Lesson on Using Sources (adapted from The Arlington Reader, fourth edition)
We use sources to establish credibility and to provide evidence for our claim. Because we want to establish credibility, the sources have to be credible as well.
To be credible, the sources must be
Current or up to date: to verify that the material is still relevant and has all the latest and possibly revised research and statistical data.
Authoritative: to insure that your sources represent experts in the field of study. Their studies are peer-reviewed and represent the gold standard, meaning they are the sources of record that will be referred to in academic debate and conversation.
Depth: The source should be detailed to give a comprehensive grasp of the subject.
Objectivity: The study is relatively free of agenda and bias or the writer is upfront about his or her agenda so that there are no hidden objectives. If you’re consulting a Web site that is larded with ads or a sponsor, then there may be commercial interests that compromise the objectivity.
Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
Common identifying tags (put link here)
Explain the title “Back in the World”
To go "back in the world" means to leave one's delusions and re-connect with reality, often a shocking experience.
Often a crisis makes us go back in the world. Sometimes the back in the world is sudden like an epiphany or a brilliant vision. Other times, it is gradual.
We see a photo of ourselves and realize we've gained weight.
Our wife tape-records our sleeping and we realize we have a lethal case of snoring.
Our credit card is taken from a merchant and we realize we have self-destructive spending habits.
Large men with scary dogs show up at our house demanding money and we realize we have a gambling problem.
You see a video of a news report of you,a skeletal girl, being taken on a stretcher to a hospital and you realize you have an eating disorder.
Women no longer return your calls and you realize your life as a Pompous Ass Playboy have caught up with you.
You see your wife having animated and engaging conversation with other people, both men and women, and this conversation has far more depth and energy than exists when you talk to her and you realize you need to get stop watching ESPN and start paying attention to your wife.
You make a hyped-up production about leaving Cleveland to play basketball for the Miami Heat and now most everyone in the world wants to see you fail. You overplayed your popularity card and it backfired.
Out of sibling rivalry and jealousy, you tried to kill your brother when he was little and even though your whole life is committed to hiding your guilt and sense of failure by being filthy rich, you realize your are forever responsible for the damage you've done to him and you must forever share his burdens.
Part Two. Lexicon
1. Decrepitude (weakened, broken down, the condition of both brothers)
2. hubris
3. braggadocio
4. culpability
5. symbiosis
6. passive-aggressive
7. scapegoat
8. sibling rivalry
9. stagnation
10. status quo
11. spite—an impulse for revenge that hurts you more than the person you hate.
12. Insanity— doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)
13. centrifugal
14. centripetal
Part Three. Pete’s 6 Moral Flaws
1. He worships money, seeing it as a solution for everything.
2. He suffers from a brand of obnoxious smug pride rooted in his wealth. (“Grow up and get a Mercedes.”) In fact, Pete is not rich at all as evidenced by the story’s ironic title “The Rich Brother.” Pete in fact is anything but “rich.” He is impoverished by his condition of helplessness and moral decrepitude. Pete covers his flaws with a pose of hubris and braggadocio.
3. He sees things only at face value without digging deeper because he is afraid of what he will find.
4. He is afraid to confront his culpability for the past, namely, his role in hating on his brother Donald through his rivalry and blind ambition.
5. Pete is a liar to his brother and to himself. For example on page 197 he lies about his dreams, claiming he only dreams about sex and money when in fact he is haunted by guilt for the sins he once committed against Donald. On 199 and 200 we find that Pete tried to kill his brother after an operation because he was jealous of the way his mother doted on Donald. Ironically, now it’s Pete who dotes on Donald and in doing so he assures that he keeps Donald crippled, which is to his advantage, or so he seeks.
6. He is afraid to confront his current role as Donald’s “mother,” which is ironic since he in a way attempted to steal Donald’s mother from him. In other words, Pete is dependent on Donald being dependent on him. What we have here, then, are two brothers trapped in a snake grip of hatred from which they can never let go. In psychology this is called “symbiosis.”
Part Four. Donald’s 6 Moral Flaws.
1. Driven by spite and cowardice, Donald sabotages his own life in order to make Pete bail him out again and again and again. This is Donald’s cowardly and passive-aggressive way of punishing Pete for what he did to him during childhood. Donald embodies the saying, “Bite my nose to spite your face.”
2. He uses religion to judge others while ignoring his own egregious flaws. In other words, Donald is a pompous ass.
3. Donald is stuck in a life of stagnation though he deludes himself with clichés that he is “breaking his pattern” (192)
4. Donald is stuck on a sense of lugubrious identity known as “victimization.” He is both overcome by spite and self-pity. As a result of seeing himself as a victim, he has reached a point of no return in which he is both undateable and unemployable.
5. As long as Donald can scapegoat Pete for all his problems, he never has to grow up and take accountability for his own actions.
6. Donald is big on generosity but only with his brother’s money, not his own.
Part Five. The 7 Qualities of Symbiosis
1. Two weak people merge to hide and reinforce their flaws.
2. Two people become mutually dependent on the other in order to stop changing, growing, maturing, and fulfilling their potential.
3. Two people use each other as a crutch and an excuse for their stagnation in life.
4. One person gets stronger and stronger or so he thinks while the other gets weaker and weaker. In truth, both get weaker and weaker because bother are more and more dependent on the other.
5. Two people stay together, not because of love, but because of weakness, hatred, and fear.
6. In a symbiosis, both people are blind or fail to admit how dependent they are on the other. On page 201 we see that Pete has a dream about Donald in which Pete is blind.
7. To use a psychological cliché, both parties of the symbiosis are called “enablers,” that is they perpetuate each other’s dysfunctions.
Part Six. Who is undergoing the “Back in the World” journey and why?
Pete is going through the journey of facing his culpability in continuing to cripple his brother. As a child he resorted to violence. Now he is killing his brother by being like the doting mother, an enabler.
Pete is a centrifugal character while Donald is incurably centripetal.
Part Seven.
Pete, _________, and ___________ experience “Back in the World Moments,” which can be generally defined as waking up to the reality that you have been denying, to your detriment, for an intractable duration. This waking up consists of ____________________, ___________________________, _______________________, and ________________________________.
1. confronting your convenient ignorance or naïveté
2. confronting your own culpability in your demise
3. accepting that the world does not conform to your wants; rather you must often conform to what the world demands of you.
4. being so radically changed by your waking up that you can and will no longer tolerate the status quo
Essay 4 Back in the World
Using at least two stories from Tobias Wolff's Back in the World, explain the book's title in your thesis. Successful papers will use personal experience to illustrate your major points.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components
Paragraphs 3-9: Support your mapping components
Paragraph 10. Restate your thesis
Last Page: Works Cited with no fewer than 2 sources
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