Assignment:
Primary Source Analysis
Be sure to follow the directions outlined in Completingthe Assignment carefully and to consult our textbook Writing Analytically. Your work should be double-spaced, typed in 12-point font, and set to 1” margins.
Here is the primary Source:
(He appears to be a business man sleeping on a bench like a homeless person under an American flag. Why would a middle class businessman be portrayed in this way?) You can write from this perspective in the Secondary Source Integration
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Objectives:
• Produce a focused analysis, two to three pages in length, of the primary source you have chosen that fits within the scope of our course theme (class in America).
• Finish the analysis with a paragraph that includes one or two open-ended researchquestions that will help guide you toward developing a working thesis and findingsecondary source materials (i.e. questions that can’t be answered with “yes” or “no”).
• Create an analysis that will serve as the basis for your secondary source integration assignment, and subsequently the first draft of your final paper, which will be discussed during your research conference later in the semester.
Getting Started:
• Make sure you understand the meaning of analysis; according to the authors of Writing Analytically, analysis is “a form of detective work that typically pursues something puzzling, something you are seeking to understand rather than something you believe youalready have the answers to” (2-3). Consider it your job to attempt to define and explain what you see in your primary source. Rather than just answering the question, “What ishere?” think about why and how the source uses particular details to communicate something to an audience.
• Remember that this analysis should not be a list. Instead of describing everything about the primary source, focus on the most important aspects of your source and begin tointerpret it by ascribing meaning to these details.
Completing the Assignment:
1. Start by identifying basic information about the source. What is it? Where did it come from? Who made it?
2. Revisit the preliminary work you have done during what Writing Analytically calls the “discovery phase”—your work with The Method and other techniques from the analyticaltoolkit—to get started with your analysis.
3. Peruse the Five Analytical Moves to generate ideas (WA, pgs. 16-33). Brainstorm by breaking the source down into its significant parts and describing those parts in detail,talking about the patterns and connections between them, and, most importantly, making explicit the possible implicit meanings of what you see.
4. When you begin your analysis, remember to be specific; if the source is text-based (e.g., song lyrics, a selected paragraph from an article, etc.), examine the text line-by-line, teasing out the meanings and implications. If the source is image-based (e.g., a print advertisement), examine all the elements that make up the image or object. This will allow you to observe patterns or connections between elements, and to begin working toward a more informed research question. At the close of your analysis, end with one or two “research questions” (questions that arise from observations about the source) that you will use to begin thinking more deeply about your topic and to help you find materials for the upcoming Annotated Bibliographyand Secondary Source Integration. Formatting and Submitting your PSA:
• Your PSA should be double-spaced, typed in 12 pt. font, and set to 1″ margins.
Assignment:
Secondary Source Integration
(step 2)
Primary source:
(He appears to be a business man sleeping on a bench like a homeless person under an American flag. Why would a middle class businessman be portrayed in this way?) You can write from this perspective in the Secondary Source Integration
The Secondary Source Integration asks you to revisit your work in the Primary Source Analysis . You will extend or rethink your original analytical claims and integrate secondary evidence seamlessly and effectively into your own writing.
Below you will find a list of objectives for the assignment. Be sure to follow the directions outlined in Getting Started and Completing the Assignment carefully and to consult our textbook Writing Analytically(especially Chs. 7 and 8) as you seek to extend the work completedin STEP 1: Primary Source Analysis. Your work should be double-spaced, typed in 12-point font, and set to 1” margins.
Objectives:
• Identify two (2) timely, useful, credible, and relevant secondary sources. Your work with these sources should help you revise and extend the work you completed in Step 1: Primary Source Analysis.
• Demonstrate the ability to comprehend the central arguments of these sources.
• Perform meaningful, thoughtful analysis of these secondary sources—in other words, enter into a conversation with the sources by making the sources speak rather than letting them speak for themselves (WA, pg. 186).
• Assert and maintain your own critical voice rather than letting the secondary evidence speak for you.
