SOCL 526: Writing in the Social Sciences

Assignment 5:  Evaluating Sources 

1.  Locate 1 reliable and 1 biased/non-scholarly web source on your topic;
2. In your blog for this unit, compare and contrast the two sources using the criteria you have learned to evaluate sources through the assigned reading;
3. Be sure to include the links to your sites in your blog so others can view the sites;
4. Read the blogs of your fellow students and comment as you see fit on source reliability.

Assignment 4:  Plagiarism Fears 

1.  Define plagiarism in your own words.  What have you learned through the reading assignments about plagiarism that you didn’t know before?
2. What fears, if any, do you have about citing correctly?  I know that students often tell me that they “worry” about getting in trouble for plagiarism.  Such worry or fear may stem from students not understanding why or how to cite. 
3. Sometimes the fear stems from “horror stories” students hear from other students.  Have you heard any “horror stories” about students being accused of plagiarism?  If so, what are they?
4. As you are taking notes for your paper, are there things you are struggling to paraphrase or cite properly?

Read your peers’ blogs and respond to each.

Assignment 3:  Keyword Blog Exercise 

1.  Go to the Greenwood Library, click on Find Articles, then click on Databases A-Z, click on Academic Search Complete, Log-in using your network ID and Password.
2. Pretend you are conducting research on “spanking” as a form of discipline.  Begin typing in different keyword combinations, keeping a list of all that you try, and then decide which word combination produces the best, most manageable results. 
3. Now go to Google, and do a simple search using the word “spanking” (you might not want to open any of these sites), record how many hits you get and scroll down to see the type of sites this search produces.  Now do an advanced search using the term child discipline and limit to the domain .gov.  Look at the number type of hits you get with this search process.
4. Now begin blogging.  In your blog discuss (A) what key word combinations worked the best in Academic Search Complete; (B) whether the Subject Thesaurus in this database was  helpful; and (C) what you learned about conducting academic searches using internet search engines.
5. Note in your blog any frustrations you are encountering while trying to locate sources for your paper and the techniques that are proving most useful to you in locating sources. 

1. Take this quiz: http://www.syntaxis.com/index.php/grammar_quiz/ (you can take several versions of this quiz. After you complete it once, you can click the button at the end of your results and begin a different quiz)

2. Take this even tougher quiz (I thought it was really hard)

http://encarta.msn.com/quiz_275/sat_grammar_quiz.html

3. If you have a Facebook account, you also may want to take this quiz:.

http://apps.facebook.com/trv-the-gramma-odvi/

4.  Blog about how well you did on the quizzes, what you learned from taking the quizzes, and questions you still have about grammar.  BE SURE TO TAG YOUR BLOG WITH socl BEFORE POSTING IT SO THAT THE BLOG WILL FEED TO THE CLASS BLOG PAGE.

5.  Read your classmates’ blog entries about grammar and post a response to two of them

6.  If you are feeling brave or really want to keep trying your hand at grammar quizzes, try some of the quizzes here: 

  http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/quiz_list.htm

Assignment for Unit 1

For each unit of the class, you will need to complete a reading, writing and blog assignment.

Your first reading assignment is to read Chapters 1 & & in your textbook.  Your first “written” assignment is to create your blog page & send me the link to your blog page.  Your first blog post is to introduce yourself to the class and begin thinking of a paper topic for the class. 

Here are the complete instructions for the first set of assignments.  These instructions also are located under the Assignment Button in Blackboard: