Dowling College: Instructions for Tests and Papers

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Instructions for Writing Papers

Answering the Question

Grading Policy

Test Make-Up Policy

Instructions for Writing Papers

Christian Perring, Ph.D.

The point of getting you to write a paper for this course is to get you to think carefully and deeply about the issues for yourself, and then to express your ideas as clearly as possible. Writing a paper is a sustained piece of work that should take you several days. It is also your main chance in this course to develop your own ideas and think them through.

Your paper should be typed, with double-spaced lines, so there is enough room for me to add comments on each page. You must keep an extra copy of your paper (either hard copy or on disc) in case I mislay your paper. Good spelling, grammar, and writing style are necessary for clear paper writing, and you will lose points if your paper is unclear. You should do some research beyond the course book, and your paper should include references and a bibliography. You can do research on the Internet, but you should also use at least one book too. The Dowling Library staff will do their best to help you search for a book to help you write your paper, so do not be shy in asking for their help.

Extremely Important: Plagiarism

Whenever you copy another text, it should be clearly marked, either in quotation marks or in separate paragraph on its own, with the left-hand margin indented.

You should give a page number for quotations from books or articles, or a precise URL if it from is a web page.

If you include someone else’s writing in your own paper without acknowledging the author, it is plagiarism. This is also true even if you copy your own work that you did in another course, at Dowling College or elsewhere.

It makes no difference whether the work you are handing in is a draft or a final version: you still need to explicity reference all your sources and include a bibliography.

If you are paraphrasing or summarizing someone else’s work, you need to make sure that you use your own words. If you are not sure what exactly counts as plagiarism, ask my advice.

Generally, if you are in some doubt, it is best to play it safe and include a reference in your paper to explain where your ideas come from.

Plagiarism is a serious problem in college these days, and I will take whatever steps I can to prevent it and detect it. If I am not sure whether your paper is your own work I will ask you to come in to answer some questions about what you wrote, to see if you understand it.

Note that plagiarism is generally very easy for a teacher to notice, and with search engines, it is mostly quite easy to find the original documents.

If you get caught intentionally trying to pass a substantial portion of your work off as your own when it is not, you automatically fail the whole course.

If you mistakenly quote a source as a substantial part of your paper without making clear that it is not your own work, (whether intentionally or not), you will get a zero grade for that work.

If you mistakenly quote a source as a small part of your paper without making clear that it is not your own work, (whether intentionally or not), you will get a whole grade penalty.

Using the world wide web for your research.

The web can be an extremely useful resource for research. However, it brings many dangers, and requires intelligent use.

Often students use the web with little thought, and don't really understand the problem of quality control. While in order to publish a book, authors need to have it read by a number of different editors and reviewers, which helps to assure the quality of the work, web page publishers can generally put up any old rubbish. There quality of the web page design may give some hint of how much work has gone into the preparation of the page, but it is certainly not a guarantee of the quality of the content of the page. Information available on the web is often inaccurate, biased, out-of-date, or incomplete.

So when using information from the web, try to make sure that it comes from a reputable source. If there is a chance that the information you find is biased, in your paper you should show some awareness of who provided that information, and what their agenda might be.

The most common problem with student papers these days is that they are basically just a collection of summaries of a number of different web pages. This shows little originality of thought and often makes a boring paper.

Use of web pages also brings the danger of plagiarism, whether intentional or unintentional. (See above.) If you copy text from a web page, and in an attempt to avoid being a plagiarist, you change around the sentence structure and change some of the words for near synonyms, the result will still be uncomfortably close to plagiarism, and it will probably also become badly written English which doesn't actually retain the original meaning.

So when writing a paper, remember that you are the author, and that your aim is to present a coherent set of ideas. You need to show that you have thought hard about the topic at hand, and have not just borrowed (or stolen) other people's ideas.

You may discuss your work with friends and classmates. It is always a good idea to get someone else to read your work and give you critical feedback on spelling, grammar, style, clarity, and content, since these are important, and it is often difficult to spot one's own mistakes. On the web, useful resources include Serendipity's Common Errors, Paul Brians' Common Errors in English, and Grammar Girl's Guide to the English Language. I have some of my own hints at the bottom of this page.

See "Avoiding Plagiarism" by Sharon Williams.
If you want help with the format of references to other works, use the MLA Citation Style.
If you come to me in office hours, or make an appointment to see me at another time, I will look at and comment on drafts of papers, or give you any other kind of help.

You can e-mail your paper to me (cperring@bigfoot.com) as an attachment (a Word file or in Rich Text Format). Check to make sure that your e-mail did not bounce. I will reply to you confirming that I got your e-mail. If you do not get an e-mail from me within 24 hours of your sending your paper, it is safe to assume that I have not received it.

You can fax your paper to me at 589-6123. Make sure that my name is clear on the cover sheet. It can take some time for a fax to get to me.

ANSWERING THE QUESTION

For any answer, make sure that you have addressed each part of the question, and pay attention to any hints or guidelines given in the question. If you omit parts and ignore guidelines given in the question, you can be sure that your grade will suffer.

