counter-opinions. For example, maybe you think that the solution to climate change is for everyone to eat more fish.  In your essay, you would 1) summarize the original paper’s argument, 2) agree or disagree and propose eating more fish based on evidence, and then 3) explain why some folks might criticize your solution and rebut their criticisms.

General tips:

• Make it clear in your answer – what does the source say, and what do you say? It is ok to use first person in this class.

• Our papers will ask us to directly engage with difficult topics that include politics, race, sex, and class equity. It’s OK if you don’t know what the polite words are, but look it up (google) or ask.

• Men and women should both be referred to by their last name, and, when relevant, as Dr. In academic writing it is almost always wrong torefer to women by Miss, Ms. Mrs., or worse of all, by their first name.  It’s OK if you don’t know someone’s title – just google or ask!

• Run spell check. Run grammar check.  You’ll lose points for making based composition errors, such as spelling mistakes, improper capitalization, poor grammar, or errors in punctuation.  It is through proper writing that you signal we should take your ideas seriously.

The best part of this class, for me, is learning what you think about things.  I look forward to reading your papers!