Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Final Exam

Students, please bring your copy of The Things They Carried with you to class. You will need it in order to take your exam.

Thanks
Mr. Tompkins

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Questions for In-class Essay

In-Class essay

You will write an ethical argument essay of approximately 350-400 words for or against one of the practices below.
                        
·      Regularly eating beef.          
·      Eating farmed salmon.
·      Consuming conventionally produced dairy products. 

You should base your ethical argument on both principles AND consequences. Your essay should draw on evidence from The Ethics of What We Eat; no other research is necessary. For your argument to be persuasive, you will need to identify and address likely objections to your position. 

In developing consequences for your position, you are encouraged to consider all parties affected by the practice, including individual consumers, food producers (corporations, family farmers, workers, etc.), food retailers, transportation systems, neighborhoods and environments affected by food production, and society at large.

Remember to define a clear thesis in your introduction that (1) identifies the practice you are analyzing and (2) expresses your position for or against the ethics of the practice.

Support your analysis with logical reasoning, explanation of your principles and consequences, and specific examples from the text of The Ethics of What We Eat.



If you have one, please bring a blue book in which to write your essay and include your notes with your essay. Alternatively, you may bring a laptop to use to write your essay. You may NOT bring a finished essay into class, handwritten or on your laptop.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Sample Outline for Research Paper.

Students, I'm posting this to give you and idea of the level of detail needed in the outline for your research paper. The most important thing to notice is how you use citations so that your outline will show the quality of your research. Your outline will be much longer than the one posted below, this is the kind of outline I expect to see. 

Email if you have questions


I.               A. Restate prompt (not word for word). The oil industry is accused of buying influence with mass media outlets in order to shape public opinion on the causes of global warming..
B. Thesis statement: Man-made pollution is the primary cause of global warming, and people must expose the lies they have been fed.
C. The Paris Climate Change conference show that there is  now worldwide concern on this important issue.(NY Times, p. 85)
D. First they denied it was happening, and then, losing that fight, denied fossil fuels contribute. (Redmond, p. 3)


II.             Topic Sentence: Serious scientists believe that greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of global warming.
B. Study by MIT about melting glaciers shows relation between melt and automobile usage (Jones, p. 323) 
- give details
C. Study by govt. task force shows  steady curve…(Survaint p. 421) 
    -(give details)

III.           Topic sentence: Rising sea levels threaten low lying coastal areas
B. Maldives sea levels have forced thousands to relocate inland. (Fredrick, p 310)  give details about what’s happened, impact on survival
C. Florida Key’s are losing area, impacting tourism. (Smithsonian study, p 43) -Even though Florida politicians have made it against the law to use the word climate change. (Rogers, p 4)                                                                              -Dim future for tourism, according to State study of vacation patterns (JSTOR, p 8)

        IV. Conclusion etc, come back to the prompt as you are summing your argument up










Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Agenda (and assignments), Dec. 3



Students,

1.                       A. For tomorrow’s class please arrive with three “good sources” relating to the Pentagon Papers – sources that you could or will use for your research paper, should you so choose. Two must be from "Scholarly Journals." The third must be from a newspaper or magazine. Write a citation using MLA style.

For each source, please provide a map of the steps you went through to find the source, including (for example) lahc.edu - academics - library – library databases – All Ebsco databases – Academic Search Premier (Those were all links). Then put in search terms and settings such as Pentagon Papers, civil disobedience, treason, supreme court (possible terms) setting like full text, scholarly journal, dates, publication types etc.

You will arrive with this info and in class we will share your results by turning over the computer to you and projecting your search efforts on to the screen.

PLEASE BRING AVAILABLE SMART PHONES IPADS LAPTOPS ETC SO WE CAN USE THEM IN CLASS

B.  Write a one-paragraph description of what in the world of academic writing and researching constitutes a "good source."


 C. Prepare for reading presentations and discussion of The Ethics of What We Eat.