CLARITY AND GRAMMAR

For most exams and papers, you should write as if you are writing for an intelligent reader who is not familiar with the works you are discussing. This means you need to explain the ideas and terminology you are using, and cannot assume that the reader already understands them. Part of the reason for writing exams and papers is for you to achieve and demonstrate a good understanding of the texts. You can assume that the reader is adopting a principle of skepticism: whenever it is unclear whether or not you really understand what you are talking about, you will not be given the benefit of the doubt.
It is essential that you write in clear grammatical sentences. Bad grammar and spelling frequently obscures your meaning, and when it does, you will lose points. Using a computer spell-checker can help, but it doesn't spot all wrongly spelled words, and if used carelessly, it can substitute completely the wrong word for the one you intended.
Whenever you copy any text from a book or article, you must always give a reference to the text, with a page number. Long quotations should be single spaced, and indented. Any copying without references will be treated as plagiarism, and could result in you being failed for the whole course.
You should always explain or paraphrase a quotation from another source to show you understand it.

Summarizing an argument involves:

Explaining what the premises and conclusion of the argument are. Set them out as explicitly as you can. It can be useful to number each premise separately.
Explaining how the author uses "subarguments" to justify the premises of the main argument.
It can be very useful to give shorts quotations from the text to show that the author really does say what you attribute to him or her.

Evaluating an argument involves:

Assessing whether the argument is valid.
Assessing whether we have good reasons to believe the premises.
When you make a claim that is not just obviously true, you should give some justification for it.
In assessing an argument, it is not enough to merely say that you agree or disagree with a view, or that it seems valid, well-argued, interesting or surprising. You need to justify your comments and go beyond what the author says.
For the evaluative part of your answers, you can set out points made in class, no matter who made them originally. You can also develop your own ideas even if they were not discussed in class.
When choosing which questions to answer, bear in mind that it is generally easier to criticize an author's arguments than to add to them, so you will probably find it easier to discuss an article that you mainly disagree with.
It is often very helpful when you have a point you want to make to choose a fairly detailed specific example to use to illustrate your ideas.

Style and Word Usage.

Never mix up singular nouns with plural pronouns. For example, "I have a friend who believes in God, but they don't know why they believe." is grammatically incorrect, (even though it is common usage in spoken language).
In philosophy (which may be different from other subjects in this respect), it is bad style to say "I think...", or "in my personal opinion." Philosophers aim for truth, not opinions.
I prefer (but do not insist) that you use gender-neutral language. When you don't intend to refer only to males, for "he" use "he or she", and for "him" use "him or her". For "mankind" use "humankind." For "man" use "humans."
Do not refer to the author as "Mr.", "Ms.", "Dr." or "Professor". When you first refer to him or her, use both the first and last name, and subsequently, just use the last name.
Do not say that the author "implies," "insinuates," or "infers" some view if the author has actually stated the view explicitly.
Sight/Cite/Site. Do not confuse these words. "Sight" is to do with vision, "citing" is referring to some text or evidence, and a "site" is a place.
Don't mix up "affect" and "effect." To affect something (verb) is to have an influence on it, and an affect (noun) is an emotion. To effect something (verb) means to make it happen, while an effect (noun) is any change brought about by a cause.
The following expressions involve wrong or very awkward word usage: She related that grass is green, she conveyed that grass is green, she views that grass is green, she expresses her ideas about grass, she extends her opinions about grass, she did express that grass is green, she opinionates that grass is green, she professes that grass is green, and she stems her conclusion that grass is green. Avoid any such expressions.
Don't use long words when short words are adequate. E.g., "Aggression" is better than "aggressiveness."
Make an effort to get right the spelling of the names of authors. It only requires looking at the text, and if you get the spelling wrong, you give the impression of having made very little effort with your paper.
Avoid clichés and platitudes like "For thousands of years philosophers have pondered the question of the existence of God." These expressions are trite and overused.
Don't put assertions in the form of a question. Is it really a good way of clarifying your meaning?

GRADING POLICY

It is hard to quantify the quality of work in philosophy. Roughly, grades have the following meanings:

A Excellent work, demonstrating a clear and near-perfect understanding of the text(s), and answering all parts of the question. The writing must be grammatical with correct spelling. If your own ideas or opinions are asked for, then you must come up with interesting and original ideas and defend them well.

B Good work, showing a strong understanding of the text(s) and demonstrating that you have worked hard on the assignment. The writing must be easy for the reader to understand, and you must have grasped most of the main ideas. Any assessment of it that you make must be well set out and at least address most of the issues raised in class lecture or discussion.

C Many problems with a paper can lead to it getting a C. It can show a poor or superficial understanding of the text(s) being discussed. Ideas in it can be confused, and the question not adequately answered. Spelling and grammar can be so bad that it is hard to work out what you are trying to say. If assessment or your own input was asked for, you may have simply stated an opinion without justification. Simply working hard on a paper does not mean it deserves better than a C.

D A D paper is either too short, very confused, involves a major misunderstanding of what the question was asking, or leaves out a major part of what the question was asking, such as assessment or your own ideas. Generally a D paper gives the impression that the writer did not put much effort into writing it, or should have known to ask for help but didn't.

F Papers rarely get Fs, but it is possible. This occurs when it seems that the writer has very little idea what the paper is meant to be about, has put hardly any effort into writing it, or has not made any attempt to answer the question.

Make-Up Policy for Tests

Make-up policy for tests: You can retake ONE and only one of the first three tests during the semester. There is a 10% penalty for retaking a test (unless you can demonstrate a legitimate reason for not being able to take it). You must retake your test by December 1, 1999.