English: Working with Faculty Feedback

Special thanks to Professors Elisabeth Gruner, Monika Siebert, and Daryl Dance of the English department for their helpful contributions.

Below are the reflections of a few faculty members from the English department on specific issues regarding the English research paper. Each teacher typically possesses a more refined set of expectations which a student can gather from the points he or she stresses within the classroom setting or even by explicitly questioning a teacher both in and outside of the classroom. The faculty advice listed below provides a helpful guide of common mistakes, professor pet peeves, and advice for novice writers. It may be additionally beneficial to approach your teacher in order to gain a clearer understanding of what his or her unique expectations may be for a specific assignment.

Mistakes commonly made by novices when writing English research papers:

• Assuming that if one critic has said something it can be taken as given (trusting the criticism too much).

• Assuming that if one critic has said something the student can't make a similar argument (trying too hard to be original).

• Not being fully aware of the criticism and thus painstakingly "proving" something that is already well established (not trying hard enough to be original).

• Not fully understanding that in writing a research paper one is entering a conversation--this leads to a lack of subtlety in how criticism is deployed.

• Failing to draw up a clear and focused thesis.

• Providing plot summaries rather than posing an argument about an aspect of the text.

• Identifying and writing about the protagonist of a literary text as if he or she is a real person rather than a fictitious character invented to serve a narrative purpose.

• Offering opinions and beliefs rather than reasoned arguments.

Professor pet peeves particular to research paper writing for the English discipline:

• Being overly schematic: Trying too hard to make everything "fit" one limited thesis.

• Lacking a central claim: Too often novice research papers take an idea found in one article and apply it rather schematically to a different text with little sense of the original author's true intentions.

• Resistance to doing the necessary amount of research required and basing research off "encyclopedia-type" articles (i.e. using inappropriate sources).

• Failure to extrapolate on introductory claims in the concluding paragraph.

Recommendations to students writing an English research paper:

• Start early.

• Read lots of criticism to get a sense of the kinds of interpretations out there (i.e. specific interpretations and topics frequently considered by other scholars).

• Be willing to change your thesis several times before you finish the paper.

• Read the directions carefully.

• Do the necessary reading and research.

• Write and rewrite until you have received that satisfied feeling of having done a good job.

• Put the paper aside for a day and then come back to review it.

• Read a lot of good literary scholarship to become familiar with the research paper form; if you encounter an academic argument that appeals to you and convinces you, utilize it as a study model. In simpler terms, in order to become a good writer yourself, read and study the form and how other writers accomplish good writing.

• Assume that writers write books and artists create art in order to change the world. Focus on figuring out the literary means by which they attempt to do so.

• Remain mindful that it is always much easier and more interesting to study and write about literature and art when you believe that they truly matter.

• After you believe you have finished your paper, ask yourself "so what?", or why should anyone care about the claims I just made in this paper; why is this knowledge important? Then, in response to this question, write yet another concluding paragraph.