• Integrate secondary sources into your analysis by paraphrasing and/or directly citing the writers’ language and ideas.
• Include proper in-text citations of each source and an appropriately formatted Works Cited page using MLA guidelines.
Getting Started:
There are several steps you might take in order to get started and to avoid what Writing Analytically calls “source anxiety” (182).
• Return to your Primary Source Analysis, decide which parts you plan to focus on in your final paper. This may require extending or deleting parts of your initial analysis.
• Consider each secondary source’s main argument and how it relates to, supports, complicates, or differs from the argument you plan to make in your final paper.
• The Secondary Source Integration should not simply be added on to the end of your Primary Source Analysis but rather woven in and responding to specific elements of your own analysis.
• Choose two sources that will allow you to engage in conversation, not just sources that agree with or support your main point.
Completing the Assignment:
Once you have selected your two sources, use the secondary evidence to extend and revise the analysis completed in Step 1: Primary Source Analysis. Take this opportunity to add new sentences to existing paragraphs, to add new paragraphs, and, in general, to revise the existing Primary Source Analysis. After this extension and revision, the completed assignment should be 4-5 pages.
In order to complete the extension and revision of your previous work, consider the following steps:
1. Focus on your own analytical claims. Interaction with secondary sources should allow for your Research Questions to evolve and to take shape, enabling you to revise or extend claims made in the previous assignment.
2. Focus on analyzing and integrating the secondary evidence into the conversation. This step can be difficult as it builds on the skills you have developed not only with the Five Analytical Moves, but also with the basics of Interpretation (Chapter 2 in WA). This step requires you to demonstrate competence in all Six Strategies for Analyzing Sources (WA,pgs. 186-195). You should especially focus on:
• Making your Sources Speak by “articulating how the source has led to the conclusion you draw from it” (187). You might ask yourself whether or not you have explained the connection between your claims and the secondary evidence completely and explicitly.
• Putting your Sources into Conversation with One Another (191-193). This move requires that you understand the arguments of the secondary sources and are able to convey this understanding via paraphrase and direct citation. As the title suggests, the emphasis of this step is on you making the sources speak rather than letting the words that you paraphrase or cite speak for themselves or for you; instead, maintain your own critical voice and make clear that the secondary evidence is one part of the conversation, not the featured speaker.
• Integrating Sources into your own writing by paraphrasing or “splic[ing]quotations into your text” (196-197).
• Citing Sources in proper MLA Style (227). You should end the assignment with correct MLA Works Cited entries of the two secondary sources and your primary source.
• Here are some tips:
• 1. Use 2 (and ONLY 2) secondary sources.
• 2. Make sure your secondary sources are current and relevant. Be careful not to confuse a primary source (image-based) with secondary (written, information-based) sources.
• 3. Do NOT analyze OR summarize your secondary sources. DO use the secondary sources sparingly and only to support your own analysis.
• 4. Watch for missing in-text citations or incorrect Works Cited Page. See this for help:https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
• 5. Remember the Secondary Source Integration is just an expansion of the Primary Source Analysis. You will still be focusing on analyzing details (one per paragraph) from your primary source. The secondary source information will appear in the latter part of these body paragraphs to support your analysis of the detail.
• 6. You might need to add a detail paragraph or two to meet the length requirement. Beware super long paragraphs.
• 7. Blend your quoted material into the text. We shouldn’t see “quote dropping,” where you simply add a sentence or more of quoted material without either introducing with your own words at the beginning of the sentence or interpreting the quote with your own words at the end of the sentence. And attributes like “Smith said,” or “According to the article entitled…” would not qualify as introducing or interpreting the material. You are simply identifying where it came from (which the in-text citation will do for you) rather than processing the material in your own words.
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Formatting and Submitting your SSI:
• Your SSI should be double-spaced, typed in 12 pt. font, and set to 1″ margins. It should include an MLA Works Cited page at the end of the paper.